Editorial from Estelle Morris for 'TeacherWorld' homepage

I am delighted to have the opportunity to support the launch of the 'Teacherworld' web site. Education is the key to improving national and individual prosperity and to increasing social inclusion in our society. We need every child to realise his or her full learning potential. The classroom is the single most important learning environment and teachers are our key to making it happen.

Our vision is for a modern teaching profession with good leadership, incentives for excellence, a strong culture of professional development and better support and training for teachers. We also, crucially, want our teaching profession to be representative of a wider community so that all parts of society feel they are contributing to and benefiting from their schools. We would especially like to see more candidates in teaching from minority ethnic groups.

The Teacherworld web site can play an important part in this. It will help increase teacher recruitment of minority ethnic groups by promoting the profession and identifying career routes to qualified teacher status. It will serve as an important networking function for existing teachers by providing a forum, with a chat room, for teachers, to express views, discuss practices and experiences and raise awareness of the issues within the profession for minority ethnic teachers.

Teacherworld, importantly, aims to reach out to a wider community, not just to teachers and potential teachers but to all those in our society involved in education - parents, governors, pupils, academics, policy makers and local community groups. I wish it every success.

Estelle Morris Secretary of State -

Department for Education and Skills