Tag Archives: international perspectives on teacher recruitment

£10,000 to attract overseas teachers

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There has been a lot of chatter across social media about the government’s offer of a £10,000 tax free relocation scheme for overseas students starting ITT in certain subjects, and teachers in these subjects being offered a similar package if they will come and work in England. These incentives are to help to overcome the dire shortage of teachers in many subjects that has been well documented in the posts on this blog. There is now even a letter in The Times newspaper on the subject.

Concerns about the incentive schemes range from the issue of stripping out teachers from countries that need them even more than we do. This theme rarely, if ever, looks at whether those countries are training sufficient, not enough or even too many graduates for the local labour market. Then, there is the argument, as in The Times, that teaching is now a global occupation, as it is, but that schools in England make it difficult for those that have worked overseas to return to teach in England. That is a problem the government could fix immediately, and not by offering cash payments.

The DfE could establish a recruitment agency alongside its job board and hire well respected headteachers to interview would-be returning teachers, and certify them as suitable for employment in England. These applicants could then be matched with vacancies on the DfE job board placed by state school and TeachVac for independent school vacancies, and their details forwarded to the school.

If the schools did not take the application forward, they could be asked to explain why these teachers were not short-listed for interview or, if interviewed, not appointed. The feedback could be used to help develop the scheme, if necessary, by offering appropriate one-term conversion courses. An autumn term course, offering say £10,000 to participants that complete the course, would mean these teachers would be available to fill January vacancies. These are vacancies where schools are really struggling each year to fill unexpected departures.

Such a scheme would also stop the return of headteachers flying off to Canada and Australia in search of candidates to fill their posts, as has happened in past periods of teacher shortage.

Expanding on the re-training scheme, the government might also look at the increasing pool of teachers trained for the primary sector that are unable to find teaching posts. Could a one-term conversion course to teach Key Stage 3 in a particular subject allow them to be employed by secondary schools, and release teachers with more subject knowledge to teach Key Stages 4 & 5?

The DfE has been happy to interfere in the recruitment market with its job board, but could be much more involved than just designing the current hands-off incentive schemes and other actions such as writing to ITT providers asking them to consider applicants from around the world. This letter was at the point in the ITT cycle where providers are mostly looking to keep places for home students in case they appear. After all, who knows when the next downturn in the economy will emerge and teaching will once again be a career of interest, a sit briefly was in the early days of the covid pandemic.

Some marks to the DfE for doing something, but there are more marks to be obtained for being even more creative in solving our teaching crisis.

Teaching in China: bright future or end of the road?

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How will the Chinese government’s ruling that International Schools in China must teach the same lessons as Chinese-run schools affect the market for international schools in China and as a result the demand for teachers from Britain? Westminster School abandons plans for sister sites in China amid concerns about communist curriculum (inews.co.uk)

At least one school seems to have scrapped expansion plans in China, and it will be interesting to see how other UK schools with investments in China respond. There is also the question of how those Chinese citizens that can afford private education will respond to the government’s decree. Will they embrace boarding school education and ship their offspring to British schools elsewhere in Asia or even negotiate places in the ‘home country’ original school of the brand or will they think that the brand will remain a draw even if the ‘hard curriculum’ is mandated by the Chinese government. After all, private schools teach the same A levels as are on offer for free in the state system in England but parents still pay large sums for their children to attend private sixth forms. No doubt class sizes will be a consideration for parents in China just as it is in England. Access to wealth buys access to smaller classes whatever is being taught in them.

The outcome of this policy change may have ripples in the labour market for teachers in England. Fewer overseas openings may reduce the ‘brain drain’ of teachers leaving this country.  Any closure of school sites overseas may well also see teachers returning to the UK. If their former employer feels a responsibility to offer them employment on their return, then the number of vacancies in the independent sector available for new entrants to the profession will drop. This ought to be good news for the state school sector as there should be more teachers entering the profession that would need to find a teaching post in the state sector.

Of course, if the Chinese pupils just migrate to schools outside of China, then the demand for teachers will remain at present levels, and the state sector will continue to see teachers leaving for more lucrative and less burdensome teaching posts overseas.

It is probably time for the DfE to research the international transfer of teaching skills. Writing that line reminds me that in September 1968 I attended a student-run conference on ITOMS – The International Transfer of Management Skills- organised by AIESEC. Do we now need to discuss ITOTS?

Of course, there are other teacher flows than just the one from England to the rest of the world. There used to be internal transfer within the African continent and between the Caribbean and the USA.

Teaching is now a global profession as the DfE has recognised with its new approach to QTS and how it can be obtained. Should England take the lead in setting international standards for teacher preparation much as it did in the market for English Language teaching Qualifications?

Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention

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This book is sub-titled Contextual Challenges from International Perspectives, and is jointly edited by Tanya Ovenden-Hope and Rowena Passy Itis to be published by Routledge on the 2nd October. The ISBN is SBN 9780367076450

I doubt whether many will want to buy it outright with even an e-book price of over £30. However, I mention it here for two reasons. Firstly, the authors asked me to write what has become the opening chapter. In it I discuss the history of teacher supply at the national level since 1970 within the context of my own career during the past half century.

Secondly, reading the book makes it obvious why I prefer to write blogs than books or academic articles about such a fast moving environment as the labour market for teachers. This book is now as much a work of history as it is a discussion about current policy, since the world of teacher recruitment has been changed by the pandemic.

Indeed, we are unlikely to see a return to conditions of widespread teacher shortages for at least a few years, however much of a -V- shape the recession we are now entering turns out to be. The opposite was, of course, the case when this book was being crafted.

I never envy the authors of a collection of chapters by different authors. Ensuring academics meet deadlines is a thankless task. This is the second time I have contributed a chapter to a book where the time between commissioning and publication rendered the original text not fully fit for the original purpose.

It would be interesting to bring together the various posts about teacher shortages on this blog and compare them with articles I wrote during periods of plenty in the labour market as part of my contributions to the TES during the first decade of this century.

There is one group that may find the book worth purchasing. The group is those successful in tendering for the DfE’s longitudinal survey of teachers designed to underpin their currently outdated Recruitment & Retention strategy. Those designing the survey for the DfE might like to link my previous post about the OECD data with the level of vacancies due to maternity leave currently being advertised on both TeachVac and the DfE’s vacancy site.