From the southern tip of Chile to the remote capitals of Mongolia and Kazakhstan, a “British education” is considered by many to be the gold standard.

This has helped the international sector grow rapidly over the last decade or so, with over 4,000 British international schools now awarding students internationally recognised qualifications.

Now, the government is hoping this burgeoning part of the education system can help solve a problem back at home: the ongoing teacher shortage.

Indeed, as 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.

A global qualification 

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.

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 have the added benefit of boosting Britain’s already lucrative international teacher training industry as part of a broader strategy to increase education exports to £35 billion a year.

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.

A win-win?

Colin Bell, CEO of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), certainly believes it is the right time for such a qualification to enter the market.

“For the best schools, there’s competition for attracting the best teachers, recruiting, retaining the right teachers and developing them - [iQTS] 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 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.

This portability is key because, previously, many people did not see the purpose of gaining a qualification they could not take back to the UK.

“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.

Attracting a global talent base

Of course, iQTS is 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 the British QTS 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 the 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 iQTS-trained teachers could be a real boon.

“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 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 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.

Not so fast...

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.

“They would be classed as an unqualified teacher,” she says.

“They then have to submit a portfolio of evidence to prove that they meet the QTS standards. And then [the Home Office] may or may not recognise it. The real core of it is that iQTS is a course, not a licensure, whereas QTS is a licensure. That’s the fundamental difference.”

This ambiguity is outlined in the government’s iQTS policy paper that notes that “once awarded iQTS by their provider, if a candidate wishes to gain QTS, they will apply to the DfE alongside other teachers who are already eligible for QTS on the basis of having an overseas qualification.”

The “other teachers” reference relates to the fact it is already possible for teachers in other nations - specifically Scotland, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Economic Area and Gibraltar - to apply for QTS against their nation’s own educational qualification. So iQTS holders would be in the same position as having to apply for QTS.

There are other routes for teachers to work in the UK of course with a skilled worker visa the most common means of entry.

However, with the potential for the iQTS to offer schools a simpler way of assessing the suitability of an overseas candidate and broaden the available talent pool, the hope will be the government uses the pilots as an opportunity to streamline this process and make it as straightforward as possible.

A missed opportunity?

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.”

The equivalence issue is something that Bell also recognises and says COBIS had lobbied the DfE to avoid.

“What we’ve always asked for, and we did it consistently when we were consulted by the DfE, is we want parity,” he says.

“So we want [iQTS] to be of as high quality as you’d get in the UK. And we’d also like a clear pathway to QTS as well, so there’s no ambiguity.”

This may be amended during or after the pilot phase but that will be a case of wait and see.

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 schools that have signed up to alternative accreditation schemes, such as the one operated by COBIS.

“There are so many schools now, particularly in the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, who’ve done our scheme, 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.

Watching with interest 

As things currently stand, the DfE is currently soliciting applications from ITT providers to trial the new qualification. Up to five will be selected, and the iQTS could see its first trainees enrol early next year, with courses commencing in September.

That pilot year will tell us a lot about how the iQTS will be received on the ground and how best it can be delivered - and perhaps will also provide the time required to address the issues outlined above so that the positive elements of iQTS come to the fore.

If not, Ford says it could be that the iQTS fails to achieve its potential: “If you’re not convinced that the qualification [a teacher has] is robust enough, or that the experience that they’ve got is suitable, you’re not going to employ them,” she notes.

“[iQTS] will stand or fall by the confidence that school leaders have got in it.”

James O’Malley is a freelance journalist