People are discovering a little-known hack that can score teachers tonnes of discounts

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Teacher discounts life hack Blue Light card

If you yourself are a teacher or happen to know one, you’ll know that the world of education isn’t always packed with perks: you often take your work home with you, weekends become made for marking and working with kids can be simply knackering – surely some discounts are the least they deserve.

Well, what if we told you that a little-known hack for teachers to get tonnes of pretty decent discounts is sitting right underneath the noses of countless British teachers?

And when we say ‘decent’, we’re talking as much as half-price off when purchasing from certain companies here in the UK.

We’re sure most if not all of you will have heard of a ‘Blue Light’ card, the membership that allows NHS, emergency services, armed forces, those in social care and other vital service professions to access savings on more than 15,000 brands, but it seems that this now includes teachers.

As revealed in a viral video by Manchester-based primary school teacher, author and online content creator ‘Mr P’ – real name Lee Parkinson – it turns out that many of those working in education also now qualify for a Blue Light card.

Explaining the simple but somewhat secret process in his now-viral video, teachers throughout the education system and, indeed, teaching assistants can apply for a Blue Light card online and find their professions at the bottom of a lengthy drop-down list.

Many companies offered their own discount services to teachers during Covid and post-pandemic after they were rightly recognised as crucial key workers – as if we even needed a pandemic to make that abundantly clear – and now Blue Light is set to cover those in education moving forward too.

As a result of this massive revelation, floods of people almost crashed the website, creating a lengthy online queue that gave us an expected waiting time of over three hours at its highest point.

There’s still a massive digital waiting room as we speak. Writing in a statement following the influx of interest, a spokesperson for Blue Light Card said: “What an incredible response we’ve had to welcoming teachers into our community!

“Teachers are not just educators, but also mentors, guides and inspirations that provide essential services to society – often going above and beyond the call of duty, as we saw during the pandemic. The excitement and appetite to join our community today only goes to show how deserving of recognition and reward our teachers are.

This was as of approximately 2:30pm on Thursday, 8 August, after hours of people stumbling onto the shopping life hack.
Blue Light cards are available in physical and digital form.
Credit: Screenshot (via bluelightcard.co.uk)/The Manc Group

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“Such is the demand we’ve seen today, we’re experiencing some issues with our website and app and our team is working hard to fix it as quickly as possible. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this is causing our members and we’ll provide an update as soon as we can. In the interim, you can register your interest at https://teachers.bluelightcard.co.uk.”

After creating a number of helpful videos like this and hosting the popular Two Mr Ps in a Pod(Cast), ‘Mr P ICT’, to use his go-to moniker on social media, the multi-talented teacher has grown a huge following over the past few years and we dare say even more so since disclosing these discounts.

Now in his mid-30s and based in Urmston, Trafford, Parkinson currently works part-time at Davyhulme Primary School and has more than 15 years of experience in the education sector.

Having specialised in ICT (as the name would suggest) and integrating tech into modern teaching, as well as holding an Academic Development and Enhancement qualification, the guy knows what he’s talking about and boasts hundreds of thousands of followers.

We’re sure all teachers would join us in thanking Mr P for spreading such helpful information and hopefully saving people lots of money moving forward. That being said, if you are an educator, don’t waste any more time reading this – go get yourself some well-earned discounts!

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Featured Images — rupixen (via Unsplash)/Mr P ICT (via X)