Charlotte Morris would end most of her days on her ITT teaching placement by sitting next to the Vltava River in the capital city of the Czech Republic, reading a book or watching the world go by. It became her favoured way to unwind while at the English College in Prague (ECP), a British international school where she was spending her placement teaching geography earlier this year.

But Morris wasn’t on an ITT course in the Czech Republic: she had enrolled on the Pennine Lancashire SCITT. So, how did this situation come about?

Morris’ SCITT (school-centred initial teacher training programme) is one of three in England to offer placements abroad as part of an initiative called Teaching Together in Europe (TTE), which was hatched in the post-Brexit era to cultivate professional and cultural connections between British schools at home and abroad.

One of the other SCITTs involved is Nottinghamshire Torch SCITT. Trainees at Nottinghamshire or Pennine Lancashire could apply to either ECP, the British School of Brussels or St George’s British International School, Rome for a placement. 

On these placements, they would run lessons and receive mentoring and observations from current teachers just as they would on a traditional placement in England.

The other SCITT involved, One Cumbria Teaching School Hub, sent trainees to the ECP for shorter placements to find out about international education and the International Baccalaureate programme, attend lessons and assist with tutor groups.

In total, 13 trainees took up the opportunity to travel abroad this year for their placement across the three SCITTs.

While it’s early days, there are those who believe that offering these sorts of placements could entice new potential teachers to the sector, by showing the global opportunities the teacher profession can offer. But can it scale and would it really entice more people into the profession?

It certainly had the intended impact on Morris, who says she jumped at the opportunity it offered - and it more than lived up to her expectations.

“We weren’t just flown to a new country and told, ‘here’s your new school’,” she says. “We felt welcomed even before we even arrived. I got to teach a bit more creatively and had a better work-life balance.”

Exciting possibilities

Tony Emmerson, senior deputy head at ECP, came up with the idea for TTE on the back of a “metaphorical fag packet”.

“We wanted to get involved with teacher training, to do something different and maintain our connection with the UK,” he says.

“After Brexit, for those of us who consider ourselves European, the desire to build a professional or cultural connection between the EU and Britain is incredibly strong.”

To get this idea off the ground, he approached the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers (NASBTT), who agreed to act as a broker circulating information about TTE to its members to see who would be keen to get involved.

“I knew that we couldn’t do this alone,” says Mr Emmerson. “We didn’t have the skills to do it.”

NASBTT executive director Emma Hollis says the association agreed to act as a broker because of the “exciting possibilities” of TTE and what it might offer to its members.

After a call out for interest in the proposal, 25 SCITTs expressed an interest. The three providers mentioned were selected after a series of online interviews and the first placements were planned for January this year.

An agreement was then reached that the cost of the placement was covered by the school, while the SCITT picked up the accommodation bill. The flights were paid for by the trainees.

Thankfully, Brexit does not complicate matters too much as 90-day stays are allowed without a visa for citizens in the Schengen zone, including for short-term training or studies. Covid outbreaks did, however, cause delays to the placements until Easter while risk assessments were delayed. This meant the placements had to be squashed together, says Emily Rankin, deputy head at ECP. Specifically, instead of having two trainees at a time, the school had six.

“It was doable,” she says - but admits it created some previously unforeseen issues. “We needed to find a room for them to work in. The staffroom wasn’t feasible because people would just want to chat with them. They wouldn’t have got anything done.”

Filling a pedagogical toolbox

Rankin admits that, given all this, it was a lot of work to get through - but that the experience gained by the first TTE cohort proves it was worth the effort for the school as much for the ITT students involved. 

“Learning to teach is a time of intense transition [so] having more exposure to different contexts, systems and ways of doing things - as long as they are successful - is really crucial,” she says. “They can fill their pedagogical toolboxes with things happening here.”

Pennine Lancashire SCITT director Louise Stubbs agrees and says that giving trainees the chance to try new ideas out in an environment more able to be receptive to them is crucial.

“As a trainee, there’s very little chance for you to get involved in long-term planning; you’re teaching whatever anyone else is teaching,” she adds. “If we’re not careful, we’re going to create a set of teachers who are just teaching what everyone else has done.”

‘The desire to build a professional or cultural connection between the EU and Britain is incredibly strong’

Morris’ experiences at ECP back this up: she says there were a lot of opportunities to try new teaching methods out that she may not otherwise have been able to do.

“A lot of the UK education system is very spoon-fed: here’s the knowledge, we’ll give it to you, now here’s an exam,” she says. “The culture at ECP was about independent and autonomous learning.”

The benefits are two-way, though, with Emmerson saying he sees a major benefit of the programme coming from what trainees can bring into their placement schools.

“International teaching is slightly isolated,” he says. “With relatively low staff turnover, we can get stuck in our ways. We wanted to bring in a new supply of idealists to hold a mirror up to the way we do things, so we can gain fresh perspectives.”

Ms Rankin says its staff and its middle and senior leaders had also benefited from being trained in coaching, including through courses offered by NASBTT.

“The new skills they acquired can be used with students, colleagues and even parents or guardians in non-ITT contexts as well,” she adds. “This includes helping others to objectively clarify facts, consider implications of possible solutions and develop action plans for moving forward.”

Enticing new teachers

Those involved say initiatives like this could act as a new way to show prospective teachers the job can provide the chance to live and work abroad, and boost teacher recruitment accordingly - as Hollis from NASBTT outlines.

 “One of the ways we might make [teaching] more attractive is to make it something that offers global travel, the opportunity to work overseas and with different communities.”

Treena Philpotts, director of the Nottinghamshire Torch SCITT, also believes the appeal of placements abroad and opening trainees’ eyes to global teaching opportunities is something the sector should look to promote.

“Many professions and career routes are global and the introduction of the iQTS [international qualified teacher status] and partnerships such as TTE opens this possibility up further to increase the mobility of the teaching profession,” she says. “This is needed for future teacher recruitment if we are to compete within the recruitment market and it offers opportunities to learn from our international counterparts.” 

Meanwhile, Stubbs at Pennine Lancashire SCITT admits that being able to offer placements in Rome, Prague and Brussels is a “handy marketing tool” and one they intend to continue to push.

Best of all worlds

But is selling an international teaching experience to trainees really what we should be doing right now? After all, if ITT providers offer a place to a trainee and then they head overseas never to return that’s not exactly solving the teacher shortage problem.

Emmerson is adamant that TTE is not a recruitment drive for international schools. Instead, he hopes it will pay back some of the “moral debt” accrued from taking teachers out of a country with a chronic recruitment crisis.

“The best preparation for international teaching is to spend three or four years working in the UK,” he adds. “We want trainees to get a taste of international school and then go back to the UK.”

Nevertheless, Hollis admits that international placements could encourage more teachers to leave the UK - but argues any “short-term pain” would be balanced by an overall increase in the number of trained teachers.

“We know that a significant proportion of teachers come back after working overseas,” she adds.

“And they come back with a global view of education, skills that they might not have been able to develop so easily here. Burying your head in the sand isn’t going to change anything because the global international sector is growing and is going to continue to grow.”

‘We can get stuck in our ways. We wanted to bring in a new supply of idealists to hold a mirror up to the way we do things’

To this end, those involved in the TTE intend to continue offering placements each year and further develop its relationships with the SCITTs - including potentially adding teacher exchanges into the mix, both from the UK to Europe and vice versa.

“Teachers who spend a lot of time in an international school will benefit from two weeks in a comprehensive in [England] to remind themselves what it can be like having to manage behaviour,” Emmerson adds.

Given that many international teachers can struggle to find work back in England due to schools’ perception that they lack relevant experience in the home sector, this could certainly help.

However, in terms of growing the TTE to include more schools and SCITTs, that is something Emmerson does not envision. Instead, he wants TTE to act as a model that other SCITTs and international schools can implement or adapt. It can scale, he believes, but it would need to be done by using TTE’s example, not expanding that particular scheme. 

“Now we have proof of concept, I hope we can act as consultants to other small groups setting up to emulate this.

“[The] option of a six-week international placement could become commonplace - that’s my vision.”

Will others ITT providers take up that offer? National Modern Languages SCITT director Katrin Sredzki-Seamer is someone who, despite the international aspect to her SCITT’s work, is not convinced it could work for her trainees.

“I would absolutely love this to work but I know how our trainee teachers struggle with that year,” she says. “Where are you going to fit the six weeks to make it worthwhile?”

Sredzki-Seamer also says that as many MFL trainees are European already, it may not have the same appeal.

Nevertheless, Hollis believes there is potential to expand the TTE approach or similar programmes and that the government’s push on international collaboration, such as around the iQTS and plans to bring in more overseas teachers, will add impetus.

“We need teaching to be seen as an exciting, attractive profession, irrespective of what the economy might be doing,” she says.

Keith Cooper is a freelance journalist