Global Teacher Prize Winners List (2015-2026)

Rouble Nagi is Educator. Rouble Nagi, is a pioneering educator from India, dedicated to making learning accessible to the most marginalised communities. Over the past two decades, she has established more than 800 learning centres across over 100 underserved communities and villages, reimagining abandoned walls as interactive educational murals that spark curiosity and engagement. Rouble's win was announced at the 2026 World Governments Summit, Dubai UAE. Indian teacher Rouble Nagi, who transforms neglected and broken walls into large-scale, interactive murals that teach everything from literacy and numeracy to hygiene and environmental awareness, has been named the winner of the $1 million GEMS Education Global Teacher Prize 2026, an initiative of the Varkey Foundation, organised in collaboration with UNESCO. Now in its tenth year, the Global Teacher Prize is the largest award of its kind.

Mansour Al Mansour is Saudi Teacher. Mansour Al Mansour's win was announced on 13th February 2025, at the World Governments Summit, Dubai UAE. Mansour Al Mansour is a Saudi Arabian educator, humanitarian and advocate for transformative learning. He is known for his charity work and for instructing prisoners. Mansour is a teacher at the Prince Saud bin Jalawi School in al-Ahsa, is also an author and is known for work in his community, including a program that helped ensure people had access to air conditioning maintenance during the Saudi Arabia's scorching summer months. He also works with orphans and hopes to use the prize to build a school for them.

Sister Zeph is Pakistani Christian Teacher. Sister Zeph's win was announced on 8th November 2023, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France. Sister Zeph founded her own school in the courtyard of her home at just 13 for children whose parents cannot pay fees. She worked eight-hour days to fund the school, then taught students for another four hours, and then stayed up at night teaching herself. Twenty-six years later, the school, now housed in a brand-new building, provides free education for more than 200 underprivileged children. From a young age she faced adversity, and emerged as a beacon of hope for underprivileged children in her wider community.

Keishia Thorpe is English Teacher. Keishia, an English teacher at International High School Langley Park, Bladensburg, Maryland, was selected from over 8,000 nominations and applications for the Global Teacher Prize from 121 countries around the world. Keishia Thorpe currently teaches English to 12th-grade students at the International High School Langley Park, Bladensburg, Maryland, United States, a school where 100% of her students are English language learners and 95% identify as low-income. Keishia completely redesigned the 12th grade curriculum for the English department to make it culturally relevant to her students who are first-generation Americans, immigrants, or refugees from mostly Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and South and Central America.

Ranjitsinh Disale is Indian Teacher. When Ranjitsinh arrived at the Zilla Parishad Primary School in 2009 it was a dilapidated building, sandwiched between a cattle shed and a storeroom. Most of the girls were from tribal communities where school attendance could sometimes be as low as 2% and teenage marriage was common. For those that did make it to school, the curriculum was not in their primary language (Kannada), leaving many students unable to learn at all. Ranjitsinh was determined to turn this around, moving to the village and going to great efforts to learn the local language.

Peter Tabichi is Science Teacher. Peter teaches at Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Pwani Village, situated in a remote, semi-arid part of Kenya’s Rift Valley. Here, students from a host of diverse cultures and religions learn in poorly equipped classrooms. Their lives can be tough in a region where drought and famine are frequent. 95% of pupils hail from poor families, almost a third are orphans or have only one parent, and many go without food at home. Drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, dropping out early from school, young marriages and suicide are common.

Andria Zafirakou is Arts and textiles Teacher. Andria teaches at Alperton Community School, a secondary school academy in the inner city borough of Brent. It’s no easy task. Brent is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country and 130 languages are spoken in its schools. Its pupils come from some of the poorest families in Britain, many sharing one house with five other families, many exposed to gang violence. Children arrive at the school with limited skills and already feel isolated from staff and one another, making engaging with them all the more vital, but all the more difficult.

<p>Maggie MacDonnell is Inuit Teacher. Her win was announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum in March 2017 via satellite by astronaut Thomas Pesquet.‬‬ After completing her Masters degree she found her country was beginning to wake up to the decades of abuse that Canadian Indigenous people have lived through, including assaults on the environment and enormous economic and social inequality.</p><p>As such, she sought out opportunities to teach indigenous communities in Canada and for the last six years has been a teacher in a fly-in Inuit village called Salluit, nestled in the Canadian Arctic. This is home to the second northernmost Inuit community in Quebec, with a population of just over 1,300 – it cannot be reached by road, only by air. In winter temperatures are minus 25C. There were six suicides in 2015, all affecting young males between the ages of 18 and 25.</p>

Hanan Al Hroub is Palestinian Teacher. Hanan grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp, Bethlehem, where she was regularly exposed to acts of violence. She went into primary education after her children were left deeply traumatised by a shooting incident they witnessed on their way home from school. Her experiences in meetings and consultations to discuss her children’s behaviour, development and academic performance in the years that followed led Hanan to try to help others who, having grown up in similar circumstances, require special handling at school.

Nancie Atwell is English Teacher. Nancie discovered a love of books as a child while in hospital with rheumatic fever. She teaches English as a writing-reading workshop, an innovation she first described in her book ‘In The Middle’ (the book’s first two editions sold half a million copies).