Increase cultural understanding, love the adventure, extend your teaching skills, but you will miss your family. That’s what teachers who have been teaching abroad for several years are telling new recruits to international teaching.

International school recruitment specialist Teachers International Consulting (TIC) researched a broad group of experienced international teachers recently. The objective was to find out from seasoned teachers the best and the worst of teaching overseas.

Teachers of 13 different nationalities who have spent an average of ten years working in international schools were interviewed. According to 67% of the interviewed teachers, a clearer understanding of many different cultures is the biggest overall impact of overseas teaching. Sixty percent of the teachers believed that the experience has broadened their knowledge and teaching ability significantly compared to what they would have achieved had they stayed in their home country. It was generally agreed upon that they saw their international teaching experience as a kind of adventure. As for the drawback of teaching jobs overseas, 37% said it was longing for family and friends, 14% said it was the difficulty of initially making new friends in a new location, 8% said language barriers and another 8% said coping with cultural dissimilarity.

All of the teachers interviewed had moved jobs more than one time within the international school arena. Experience-wise with regards to finding and obtaining new teaching jobs, 43% preferred using specialist recruitment organisations, 26% would depend mostly on speaking to colleagues at different international schools, while another 26% would use website and press announcements. Only 5% said they would now consider recruitment fairs. Everyone concurred that the best advice for new international teachers is to be unbiased and consider Middle East teaching jobs, teaching jobs in Europe, wherever, look at everything on its merits.

The arrival of new teachers into the international schools market has increased significantly. Based on a research conducted by the ISC, an organisation that studies the developments in the international schools market, the number of staff in international schools has increased from 90,000 to approximately 230,000 from 2000. The number of staff in international schools is presumed to increase even further – up to 320,000 in 2015 and 450,000 in 2020. “Most of these people will come from English-speaking countries as this is the language for learning in international schools,” says Andrew Wigford, director of Teachers International Consulting. Recruiters from majority of the reputable and qualified international schools are always on the look-out for teachers who have good experience and come from English-speaking countries. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom all have a remarkably good reputation both for their pedagogy and the learning-focused skills of their instructors.

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