Is Andria the world's best TEACHER?

Amazing Andria Zafirakou has devoted her life to supporting and inspiring children in her classroom

- KARA O'NEILL

Since the age of about five, Andria Zafirakou can remember wanting to be a teacher.

‘I’d line up all my dolls and teddies in front of me, and call a register. Rather than running around outside, or playing shops with my plastic till, I’d be teaching English, Maths and Science to my “pupils”,’ she says.

At school, as a pupil herself, Andria, now 44, soon fell in love with Art.

‘Even now, I can remember the creative projects that I worked on when I was six and seven years old. I’d put so much effort into whatever I was making, always wanting my finished drawing to look the best.’

When Andria, from Brent, northwest London, went to secondary school and began to consider a career, she didn’t even have to give it a second thought.

‘I wanted to be an Art teacher,’ Andria says. But her parents, who had migrated to the UK from Greece and Cyprus, didn’t approve.

‘My mother and father thought I should be focusing on Science, Economics, History – subjects that would help me to get a job as a doctor or a solicitor. “What job can you get with Art, Andria?” they’d say. And I knew that that meant choosing to pursue art wasn’t an option.’

Andria picked History instead, with her parents’ blessing. But just two weeks later, she knew she had made the wrong decision.

‘I begged my tutors to let me switch to Art, the subject I’d wanted to do all along. Then I had to go home and have a really difficult conversation with my mum and dad!’