Why I founded the Educate Awards – Kim O’Brien

As the 2026 Educate Awards approach, founder, Kim O’Brien, looks back on 15 years of celebrating the teaching profession.

15 years ago, having worked across multiple sectors such as property development, it struck me that the teaching profession didn’t have an awards ceremony on the same level as other professions – law, architecture, surveying, and the creative industries, to name a few.

Why did this bother me? Because at the time we were publishing this magazine, Educate, and it simply didn’t sit right with me. There was something about it that felt unfair. It also seemed to position teaching as somehow ‘different’ from other professions, where genuine recognition and celebration was largely missing, unless it happened in a school hall over a cup of tea and biscuits.

“I kept coming back to the same question: where was the moment that truly shone a light on this profession on equal footing with others? A space that gave schools and those working in them the chance to be properly celebrated: professionally, publicly, and proudly. To step out of the classroom, onto a red carpet, and be recognised for the impact they make every day.

It was from that thinking that the idea of the awards was genuinely born. Okay, so having an idea is one thing. Making it become something real is something entirely different. If nobody is going to give you money to make your idea happen, the first thing you need to do is build a sound financial plan to underwrite it so that it is commercially viable and sustainable. That always had to come first. From there, attracting sponsors to join the mission became job number one.

It’s been hugely rewarding to partner with amazing businesses and organisations which have the same shared vision for the awards, and through their support have helped make them possible. To me, this goes beyond a commercial relationship; it’s a partnership between the awards and its sponsors to deliver, year after year, the Oscars-style ceremony that Educate Awards has become.

For every school, teacher, and support staff member who attends, and for everyone who walks the red carpet, I have always felt enormous joy and pride. Seeing people who give so much of themselves in their jobs every day being recognised in that way is something that never loses its impact for me. The emotion in those moments is real, visceral, and euphoric every single year.

It’s in those moments, watching it all unfold, that I’m reminded again why that idea, 15 years ago, was absolutely the right one.

I also need to talk about my team, the people who have truly made the awards happen each year. Because without them, none of this would exist in the way it does today. They put everything into it, and I mean everything. They live, sleep, eat and breathe the awards for the entire year.

The passion and love they have for it, even though the awards are about a different profession to their own, is something I find wonderful. The awards simply wouldn’t happen without this level of commitment, energy, and consistency that never waivers across the year.

 I think in part I put this down to what they experience every year at the ceremony itself. The euphoric emotion in the room is infectious, and when you’ve been there, when you’ve felt it, it has such a positive impact on you.

We’ve all been to school. We’ve had the privilege of being taught by teachers and have been developed, enriched, and supported by people working in schools throughout our lives, from childhood, through our teenage years, and beyond. I think my team feel genuinely honoured to be part of something that recognises and celebrates that. So, we don’t have to ask each other to go above and beyond for the awards, it just happens.

Every year, former team members also come back. In fact, the team today still includes people who have been with us from the beginning. Anyone who works on the awards tends to want to return, to be part of it again. They simply love it, and it, and that, in itself, is remarkable, because delivering an event of this scale is incredibly demanding and exhausting. So, for people to keep coming back year after year reflects what the awards also mean to the team behind delivering them.

So, as we approach the 2026 Educate Awards, I feel my usual huge sense of excitement, anticipating the quality and volume of entries, and then the build-up to awards night itself, along with the planning of the entertainment and everything that goes with it. It’s another part of the event I absolutely love, especially because it showcases outstanding student talent across the creative subjects and gives this work by schools the spotlight it deserves.

When I step back and look at the wider narrative around education over the past 15 years, the ongoing teacher shortage and the number of people leaving the profession, it takes me back to why I founded the awards in the first place. The profession needed, and to a degree still needs, to be lifted to the same standing as other professions, not just in how it is seen by the outside world, but in how it is valued by teachers, support staff, and wider school staff themselves. That was always what I hoped the awards would do: to create real, public, professional recognition and celebration in an Oscars-style way and give them their own moment to shine.

Kim O’Brien, founder of the Educate Awards, is also managing director at CPMM Media Group, offering strategic PR and marketing services to schools, colleges, and multi-academy trusts. If you’d like to chat, just drop her an email kim.obrien@cpmmmedia.com or give her a call 0151 709 7567.