Teachers’ Day is celebrated in India on the birthday of one of India's greatest teachers, Bharat Ratna Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

The great orator, thinker, writer, and philosopher started his career as a teacher of philosophy in Madras Presidency College, and then taught in Mysore University. He taught the `dull subject' with a passion that inspired his students. In Calcutta University, he was Professor of Mental and Moral Sciences.
He went on to become Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University and rose to become the President of India. The Government of India, on the request of the National Teachers Federation, declared his birthday as Teachers’ Day on 5 September 1962.

Respect for one’s teachers and recognition of the role that they play is not unique to India, we know of the great teachers of Ancient Greece, Rome and China. Several countries around the world celebrate Teachers’ Day. In countries such as China, South Korea, Taiwan and the US, the day is a ‘non-official’ holiday.

The UN observes the World Teachers’ day on October 5, to ‘provide an opportunity for the international public to examine the critically important contributions that teachers make, both inside and outside the classroom.’ On this day, thousands of education professionals around the world unite to ensure that the educational needs of future generations of schoolchildren are taken into account.

World Teachers’ Day focuses on the need for bringing qualified teachers into classrooms, and for offering teachers the necessary support – financial, intellectual and social – to attain the objective of Education for All by 2015. In order to reach the goal, millions of new teachers will need to be recruited and trained all over the world.

World Teachers’ Day invites everyone to recognize the indispensable and often difficult role that teachers play – whether working in an industrialized city or in a temporary classroom in a refugee camp.

Other countries also celebrate Teachers’ day in September.

In Taiwan it is celebrated as a national holiday on September 28. The day honours teachers' virtues, pains, and also their contribution not only to their own students but also to the whole society. This date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Confucius, believed to be the model master educator in ancient China. In 1939, the Ministry of Education set the date at August 27, the attributed birthday of Confucius. In 1952, it was changed to 38 September, calculated to be the precise date in the Gregorian calendar.

In China, Teachers’ Day was first observed on August 27 at the National Central University in 1931. It was adopted by the central government of the Republic of China in 1932. In 1951, the People’s Republic of China cancelled this observance. It was re-established more than thirty years later, in 1985, and the day was changed to September 10.


The Latin American International Teachers' Day is on September 11, commemorating the death of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, an Argentinean politician and respected educator. The Latin American countries decided on this in the 1943 Inter-American Conference on Education, held in Panama.

Many Latin American countries, however, have a separate national Teachers' Day. In Brazil, Teachers' Day is October 15. . In Peru, Teachers’ Day is celebrated on July 6.

In Mexico, in September of 1917, the Federal Congress decreed May 15 as Día del Maestro. Teachers’ day was first celebrated in Mexico on May 15, 1918.