Leadership

Walking in the Shoes of Overseas Trained Teachers

Under threat and under pressure, teachers with overseas qualifications are proving to be resilient and adaptive, but they are not receiving the recognition they deserve. Prof. Paul Miller reports.

Introduction

Within the last decade, very little has been written about overseas trained teachers (OTTs) in England in the first wave of teacher migration that happened in 2000–2008. This is due mainly to the fact the pattern of teacher migration to England slowed in the late 2000s in response to an expanded European Union, and also due to public awareness of the maltreatment faced by OTTs in the early to mid-2000s. Although the pattern of teacher migration to the United Kingdom, in particular, to England, has changed considerably since the early 2000s, there is evidence that due to ongoing problems in teacher supply in England, international teacher migration and recruitment has once again intensified.

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Leadership Briefing 10.02(110)"
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      string(5685) "Legal BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.MIGRANT SALARY IN THE EDUCATIONSECTORKeywordsMigrant salary,educationsector, migrantlabour,recruitmentand training,skills, training,qualifiedteachersSummaryThe incoming pay threshold for non-European workers could cause chaos for the educationsector. Under the new rules, introduced in 2011 but coming into effect next April, workersfrom outside the European Economic Area (EEA) will be forced out of the UK after six years ifthey don’t reach earnings of at least £35,000. The Home Office has indicated that the changewas made with a view to reducing the demand for migrant labour, but it effectively means thatmoney employers have directed towards recruitment and training in the meantime has gone towaste. Tijen Ahmet, Immigration Solicitor at SA Law, discusses the issue.The government’s ongoing objectives to reduce the demand for migrant labour continues and fouryears on from the series of major consultations including an employment related settlement, a newsalary threshold for all Tier 2 (General) migrants applying for settlement will be introduced from April2016.Tier 2 migrants are essentially skilled workers from outside the European Economic Area whoare being sponsored by UK businesses and organisations for continuing employment.  At presentwhere a Tier 2 (General) migrant has completed a continuous five year residence in the UK underthis category they will be eligible, subject to meeting all the requirements of the rules, to apply forsettlement otherwise known as indefinite leave to remain in the UK. If they do not apply for settlementfor whatever reason, they will have no option but to leave the UK before or when their sixth year iscompleted.The challenge that these particular skilled migrants will face is the requirement to be paid at least£35,000 gross per annum. The Government has said that this salary threshold will remain in place fortwo years from April 2016. On or after April 2019 the threshold will be held at £35,800 and after April2020, Tier 2 migrants will be subject to an increased minimum annual salary requirement of £36,200when they apply for settlement. Whilst there are exceptions for individuals sponsored to do jobs thatappear or have appeared on the list of PhD-level occupation codes or published shortage occupationlist, the impact on recruitment for certain sectors could be astronomical.To fan the flames, temporary permission to remain under Tier 2 in the UK is capped at six years afterwhich they would be forced to the leave the UK. Putting myself in the shoes of the migrant, I wouldfind this difficult to digest after having paid my taxes, worked hard, adapted to life here with my familyand been compliant with the rules all the way through to then be told that we must leave the UK;some would argue this is a wasted investment in the round.The salary threshold rules demonstrate the government’s current conflict. Ministers accept that Legal BriefingLeadership Briefing – www.teachingtimes.comReports Summaries – a weeklyservice of essential summaries,in-depth reports and criticalanalysis that’s new and relevantto education, linked to originalsource documents.our economy needs skilled migrants to work at levels below £35,000 a year yet the barrier thegovernment has chosen is well above the national average minimum wage of approximately £26,000.The implications of the migrant salary rules will undoubtedly have an undesirable impact on oureconomy and remain unfair for individual migrants, but most notably cause immense difficulties foremployers who will wish to retain their staff.The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has recently openly raised their concerns over their experiencednurses not being able to meet the salary threshold at a time of great demand for labour. TheRCN suggested the damaging effect of the new regime could “cause chaos” for the NHS, thoughunfortunately it is unlikely that only the NHS will be adversely affected. The teaching profession willalso take a knockback with overseas trained and qualified teachers’ salaries falling considerablybelow the £35,000 threshold. While there will be no impact on those occupations where there iscurrently a shortage of labour such as mathematics, chemistry and physics teachers, head teachershave already raised fears that substantial numbers of valued, talented and skilled staff will be forcedto leave the UK.The National Association for Head Teacher’s (NAHT) concerns mirror the RCN’s; the generalsecretary of NAHT, Russell Hobbs, said “Head teachers everywhere are struggling to recruit. Pupilnumbers are rising. Budgets are being squeezed all the time. In the face of these challenges, itseems counterproductive to force out valued members of staff for the sake of meeting a migrationtarget”. 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Leadership

Migrant salary for the education sector

11 Aug 2015

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      string(5789) "36Vol 7.4School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comLeadershipSkillsRecruitmentThis year marks the fourth yearwhere there will not be enoughnew teachers to meet the demandfrom schools. How has thishappened? And what can you doif your school has vacancies tofill? Recruitment expert ProfessorJohn Howson examines thecurrent state of the job market andgives his advice for leaders lookingto staff their schools.Whether teacher recruitment is a ‘challenge’or an outright crisis is a matter of meresemantics for many school leaders. As thekey period of the 2016 recruitment roundfor teaching staff approaches, leaders throughout thecountry are already starting to worry about how theywill be able to recruit sufficient teachers with the rightqualifications to meet the needs of their school.This year marks the fourth recruitment round wherethere are likely to be insufficient newly qualified teachers(NQTs) to meet the demands from schools. 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Not to do so is likely to guarantee that some schoolswon’t be able to recruit enough teachers the followingyear.Recruiting staff ina profession atbreaking pointhttps://www.nao.org.uk/report/training-new-teachers/37Vol 7.4School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comLeadershipSkillsRecruitmentAccording to the DfE, there were only three secondary subjects where the TSMnumber was reached for courses starting last September (see Figure 1). 2 For the firsttime, these numbers included those recruited through Teach First, so in some cases thepercentage recruited into training would have been lower if those teachers had beenexcluded. For subjects such as design and technology (D&T) and physics, the 2015recruitment round wasn’t the first year of under-recruitment. This constant shortfallproduces a cumulative shortfall that just serves to make the position worse eachsuccessive year the TSM number is missed.Figure 1: From the DfE’s initial teacher training census for 2015 to 2016A perfect stormSo what has caused this problem? Partly, it is the cyclical pattern of interest in teachingas a career, which is always higher during a recession and then falls away as the privatesector economy recovers. In this particular economic cycle, the need to first freezeand then hold down public sector pay to an average of a one per cent pay increasemay make teaching salaries look unattractive, especially in London – and especiallysince teachers have to take on an extra £9,000 of student loan debt for their trainingyear while most graduates start earning as soon as they leave university. 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Thus, PE had the highest percentage of trainees remaining atthe end of the 2015 recruitment round, and business studies had the largest deficit ontrainees compared to vacancies.Figure 2: From TeachVacIn the first two months of the 2016 recruitment round, there has been a greaterdemand than last year for teachers of EBacc subjects – specifically for mathematics,science and English teachers. This has been compensated for, to some extent, by fewerthan expected vacancies for music or IT teachers compared with last year. However, theposition could change over the next few months or so as the main recruitment periodunfolds. In the last week of February, demand for teachers of business studies led to anearly ten per cent decline in the pool in just one week.The position"
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Leadership

Recruiting staff in a profession at breaking point

19 May 2016

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      string(301) "workenvironment for everybody if they don’t exist. So you know,we are trying to talk. Now when people hear me talk aboutstaff, they’re starting to get the picture that I’m not talkingabout teachers, I’m talking about everybody. Yeah. So I’mreally trying to work on that ..."
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      string(5650) "workenvironment for everybody if they don’t exist. So you know,we are trying to talk. Now when people hear me talk aboutstaff, they’re starting to get the picture that I’m not talkingabout teachers, I’m talking about everybody. Yeah. So I’mreally trying to work on that.o Kids that have disengaged from here and we’ve lost andthey’ve literally disappeared and they were like 14 years ofage. I‘ve found them. And I’ve got them reengaged downthe road (in an alternative centre program)….. we’veInternal conventionsand norms about thepositioning andstatus of teachingand non-teachingstaff.DETA is  82employed a teacher, a trained teacher down there, we gotpermission to actually advertise in the print media whichwas a hell of a process let me tell you because ….. I reallydon’t have anyone here who is the right person.o But I find some of the system stuff. In all honesty. Whilethey are saying to schools…and this is something I haveworked through recently. We need to find a way to re-engage our kids there are so many disengaged ra rara…that whole process in setting up that centre down therewas ridiculous…..even to put an ad in the bloody paper. Itwas just like….you know they want you to do this stuff andyet the ability to do it is hindered so much and the extrahours of work that the thing created was just simplyridiculous…in all honesty…. because of EQ rules.encouraging schoolsto develop re-engagementprograms for drop-out youth but alsoimposes a range ofrules and regulationswhich make theprocess very difficultfor schoolsGHODo One thing in terms of your staffing. I have a lady at themoment. She came to the school last year from overseas.Very good teacher, very experienced. And she came in onsome sort of contract last year. ….And she is in staff butshe is on contract until September….. And you know I’vegot two ladies from this department who are on maternityleave and both dropped in yesterday. One has got noimmediate plans to return. One probably perhaps parttime. But the thing that annoys me is that this teacher is aparticularly good teacher. I want her full time. I haveexpressed that to P, I have expressed that to B. And Iknow that their hands are kind of tied too. My concern isthat if we don’t find her full time, she will find a jobelsewhere. She has already asked me if I would be areference and I said yeah. She would love to stay here. Ihave had this kind of thing happen before. You know youget a good person in on a contract and the Departmentstand on their hands and do nothing….. And we end uplosing them to somewhere else. It’s just the frustration.o …..workplace health and safety. If we followed everythingto the letter of the law we would never get anything done.You can take a pace into one of our prep rooms or into thelab and anywhere. And things that don’t meet theregulations and we can spend countless amounts ofDETA regulationsrelating to theoffering of contractsversus permanentpositions createsconstraints forschooladministratorsseeking to employthe best staffIndustrial rules andregulations relatingto workplace healthand safety standardswithin varioussubject departments(e.g., science) havebecome onerous andvery difficult to  83money and resources on that and so it’s sort of…there’s afine line there between what is necessity what you follow,and lab rules and stuff like that. When teachers order pracstuff they are supposed to do a risk analysis on every practhey do. Well you know you multiply the number of staff bythe number of classes by the number of pracs they do,mate, you would be here forever. My two labbys they arealready worked off their feet as it is and then they wouldhave to process all of this. ….. If they see/know somethingis not going to be potentially safe, if it is serious like that,they will come and see me direct. Or they will just go to theteacher and say we are not prepared to give you this. Orhere is a better way of doing this. And that is moreworkable. It’s just…whoever developed the WorkplaceHealth and Safety Act. It has just grown into a hierarchy ofunbelievable magnitude, in terms of relations and paper.We want a safe work environment. I don’t say that it is notimportant. I think we have gone to the extreme. You caninvest your whole time just being concerned with that. Andlike doing science experiments there is always a risk.manage4.8.1 Commentary on Table 8Excerpts from the respondent data are mainly related to external rules and constraintswhich leaders report as being a hindrance to them in their work. The examplesrecorded in Table 8 indicate that leaders and followers at Southern SHS are regularlyfaced with barriers or constraints to their practice. 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Leadership

Distributed Leadership

6 Jul 2017

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      string(5676) "grateful that someone is finally hearing their story, and appreciative that the questions are simply about supporting their child better.Mr Timpson was aware of the physical abuse Sam had suffered and had also been trained to recognise trauma triggers. As a result of this proficiency and knowledge, Mr Timpson stopped the bus and guided Sam out into a nearby field. Mr Timpson knew that he needed first to emotionally regulate Sam – aka, to stop the amygdala in Sam’s brain sending danger alerts out. When a hyperaroused child is calmed by a soothing adult, neuroscientists refer to this process as the amygdala “going quiet”.There are lots of ways to emotionally regulate children and teenagers: all evidence based (neuroscience and physiological studies). Mr Timpson used empathy, understanding and a soothing voice. All of these are proven to calm the amygdala (Morelli et al 2014 and Seltzer et al 2010)He said “Sam, something triggered you when that mouthguard hit your head, didn’t it? Let’s sit here for a while until you feel safe again and if you want to talk about what happened I’m right here to listen.”Eventually, Sam calmed down. They talked about the horse in the next field, before Sam rejoined the bus. The rest of the school trip went by without any problems.In his trauma informed schools training, Mr Timpson learnt the importance of calming the body down first before the teenager engages in any conversation or reflection on what happened. Later in the term, Sam asks to talk to Mr Timpson and tells him he is worried about his Mum.He also tells Mr Timpson about the terror he felt at the hands of his Mum’s partners. With Mr Timpson’s assistance, Mum receives counselling for the first time in her life. Once she discusses her traumatic childhood in a safe setting, she’s able to change her pattern of unhealthy relationships and is no longer drawn to men who are repeats of her past. For the first time Sam and Mum have a calm safe time together. Unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals and may start to bleed again at any time ( Alice Miller)  Reflection‘Zero tolerance’ approaches to discipline in school – such as the use of detention, isolation rooms and permanent exclusions, entirely overlook the reality for so many troubled children of traumatic life events. 70 percent of excluded children in the UK have special education needs of disability and many of these children/teenagers will also have unresolved trauma. (BBC Parliament Accountability Jan 19 2019).Research shows that the brains of traumatised children change in the same way as soldiers returning home from war. The shocking events for both the children and soldiers can cause physical changes to the brain. And yet, through the use of permanent exclusions, we isolate thousands of traumatised children due to their challenging behaviour which manifests as a result of over-active stress response systems. (McCrory, et al 2011)Take away messagesResearch shows that two out of three teachers worry that if they have a conversation with a teenager who self-harms, they will make matters worse for that teenager (Talking Self Harm Report, 2015). This feeling of ‘narrative incompetence’ leaves far too many children and young people seeking alternative sources of help e.g. internet sites which tell them to ‘cut deeper’ or simply ‘end it now’.When teenagers come to talk to teachers about difficult things at home, suitably trained staff can often provide vital, life-changing conversations. Trauma informed training for staff includes giving accurate empathic responses and ‘finding the words to say it’. With appropriate training, school staff no longer need to be frightened of addressing mild to moderate mental health problems. They no longer need to see mental ill-health as some kind of scary brain disease (which it really isn’t) but rather painful life experience that heed to be acknowledged, talked about and made sense of.From our training in over 500 schools in regions across the UK and seeing the moving results achieved by staff we have trained, we entirely endorse the research findings of the Government Green Paper, ‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision’ (December 2017), which states:‘There is evidence that appropriately-trained and supported staff such as teachers, school nurses, counsellors and teaching assistants can achieve results comparable to those achieved by trained therapists in delivering a number of interventions addressing mild to moderate mental health problems (such as anxiety, conduct disorder, substance use disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder)’.Behaviour should always be considered as a possible communication and not simply seen as a deficit or naughtiness in the child.We need to protect traumatised children/teenagers by ensuring they have a calm safe base at school at least once a day with a trusted adult, where they can emotionally regulate/emotionally refuelDr Margot Sunderland is Co-Director of Trauma Informed Schools UKwww.traumainformedschools.co.ukReferencesGeisler, F. C. M., Kubiak, T., Siewert, K., & Weber, H. (2013). Cardiac vagal tone is associated with social engagement and self-regulation. Biological Psychology, 93, 279–286.Langley-Obaugh, C. (2020). How Stress Can Lead To Emotional Trauma – Christine Langley-Obaugh. [online] NotSalmon.: https://www.notsalmon.com/2015/04/04/how-stress-can-lead-to-emotional-trauma/Miller A (1998). “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child”, p.226,"
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ADHD

Sam’s Story – Managing Challenging Behaviour

26 May 2020

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