Former EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan reports from the recent ISTP meeting in Tallinn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) is a global summit on teaching jointly sponsored by Educational International (the world teacher union confederation which EIS is affiliated to), OECD, and a host nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is unique in its composition as delegations are only permitted where both ministers and trade unions are attending, which allows for open dialogue on the conference themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ISTP 2026 was hosted by Estonia and was entitled \u201cSwitching gears; Teachers and Learners in the Future Learning Environment\u201d with sessions on the Evolving Teaching Profession; Autonomy of Educators and School Leaders and AI and Ed Tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was recognised that despite the pace of change, teaching remains firmly rooted in the critical teacher pupil relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegates agreed that autonomy was not free licence; but about professional space, with much being said about the need to trust teachers. Several countries referenced the importance of collaborative autonomy. Collaboration was seen as the foundation block for the concept of democratic schools with several delegates referencing the role of schools in defending our broader democracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was clear recognition of AI as a tool to be mastered and used but for that to be effective teachers need to be in control of it and understand how it works. Switching gears sometimes meant dropping a gear to stay in control, rather than always going faster. The UK suggested that systems, collaboratively, should be proactive in creating Education specific AI tools rather than being at the whim of market driven general applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Norway and Slovenia raised the significant emerging issue as to how engagement with certain AI capacities can impact brain development in the critical period of childhood. The very real danger around anthropomorphic applications was recognised, with EI advocating early bans on their use with children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As ever the Summit concluded with each delegation committing to three action points based on the discussions. Country specific information can be found on the website, as can all presentations and background material. The full summit report will be published there this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The UK will host next year\u2019s summit, to be held in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: A Scottish delegation did not participate in ISTP this year, due to the urgent efforts by the EIS and the Scottish Government to resolve the workload dispute in March at the time of the summit.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former EIS General Secretary Larry Flanagan reports from the recent ISTP meeting in Tallinn. The International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) is a global summit on teaching jointly sponsored by Educational International (the world teacher union confederation which EIS is affiliated to), OECD, and a host nation. It is unique in its composition as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2789,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions\/2789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/may2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It was recognised that despite the pace of change, teaching remains firmly rooted in the critical teacher pupil relationship.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n