ABSTRACT
There has been an obsessive focus on improving teaching standards worldwide as research seems to indicate that they are a highly significant factor in student attainment. Improving professional standards may refer to improving centrally codified conceptions of what it is to be a good teacher; or it may refer to improving the quality of the thousands of actions and decisions that teachers make on a daily basis. A system needs a widely understood curriculum and assessment system whose development is mapped out well in advance, informed by teacher-led research and experimentation in partnership with high education institutions. Facilitated by a new cadre of highly trained teacher-education professionals teachers' development can become supported in a systematic way rather than rely on the luck of whether their school has the expertise, resources and vision to support them.
