International schools come in many different shapes and sizes. There are American schools, British schools, IB schools, Department of Defence schools, privately run schools and non-profit schools, to name a few.

One distinction teachers looking for a job overseas should be aware of is that of locally run versus foreign run schools. Being aware of this one difference can ensure that you sign an overseas teaching contract with your eyes wide-open.

Locally run schools are more likely to be a cultural shock to teachers from abroad, depending on the culture of the incoming teacher and the culture of the host country and/or owners.

A locally run international school may have some ‘quirks’ that can make life difficult for an international teacher. These quirks may include an old-fashioned approach to teaching assignments (sexism), an unwillingness to assign failing grades to students who haven’t succeeded in mock exams or tests, and many more.

International schools run by a foreign director, however, are more likely to be operated in a manner more in keeping with schools you are used to.

Using simple guidelines to evaluate potential employing schools can ensure that you land yourself in a teaching job abroad that you can be happy with.

* Does the school have a director from a ‘western’ country? Or a director with experience in ‘western’ educational practices?

The former is going to be more use to you because a western director will presumably have experienced a western education as well.

Also check whether the director interviewing you is remaining with the school for the following academic year. I’ve known teachers who have been interviewed by a British or American director and accepted contracts only to find out on arrival that the ‘foreign’ director has been replaced with a local one.

* Rather than talk to the recruiter about your teaching philosophy, ask them about the teaching and learning philosophy and practice of the school.

Some teachers have been excited about their new job abroad until they have tuned up at the school to discover that there was a vast difference between what the recruiter told them about the school’s educational philosophy at the interview and what was happening in practice.

Asking the recruiter about the teaching and learning philosophy of the school, rather than discussing your own is more likely to elicit the truth about the school. If you are a hot prospect, it’s quite likely that the recruiter will agree that your teaching style will be a perfect fit for the school simply to get you to sign the contract.

* Check the school’s reputation using online resources and by talking to teachers.

This is especially easy if you are attending a job fair because you will be surrounded by experienced international teachers. Ask other teachers what they think of the school that’s attempting to recruit you. The international school teaching community is a small one, everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows something…

Go online and join the International Schools Review website to check what other teachers have to say about the school you are interested in.

When finding information about schools, make sure the information is timely. When the teaching and administration staff are signing two year contracts, there can me a lot of staff turnover; resulting in a lot of rapid changes in a school!

Remember, no school is going to be a perfect fit, so try and find the school that looks like it is going to be the best fit. If you get to your new job and it is not exactly what you expected, try and look at the positives, they will almost certainly outweigh the negatives…

* a lot more money left at the end of the month

* a better climate

* more opportunities to travel

* a shorter school year

* more time to pursue hobbies or professional development.

You need to teach overseas! Pick a country, any country, and there will be at least one international school there. International Schools offer private education for expatriate’s children worldwide. And, while most of the parents have to pay school fees, one of the conditions nearly always included in the contracts of international teachers is free education for the teachers’ children. There are over 4000 international schools worldwide, all requiring teachers to staff them, many of them offering excellent quality private education.

Picking a school that suits both your children’s needs and yours can be challenging, but it is possible. In a recent interview I conducted with international teachers, Maggie Hos-McGrane, an international teacher of 19 years experience said that after she had completed her research she’d found only 30 of the more than 4000 international schools suited both her and her children. If you have children, here are some things you should consider when applying for teaching posts abroad in international schools.

Is the school a profit making enterprise?

There are a number of different kinds of international schools to choose from, some are run by a board and are not designed to make a profit, and others are run by an individual or company in order to make a profit.

As a teacher you will be concerned that the school’s educational philosophy matches your own. As a parent you want to insure that your children’s education is the priority of the school, rather than the amount of money spent on educational materials and the effect that will have on the school’s owner’s profit.

There are some directors or owners of international schools that may be more interested in the financial benefits of running a school than the education benefits to the students. Be aware, both as a prospective employee and as a parent.

Is the school accredited?

International schools can become accredited by an organization that sets educational and operational standards for international education institutions. One such organization is the Council of International Schools (CIS). In order for an international school to become accredited by CIS, they must go through a rigorous appraisal process which looks at the staff and management, the facilities and, the quality of teaching and learning in the school.

If an international school is accredited, then you can be confident that the quality of education provided by the school is high. Most schools that are accredited by an organization like CIS advertise their status on their webpage, brochures and stationery.

Other organizations that offer accreditation for international schools are NEASC, COBISEC, ISCIS and the Association of Christian Schools International, to name a few.

How many students are in the school?

This is particularly of concern for parents of high school aged children as the number of students in a school may affect the number of subject choices offered at higher levels. For example, if there are only 30 students in the graduating class, then the school will have to limit the number of subjects being offered to make it cost effective. This can often affect profit and non-profit making schools alike.

Additionally, the number of students in the school can affect the number and type of extra curricular activities offered, and therefore your child’s opportunities to experience team sports and other activities that are usually run after school.

When a school has a large number of students, this can also mean that the school is more likely to have a well-stocked library, well equipped laboratories, up-to-date computer equipment and outdoor activity areas. This is usually true of larger schools simply because there is a larger pot of money to fund these facilities from.

On the other hand a school that has thousands of students, while usually offering a wide variety of subjects and activities for students, can often be an anonymous place for children. It is up to you to decide what a good balance is for you and your family.

Which curricula do the schools subscribe to?

There are international schools abroad that offer what is essentially a national curriculum. In fact, in the case of many British schools abroad, it’s even called the National Curriculum.

You can find international schools that are running the national curriculum from America, the UK, Australia, Canada, France (usually taught in French), and so on. Securing a teaching contract in an international school that offers the national curriculum that you and your children are used to will help ease the transition. However, you are not limited by the curricula that you have taught in the past, international schools are generally looking for good teachers and realize that teachers can adapt and teach any curriculum.

When you are looking for a good school for your children, you may run up against some curricula that you haven’t come across before. For example, there is the school wide system offered by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO). The IBO offers the Primary Years Programme up to Year 6, the Middle Years Programme from Years 7 to 11, and the Diploma Years Programme for Years 12 and 13.

Which examinations will your children be working towards?

There are a number of examinations available for international school students, and you will need to understand the options before making any decisions about accepting an employment contract.

I mentioned the IBO previously as being a school wide programme. However many schools adopt bits and pieces of the programme. You may find that an international school offers the Diploma for the upper two years but offers the British IGCSE for Years 10 and 11. IGCSE is an examination based qualification, and the IBO Middle Years Programme has no formal examination assessment, students get a certificate and a record of achievement. Some international schools have a mix and match attitude to the curricula offered.

International schools that run national curricula tend to prepare students for the related national exams. American schools overseas run a mixture of state curricula and AP courses.

In this article I have listed just a few of the factors you’ll need to consider if you would like to get a private education for your children by teaching overseas. While I don’t have any children of my own, many of my colleagues do, and they believe that the education their children are receiving abroad is better than what they could get back home, wherever home may be.

There are a number of factors to be considered when you are looking at taking a job at an international school, on the financial side there is:

* salary

* medical insurance

* housing allowance

* annual flights

On the conditions side there is:

* class size

* facilities

* contact hours

* teaching days in a school year

Most of these factors can be taken at face value. However, if you like to travel and want your work to pay well as I do, you may be turning down lucrative positions if you take a salary offer at face value and don’t take the cost of living into account.

For example, when I moved to Poland in the late 90s I accepted a job that only paid 900USD a month. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? I can tell you, I lived well on my money. During that year I explored Poland, spent Easter in the Czech Republic, went skiing in Austria for two weeks, started a Masters through distance learning and saved a little as well.

How did I do this? Well, the cost of living was quite low in Poland compared to other countries in Europe. I regularly had two thirds of my salary left after I’d paid all my expenses for the month. As I said, it’s the cost of living that makes all the difference.

Some countries have a high cost of living and some don’t. I know that’s a clumsy statement, but consider this… If you were to rent an apartment in Tokyo it would cost you 673USD a month for around 20 m2. That’s small! In Bangkok you can rent a 44 m2 furnished apartment for 337USD a month. I hope you can see that this kind of information is as valuable to your decision-making process when accepting a job as the actual salary figure itself.

When you are evaluating whether a package is worthy of accepting you will be looking at several issues. You will probably want to avoid taking a pay cut, and here are some tips to help you with your decision making:

* Make a list of the financial commitments you will need to meet while you are overseas. When you have shortlisted positions, check with the recruiter that the salary offered will enable you to meet them. Ensure you know the USD equivalent of the amount you need.

* Go online and check the price of rental properties in the area you will be living in. You will be able to assess whether the accommodation allowance will need supplementing from your salary.

* Check the “Big Mac” Index. The “Big Mac” Index is a surprisingly accurate comparison of cost of living which works on the principal that a McDonalds Big Mac should cost the same in every country. It is an excellent way to get a feel for the comparative cost of living in the country you are looking in which you are looking to work. You can access the Index here:

Big Mac Index

* If you are looking to travel while you are teaching abroad make a travel plan of the countries you want to explore and when you want to visit them. You can investigate how much this will cost and sort out a budget by using the internet.

If you have read any of the articles I have written prior to this, you will know I’m a proponent of spreading yourself around in order to secure a teaching position in an international school. This is the approach that I have used successfully and I still believe it is an excellent strategy for kicking off your international teaching career. However, I thought I’d better write an article on strategies for educators who are looking for their second or third overseas teaching position. Those international educators with some overseas work experience under their wing may choose to use this longer-term strategy to secure their next teaching position.

Once you’ve been working in the international education sector for a while, you’ll soon come to realize there are international schools and then there are ‘international schools’. Some international schools are international in name only, some schools have student bodies that are populated heavily with the children of privileged, local families, so that you end up teaching in what is essentially an English Speaking School.

Teachers love to talk! In fact, one of the reasons I accepted the position I currently hold is because teachers I met at the international teaching job fair I attended recommended the school to me. I now keep a list of schools that have great reputations, and another list of schools that I know I definitely don’t want to work in. I base my list on what I’ve heard from teachers that I work with or meet at professional development events.

Once you have identified which schools will suit your needs by talking to colleagues, peers and doing some research, you’ll need a strategy for landing a great teaching position with them.

First Contact Plus

I have dubbed this strategy ‘First Contact Plus’ because the first contact you make with a school you want to work for may not result in employment being offered. The key to this strategy is persistence and making yourself known.

This strategy comes into its own when you do not have a fixed time-frame in which you need to see results. It might take years for this strategy to pay off. I know of one colleague who has been using this strategy to woo a particularly desirable school for several years, and only this year have there been any real rewards.

How does the strategy work? Well, it starts by you sending your application pack to the recruiter in question when the recruiting season starts. Do not wait for your desired school to post vacancies. You are not applying for a job, what you are trying to do is become known to the recruiter. You do not include a letter of application with your pack, you write a personalized letter of introduction.

Follow this up with a phone call a week later, asking the recruiter if they received your application pack and making inquiries about the school’s recruitment process. Should be a vacancy that would suit your credentials and experience, press for an interview

If you should attend an international teacher recruitment fair that season, introduce yourself personally to the recruiter attending the fair to represent your favored school. You must introduce yourself regardless of whether there is a position open that you could fill, or not. When you meet the recruiter, remind them about yourself and offer your regrets that there is not a suitable vacancy this season that you could fill. Clearly let the recruiter know that you find the idea of working at their school desirable and ask if you can stay in touch with the view to seeking employment in the future. When you get their permission to stay in touch you can email them without it being considered SPAM.

This completes the ‘First Contact’ part of the strategy. Next, the ‘Plus’.

Once you have made contact with the recruiter you need to remain in the front of their mind. Be warned, this does not mean stalking the recruiter, but rather building a relationship with them so that you are at the top of the list when a suitable vacancy eventuates. Each season send your application pack to the recruiter, send them Christmas cards if appropriate, let them know of any professional development, positions of responsibility or other additions to your resume. Whenever you are attending a recruitment event, meet and greet the recruiter in person. If you are holidaying near the school when they are in session, then request to visit.

You can see why this is an advanced, long-term strategy for landing the perfect job teaching overseas. It takes some effort and you will need to have access to the job fairs etc. However, the results can be well-worth the effort you put into it. First Contact Plus is a strategy that puts a spin on a marketing strategy called ‘relationship marketing’ where companies attempt to build a sustainable competitive advantage by nurturing a relationship with suppliers and customers alike.

When you consider that there may be 100 schools represented and 400 pre-screened candidates, your chances of securing a teaching position at an international school is high. Additionally, many of the top schools will only consider interviewing candidates who are pre-screened by a recruiting agency.

Whether or not you decide to register with a job fair might depend on your ability to get to where one is being held. Job fairs are held at locations worldwide, with a particular concentration in North America and the United Kingdom. Some of the organisations hosting the job fairs do not charge participants to attend, they make their money from charging the recruiters.

There are several organisations that hold job fairs for international teachers. International School Services (ISS), Search Associates and the Council of International Schools (COIS) are three of them that hold job fairs around the world. These organisations pre-screen the candidates and invite those candidates that meet the criteria published on their websites to attend their job fairs. You can go to their websites and check if you meet their criteria.

Both ECIS and Search Associates are very professional and experienced in their approach to organising job fairs, and it shows at their events.

Recruiters rely on these organisers to cut out the unqualified or undesirable candidates. They turn away many candidates each year, so you should feel proud if you are invited to attend one of these fairs; it’s the first step to getting a contract at the fair.

COIS

COIS do not charge candidates to attend their job fairs. The recruiters do pay a fee to attend.

COIS job fairs are held from February through to June in the UK and in North America. The requirements for becoming registered with COIS are available on their website and include:

* A current teaching certification/ qualification

* Three professional referees, one of which must be your current head teacher

* 2 year’s experience

* Candidates should be willing to consider being placed anywhere in the world.

The dates and venues and application deadlines for the COIS job fairs for 2007 are available on their website and the deadline for applications for their first job fair is January 18th.

Search Associates

Search offer an online application process and a number of job fairs in a variety of geographical locations. Before completing an application you can go through a self-screening checklist on their website to determine how competitive you will be in the job market.

Search charge candidates $US150 to register, which is good for 3 years if you don’t find an overseas position in your first recruitment season. Search offers a number of job fairs and your registration fee covers your attendance at one fair per registration period (of up to 3 years). You can attend more than one for an additional fee of $US 50 per fair. Should you find your new position through Search Associates, there is an additional placement fee of $US 300.

On application Search will assign you an ‘associate’ to give you personal service.

Once you are registered, your resume will be posted online for recruiters to peruse. It is vital that you go log in to the site and update your resume at least every 30 days or your resume might be pulled off the site.

Teachers in Australia and New Zealand can attend one of the Information Seminars offered by Search. These seminars are held throughout Australia and New Zealand in order to provide information for people interested in teaching overseas, and to pre-screen potential candidates prior to the Search job fair in Sydney. Check their website for details.

Search offer two specialised placement services aimed at teachers with experience in either the IB system or the British National Curriculum, see their website for more details.

The dates and venues of the Search Associates Job Fairs for 2007 are on the Search Associates website and their first job fair is being held in Australia in January.

ISS

ISS charge candidates $US175 to establish a professional file with them. If your application is not accepted by them, they will refund $US125, and they do not charge a placement fee if you accept a position at one of the job fairs they host.

ISS job fairs are held in January, February, and March. The requirements for establishing a file with ISS are available on their website and include:

* A 4 year bachelor’s degree

* 2 year’s experience

* Candidates should be willing to consider being placed in two continents.

If you are interested in establishing a professional file with ISS you should look at the more detailed list of their requirements on their website.

The ISS name for a job fair is International Recruitment Centre (IRC).

ISS are holding three IRCs in 2007, the first one will be held in Bangkok in January.

ISS say that ‘typically 50 percent of those who attend accept positions as a result.’

These are the big three of the recruitment organisations for teachers looking at a career in international teaching and participation in one of their job fairs can kick start you onto a new and exciting career path. It can sure beat searching through job advertisements and sending out your application pack 100 times.

When you attend an international teaching job fair you are in a completely manufactured environment. The organisers have brought together a large number of recruiters from international schools and teachers desiring to teach overseas, into what is usually a confined indoor space like a hotel, and the participants’ sole objective is to fill teaching vacancies.

In order to make the most of this pressure-cooker-like environment, you need to network.

Networking is common place in the business world. Business people meet and exchange business cards, then either keep in touch or contact each other when they have a mutually beneficial need of each other’s services.

When teachers attend a recruitment fair such as the international teacher job fairs, networking can enable you to leverage the time and expense involved in getting there. Teaching Job Fairs can be overwhelming to the uninitiated, check out The Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School for a detailed strategy dedicated to preparing you to make the most of the job fair opportunity.

Here are three quick and easy steps to leveraging your participation in an international teacher recruitment fair using networking strategies:

Step #1

Meet as many recruiters as possible, in person, and make a connection with them by talking about their school, the country their school is based in, regretting that they don’t have a position for you this year, etc.

Most international recruitment fairs are held in hotels and the schedule of events will include activities such as welcome drinks. It is imperative to your networking strategy that you attend these functions and make yourself known to the international schools’ recruiters as an international career teacher.

Step #2

After the teaching job fair, follow up with the recruiters to remind your new contacts of the conversation that you shared. Ask them how successful the job fair was for them and ask to be kept in mind if any suitable teaching vacancies come up. You can follow up via email, phone or letter.

Step #3

Maintain contact with the schools’ recruiters and stay in touch. You don’t want them to forget about you over the course of the academic year. You want to be the first educator these recruiters think of when they begin recruiting teachers the following year.

A word of advice, when I say meet as many recruiters as possible, I’m serious. Do not prejudge any recruiter as not being worth your networking efforts simply because they don’t work for a school at which you’d like to teach. Unless the recruiter is the owner of that particular school, chances are they will eventually move to a school at which you would like to work. Recruiters are often headmasters and principals, and they move around as much as teachers do!

Additionally, recruiters talk to each other and there is always the possibility that a recruiter you’ve been networking with may know of a teaching position for you at an international school where they have a networking relationship of their own with another recruiter.

When you take the time to network at a teaching recruitment fair, you can begin working on an advanced strategy for landing the perfect teaching job. I call it First Contact Plus.

There are as many contract conditions as there are international schools, almost.

International schools are sometimes caught in a difficult situation. They need to comply with the regulations of the country they are operating in, ensure their conditions and salaries are competitive with other international schools and balance this all with the fact that they have to work within a salary budget.

Here are some items to consider when you are thinking about contract conditions for you and your family.

* tuition fee for dependent children

* housing allowance

* medical cover

* pension contributions

* end of contract bonus

* annual flights home

* sick pay

* maternity leave

* spouse visas

* professional development

* extra-curricular activities

* over-night trips

When you are making the decision to work overseas, you will need to set some criteria for what contract conditions you are willing to accept.

If you have three or more children, you’ll be looking for a contract where the tuition fee for all of your children is waived. Otherwise you may end up spending a considerable amount of your take-home pay on tuition fees for your third child. The fees for international schools are high, frequently beyond what a teacher can afford to pay, even on the good salaries that are available for teachers at international schools. This makes sense when you think about it – it’s those salaries that pay overseas teachers so lucratively.

When you choose to move to a location far away from your family, you won’t want to spend the money you’ve saved to fly your whole family home each year for a visit. This is where annual flights home are a must for me when I am deciding what conditions I will accept.

Consider the period of time you are willing to commit to your new school. There is a trend towards offering starting contracts of two years. My advice is to sign a contract for two years, initially, as it may take you a year or more to settle into the community. Then you can ask to sign contract renewals annually.

If I had signed a one year contract for my current school, I wouldn’t be here now, nor would I have just re-signed for an additional 12 months. It took me a year to get settled and find new hobbies and places to do my old hobbies.

To avoid making a mistake you will regret later you need to have a clear idea of what you want before you enter into any interview situation with the international schools’ recruiters. You also need to have some way of comparing the contract conditions that are offered by different schools, should you be offered more than one teaching position.

Knowing what you’re looking for doesn’t mean that you will get it, but it will mean that you can make informed decisions based on what’s being offered. You will still need to be flexible because, as per the point I made earlier, there is considerable diversity in contract conditions offered across the world.

Ever since I wrote my book The Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School I’ve been inundated with questions about teaching overseas. I’ve selected the most frequently asked ones to answer for you here…

Where can I teach in an international school? How can I find out?

There are over 4000 international schools of varying sizes worldwide and all of them need teachers. So the answer to the first question is… just about anywhere!

One way you can find out whether there’s an international school where you’d like to work is to ‘Google it’. I simply typed in “international school Bangkok” and up popped a whole page of listings.

Of course this isn’t the way to go about landing your new teaching job abroad, but you can certainly check out how many schools are available in the destinations you’re interested in.

I’ve got kids, will an international school employ me?

Yes they will! You may have some trouble if you’ve got 7 kids and you’re a single parent, or something similar, simply because the recruiters know you probably won’t be able to manage on a single teacher’s salary and allowances.

Contracts for overseas hired teachers often include such perks as free tuition for your children (often limited to two, but not always), so you’ll get a private education for your children too.

Do I need a TEFL certificate to get a job teaching abroad?

This all depends on what kind of credentials and experience you already have.

If you don’t have a teaching qualification, then you probably don’t have any other option. With a TEFL certificate you can teach the English as a Second Language classes that are offered at most international schools.

Based on my experience doing both, teaching EFL or ESL at an international school is preferable to teaching at a private language school. So plan your job-hunt accordingly.

Also, if your experience is all in mono-lingual and mono-cultural situations, then getting a TEFL qualification to add to your current credentials will only improve your chances. It will show recruiters that you are prepared for the issues you’ll encounter in your multi-cultural classes abroad.

Will I make enough money?

Exactly how much is enough? This is a hard one to answer because we all have different opinions on how much is enough, don’t we?

However, my answer is this… do your homework! It is possible to make loads and loads and put your investment portfolio on the map (or cover the map with your travels! Or both?), but it really depends where you go. Western Europe doesn’t have the same potential for earning that the Middle East or South East Asia has, but you’ll still make enough to live reasonably. Even in Western Europe, some schools pay better than others, and Eastern Europe is different again because of the low cost of living.

Teaching Abroad – the best decision you’ll ever make

Teaching overseas is an opportunity to put your qualifications to good use. You’ll be able to support yourself, and often have more left over at the end of the month than you would at home, and travel extensively to exotic destinations you’ve only ever dreamed about.

And guess what? Internationals school principals have been discussing the looming shortage of international teachers!

That’s right, with the sudden explosion in the number of schools opening for business in the last couple of years there’s been an equal explosion in the number of positions recruiters need to fill… but as yet there hasn’t been the required increase in teachers applying.

You do the math on that one and it all comes out to be a positive move in your favor.

The internet has one purpose, to share information with people, and it’s a very powerful tool. I’m going to focus on how you can use the information that is available on the internet to secure a teaching position abroad.

Searching for Vacancies

Firstly you need to identify where you would like to work, and the kind of school in which you want to work. For example, I teach economics and would like to teach in Europe.

Once you’ve thought about the geographical area in which you want to work and have made a decision about that, you’ll need to go to a search engine and conduct a search. You are going to be looking for schools with relevant vacancies. Personally I find Google returns the most relevant search results.

In order to teach in Europe I’m probably going to have to teach in an international school, so one search term I might use is “international school Europe”. The reason I wouldn’t try the search term “economic teacher vacancy international school Europe” is that while it might be a more specific search term, in using it I am assuming that the schools’ webmaster has optimized the page for that search term.

For example, when I used the first search term “international school Europe” the first page of results has only two schools listed whose sites I can then visit and look for relevant vacancies. But the other results were directories of international schools in Europe which I could use to jump into my research with around 15 schools listed per directory.

When I use the second search term “economic teacher vacancy international school Europe” the first page of results has no relevant web sites listed. The sites were either economics news stories or job placement services recruiting teachers for schools in the United Kingdom.

Finding Information about the School

Once you’ve found a likely looking vacancy that you think you’d like to apply for, you can use the internet to gather more information about the school. This is an essential process, and should be carried out before you submit your application. As all teachers know, there are schools in which you want to work and then there are schools in which you wouldn’t work even if you were desperate for a job, so it’s important to do your research.

You will need to set out some criteria against which you can assess the school. If you are looking to teach in an international school, then there are industry specific criteria you should be looking at, and I’ve included them in a chapter in my book The Complete Guide to Securing a Job at an International School.

You can find information about schools in many places. You could search the schools’ website for information. Look at:

* pictures they have on the site. I was keen on getting a job at one of the schools in the Bahamas when I saw that all the staff were all wearing shorts in the staff photo on the website!

* students’ work published on the website. One of my colleagues is currently looking for a new job teaching Information Technology at an international school and one of her strategies is to check out what students are doing at the school.

* whether the school has included information about living in the local area, either for parents or for teachers.

You could find out whether there is there a national (or international) education quality assurance organization, such as Ofsted in the UK, ERO in NZ, or ECIS for international schools, and see whether there are any reports available in the public domain about the school that interests you.

You could find and join a forum and ask the members for information about the school. For example the Times Education Supplement (TES) website has several teachers’ forums. You can find the forum concerned with teaching overseas here:

TES Teaching Overseas Forum

Submit Your Application via Email

When you’ve established that the school is one in which you’d like to work, you can use email to submit your application pack, find a web hosting service and have elements of your application pack available online for the recruiter to visit and, you can send the recruiter to the website of your current school if there is material displayed there for which you can take some credit.

Police clearance certificates are as important to international teachers as their passports. Why? Without a police clearance certificate many countries will not allow teachers to work with children.

The clearance certificate goes by many different names; what you’re looking for is an official document that records any convictions on your criminal record. Regardless of whether you have any convictions or not, you will be required to produce official evidence that your record is clear.

If you record is not clear you may still be able to teach abroad, but you will need to find out which countries will grant you a work permit with the convictions you have.

More rigorous background checks for foreign teachers applying to work in Thailand have been put in place because of a recent high profile arrest of an American teacher by American immigration officers in August 2006. The teacher was taken back to the States for questioning in a murder investigation.

Once you’ve obtained your police clearance certificate, take it with you when you move overseas. It’s one of those important documents you should always be able to lay your hands on. A clearance certificate is one of my top 10 things to take when moving abroad. You’ll need to have the original with you; it’s not one of the documents you can carry in digital format.

When you are nearing the end of you first overseas teaching contract start making enquiries about what you need to do to obtain a clearance certificate from the police in the country you’ve been teaching in. This is important! When you’re teaching abroad it’s important you maintain an unbroken chain of police clearance certificates or the equivalent.

Should you eventually desire to return home and pick up your teaching career there, you’ll need to supply the clearance certificates you’ve collected whilst working abroad. A consequence of not being able to produce a record of your conviction history could be that you’re unable to continue working in the education industry as a teacher when you return home.

Information for NZ, Australia, the UK and the USA

In NZ you can get a copy of your Criminal Record from the Ministry of Justice by contacting the Privacy Unit of the Ministry of Justice in Wellington.

In the USA you can get a ‘Criminal Record Check’ from the local police. This will only cover the state in which you live, so if you’ve lived in a number of different states in recent time, then you should apply to the local police in those states as well.

In the UK you can apply for a ‘Subject Access – Conviction History,” which is a record of any convictions you have, from your local police station. This is the document that you can obtain yourself under the privacy laws. Your other option, if you are currently employed, is to ask your employer to request a Criminal Records Bureau check, which involves a more rigorous search of your record.

In Australia the Australian Federal Police in Canberra can issue a ‘National Police Clearance Certificate’ which covers all states and territories except Queensland. If you live in Queensland you’ll need to contact the Queensland Police Service directly.