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 | | Friday, 15 March, 2002, 13:08 GMT Concern for overseas teachers in the UK  Travelling Australians often stop over in England Head teachers say schools are having to rely on recruiting staff from abroad, sometimes after just a telephone interview, to fill teacher vacancies. The Department for Education does not know how many overseas teachers there are in England's schools. Its figures show it issued 6,000 work permits for people coming from outside the European Community last year alone. At its annual conference in Bournemouth on Friday, the Secondary Heads Association is discussing the shortage amid concerns that overseas teachers often struggle to fit in. Discipline The association's general secretary, John Dunford, said recruitment agencies, local education authorities and individual schools now recruited abroad, sometimes after no more than a telephone interview. His members' concern is not about the quality of the overseas teachers, which is often very high.
Large numbers are being recruited from Commonwealth countries, often with a serious effect on schools there. Jamaica, which lost 600 teachers last year, has complained that increasingly "aggressive" recruiting by British agencies is draining its schools of their best and most experienced teachers. But those from the Caribbean, South Africa and India, in particular, often find the relative lack of discipline in UK schools comes as a shock. Moving on Kate Griffin, head of Greenford School in Ealing, west London, said she had recruited over the telephone - because "you have to". "But some do struggle and then they move on," she said. "They look for alternative jobs, perhaps going to work for temping agencies - or, if they are a science teacher, going to work as a lab technician. "We do everything to make sure we hold on to good teachers." | | See also:  Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Education stories now:  Links to more Education stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||
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