It is limiting to think that the most talented and effective teachers come from a highly qualified background, a top educator has said.

Professor Pasi Sahlberg, a renowned Finnish teacher and scholar, told delegates at the Oppi education festival in New York recently that that the assumption all teachers come from top-performing schools is a "dangerous myth".

According to TES, he explained that countries like Finland and Singapore - which are known for their consistently high standard - have an open mind when recruiting trainee teachers.

Professor Sahlberg pointed to the University of Helsinki by way of example, noting that of the 120 applicants for its teaching programme, only a quarter were in the top 20 per cent for academic results.

"Why does the university want to have someone who hasn't got the highest marks in reading, maths and science when there are so many applicants they could easily fill the 120 seats with the best kids there?” the online education news provider quoted him as saying.

"It's because in my country - and also in Singapore, and, as far as I know, in many other places where they are doing well with the teaching profession - the teaching profession is for everybody. It's a completely different idea to saying teaching is only for the best and the brightest who had the highest test scores."

This system goes against some of the approaches adopted by other countries eager to emulate the success of countries like Finland and Singapore.

For example, the UK government announced plans in 2011 to attract “the best graduates”, explaining that this was its way of “raising the status of the profession” and making it more appealing to “top graduates”.

Some of the proposals put forward for doing so, included offering incentives like a £20,000 bursary for those with a first in their degree who signed up to teach maths or science.