How do the world’s best performing education systems attract and develop great teachers? To find out, I am about to embark on a journey overseas. John Morris will report next week on Australia, and I will report in the subsequent weeks on Singapore, Germany, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Singapore has always been top of the class, but its typically East Asian approach to education is often criticised for pushing rote-learning and stifling creativity. Yet when Singapore joined in 2009 the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), which measures creative application of knowledge to real-world problems, it came out on top. The key to Singapore’s success has been its systematic approach to raising the status of the teaching profession.

While Singaporean students study hard, Finland has a very different approach. Learning is stress free and this seems to work; according to PISA Finland is up there with Singapore as one of the top-performing systems. Although the style of education is completely different, they are similar in their investment in the teaching profession. Trainee teachers are selected from the cream of the crop – the top 10% of graduates.

There are two questions for Germany. Why do PISA results vary so much state by state, with Bavaria one of its best performing states, and Bremen consistently the worst. And how has Germany turned its education system around in the last 10 years and improved its PISA results?

The United Kingdom does quite badly in PISA, and is undertaking radical educational reform. Incremental annual pay increases to teachers will be scrapped this year and pay will be linked to quality teaching, giving schools more freedom to recognise and reward great teachers. I’ll speak with Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove to find out how reforms are going.

The final destination is Canada, a high-performing country with results similar to New Zealand. Canada has done education reform peacefully, working in collaboration with unions to build a stronger teaching profession. The research in Canada will give New Zealand clues about what to reform and how to do it.

The following questions will underpin my interviews with education experts around the world: What can New Zealand do to systematically invest in the teaching profession? How can policymakers work with teachers to raise the quality of their profession in order to provide a better education for all New Zealand students. I hope to find answers to these questions on my trip over the next few weeks.