Tackling the Global teacher shortage for International schools
Problems around teacher supply and retention are major issues facing the education sector, in the UK and abroad. There is a global teacher shortage and it is increasingly important to be able to recruit the best candidates. So what are the solutions school leaders can turn to in these troubled times?
The UK is facing a teacher shortage of unprecedented proportion. A recent poll by the National Education Union found one in three or 35% of teachers in the UK wish to leave within five years. With such a dwindling crop to choose from, in times of exponential growth in the International sector, recruitment of quality, British qualified teachers, is going to be an increasing problem for International schools.
A report by the Council of British International Schools, 'Teacher Supply in British International Schools' recently highlighted these difficulties and listed it as one of the seven key strategic areas highlighted in the new COBIS Development Plan 2019-22. It found 94% of British international schools said they find recruiting quality teachers ‘somewhat’ or ‘very challenging’ in COBIS Teacher Supply Research – which shows that recruiting teachers in international schools continues to be challenging. Their approach is to bolster recruitment avenues, to team up with recruiters, to try to enhance the advertising and ease of selecting from candidates, but does this do enough to address the elephant in the room, that there are simply not the number of teachers to recruit from?
Areas that have always been historically difficult to recruit for, Early Years or Specialist music teacher, are now going to be incredibly challenging, despite the advertising and recruitment process. But what other solutions are being suggested globally to address this change?
There is a great push on more open recognition of teaching qualifications from other countries. Most British International and International schools are staffed predominantly by teachers from the UK and the US, with smaller numbers from other countries. Some schools already specifically target teachers from such places as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. It's not an unlimited supply but it hasn't yet been fully tapped.
International teacher supply research found that more than a third of senior leaders (34%) have increased recruitment of local staff, an increase of 27% in recent years, with a big push in certain countries, such as Hong Kong, to recognise such local teaching qualifications and accredit them with British recognised QTS. Certainly, in Hong Kong, teachers with non recognised teaching qualifications, such as SKITT or GTP are granted a permitted teacher status, however, these are granted at the governments discretion and schools are limited on how many PTS teachers they can have on staff. To this end, schools are also engaging with training new teachers in their locality. Nearly two thirds of schools have supported teachers to gain UK teaching qualifications through programmes such as PGCE, IPGCE, or Assessment-Only QTS in the past two years.
This bears its own difficulties, however. Many schools find retention rates of ex-pat iPGCE graduates low as they become engulfed by the transient nature of staff bodies in the international circuit. The school has facilitated the qualification, maybe even assisted with the funding, only for the staff member to leave the school a year or two after.
According to senior leaders, the services that would most help the international school sector with teacher supply in the coming years are: ability to act as a Teaching School delivering school-based ITT (64%) and conversion courses (to QTS/PGCE) for internationally trained teachers (57%). Other responses included: ITT programmes to train local and international staff (50%) and ability to deliver NQT induction (50%).
Schools that do recruit teachers from the host country have found difficulties involving language proficiency, suitable qualifications and experience, salary differentials and parental expectations. Schools that find ways around such difficulties - by, for instance, providing on-the-job training and reviewing salary structures - open a potentially rich vein for recruitment.
So what are the local solutions? Two suggestions, that could drastically help staff recruitment and address the shortfall in the coming years are the iQTS and the BTD (British Teaching Diploma)
Globally, a "British education" is considered by many to be of the highest available standard with avenues into higher education. The historical rigour of Eton etc. and the British value system has always been held in high esteem across the globe. This has helped the international sector grow rapidly over the last ten years or so, with over 4,000 British international schools now awarding students internationally recognised qualifications.
The first solution to address the declining numbers of British teachers is the iQTS, a scheme proposed by the government to recognise qualifications from other countries.
Sara Ford, deputy director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, explains, this issue has long meant overseas teachers have been required to help plug the gaps.
"We have struggled with recruitment and retention, and we have relied on overseas teachers for certain subjects."
However, easy access to this workforce has been removed by Brexit, which meant a new system was required. As such, Ford explains the government wanted to create a "single-tier arrangement" where it "didn't matter which country you were from" so long as you had a qualification to be a teacher that aligned with the standards set for teachers in England. This led to the proposal for the iQTS - the international qualified teacher status - that was first outlined in February 2021 with the aim of ensuring that anyone around the world could be trained to a standard in line with the qualified teacher status (QTS) in England. This proposal was welcomed by industry and, in November, the Department for Education confirmed the launch of a pilot programme for iQTS.
The iQTS. scheme will enter a pilot phase this year and could allow many more talented graduates to achieve a UK-backed teaching qualification – but there are issues lurking underneath that could limit its impact
This pilot will start in September 2022 and see five Initial Teacher Training (ITT) providers, already accredited to deliver QTS in England, deliver the qualification through a mix of remote teaching, in-school placements with approved international schools, feedback from mentors and assessment.
The government says this will help boost recruitment for both international schools and those in England and it will do this is by holding iQTS to the same standard as the domestic QTS that teachers in England are expected to have.
2. The second solution could be the British Teaching Diploma or BTD. This is a diploma accredited through Cardiff Vale, one of biggest and leading UK FE Colleges.
The British Teaching Diploma is an internationally recognised Diploma, equivalent in standard to the second year of a British University Degree. It is a brand new, fully UK recognised, Level 5 certificated teacher training and continuous professional development diploma.
The BTD is aimed at staff who wish to attain an endorsed British Teaching Diploma, the learning from which can be put into immediate practice in international educational settings. This will enable local teaching staff to be ‘upskilled’ to competent levels, according to the British standard, in line with similar schemes such as HLTA where responsibility for class teaching can be handed over.
The BTD helps to upskill colleagues to master the tools and aptitudes of highly effective teachers. This, in turn, adds huge value to the Institution and helps more learners achieve even better outcomes. The Diploma itself gives a gateway to further qualifications, gaining them credits that are transferrable should the teacher choose to advance their education career to a QTS approved certification.
The BTD contains the essentials of a British PGCE and it is focused on the best of British and global pedagogy.
Colin Bell, CEO of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), certainly believes it is the right time for such qualifications to enter the market.
"For the best schools, there's competition for attracting the best teachers, recruiting, retaining the right teachers and developing them - these will provide that additional channel into qualified teacher status," he says.
Mark Steed, principal and CEO of Kellett School, a British international school in Hong Kong, agrees it is a positive step for international schools and those in England too: "This is a win-win for both sides," he says.
This is because on the international side, he says, iQTS and the BTD could be perfect for what is known in the industry as the "trailing spouse" - the people who find themselves living abroad because they are married to a diplomat or overseas worker, who then want to find work of their own.
"They [would] take on a job as a teaching assistant because they're a native English speaker, do a couple of years with us, and then they train to be a teacher. When they return to the UK, they're then able to continue their career as teachers," he foresees. "One of the things that we struggle with is that we recruit people and we can train people up in an international context, but what they want is portability, they want to go back to the UK. And [previously] that has not really been possible," Mr Steed explains.
This in turn could then boost the number of teachers in the UK when these professionals return home. "The UK desperately needs a broader source of people who are qualified to teach in the UK. It needs qualified teachers, and there's an acute shortage, particularly in certain specialist subjects and specialist areas," he adds.
Of course, both the BTD and iQTS are not just aimed at expats abroad but also local workers who want the chance to train as a teacher and then potentially use that qualification to move - either to another international school around the world or to the UK. This is certainly what the government hopes with its belief workers around the world will see a "British" teaching certification as worthy of their time, effort - and money.
Ian Thurston, principal of the Dubai International Academy, an IB continuum school in the United Arab Emirates, certainly believes it will attract locals.
"I think a British qualification is highly regarded," he says. "On the international circuit, if someone's coming in with British qualifications, you always think to yourself, 'OK, yeah, that's really good. They know what they're doing'."
Thurston explains how finding highly skilled teachers in a place like Dubai, which hosts international schools from numerous countries, can be hard, and both the BTD and iQTS could make this easier. He says this may not happen at the top international schools where there may be an expectation among parents that teachers are coming from the UK but, as the market grows, having access to locally British trained teachers could be a real godsend.
"There will be some schools who won't be interested in taking teachers [in] training because they're pitching themselves at the top end, but I think there's a growing mid-range market here in Dubai and those schools could really latch on to something like this as a way of finding staff."
Meanwhile, Vanita Uppal OBE, director of The British School New Delhi in India, says she believes the BTD and iQTS's "focus on pedagogy and training on the development, learning and metacognition of children" will offer a real boost to teaching around the world and prove appealing to those keen to enter the profession.
"It would mean that quality graduates can more easily become teachers and the pool of talent would expand, allowing the bar on standards to be raised," she adds.
So the BTD and iQTS could boost recruitment for both international schools and UK schools, drive improvements in global teaching and boost the UK economy too. Win-win indeed.
Well, not quite because, despite the optimism around much of the iQTS, the scheme has also attracted scepticism - primarily because of one major factor. The issue is that although the iQTS is designed to be on par with QTS in how it is delivered, there is ambiguity over how exactly it will work from an administrative point of view should the iQTS-holder wish to come to Britain to teach.
"The major problem with how they've done iQTS is that they've not given it equivalence to QTS, which is nonsensical," says Liz Free, CEO and director of International School Rheintal in Switzerland.
As such, Free can imagine a Byzantine situation where an iQTS-qualified teacher could apply for a visa to teach in Britain but have their application rejected by the Home Office, because visa rules state that applicants must have a qualification that is recognised as equivalent to QTS - which, confusingly, iQTS isn't quite.
This is not the case with the BTD, however, with the Diploma being accredited through a British institution with certification.
Free, though, says it is something that should have been addressed from the start of the iQTS pilot.
"I think it's a massive opportunity missed [that] they haven't made iQTS and QTS legal equivalents," she laments.
"If they made that difference, it would then be a legitimate tool for recruiting into the UK and for developing the global workforce with a British stamp all over it, something the BTD offers."
Furthermore, there could be second-order consequences too for international schools because once they have iQTS and then achieve QTS they would still have to complete their early career induction either in England or in an accredited British Overseas School. But this is only possible in a limited number of international schools that have signed up to a voluntary DfE inspection scheme, and not many of those mid-range schools, this will make the iQTS more of a hindrance than help
"There are so many schools now, particularly in the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, who've done other schemes, but they can't support the ECT induction," explains Bell.
"However, they can take a teacher through the iQTS, [so] if you want to get your QTS and then your induction year, you might have to move school."
It's worth noting teachers would not be obliged to complete an induction year until they were working in England.
The BTD brings to the International sector a British qualification, with further avenues into QTS with credits achieved to a degree level.
In summation, the global shortage of teachers seems on an unstoppable one way trend at the moment. Unless there is radical change in conditions, pay and acknowledgement of the profession, this will continue. There are options being tried and tested, both commercially and by the Government, but for International schools, finding a long term, financially viable option is imperative to survival in a very competitive and exponentially growing market.
Will these solve the teacher shortage crisis in the future? Only time will tell.
Christian Bishop