Italian design-and-technology teacher Mauro Bonaccorsi visited Peterborough, England, on a training course earlier this year and was impressed.

“I am very curious about the English education system,” Mr Bonaccorsi, 59, said. “But I would like to improve my teaching methods and, especially, to work in a bit more well-organised country, because in Italy we sometimes lack a bit of organisation.”

And his optimism is not unusual, a Tes survey of 2,866 teachers outside the UK, found that around 84 per cent of non-UK teachers who believe they may be qualified to work in Britain, would consider working here, suggesting there could be hundreds of thousands of teachers prepared to move to England.

Mr Bonaccorsi worked as an architect until 2004. He now teaches design and technology, building construction and history of art, at a technical secondary school for 14-19 year olds in Livorno. Teaching time takes up 18 hours of his week, with the rest used for lesson preparation.

New horizons: Mauro Bonaccorsi, design and technology teacher in Livorno 

“It is quite good,” he said of the hours. “But many teachers would like to stay for longer in school and maybe have more facilities and more organisation. Sometimes it is difficult to take students to a workshop here because there is no assistant or some of the machines are broken.

“And of course there is the salary. Salaries are not so high, compared with other teachers in Europe our salaries are a bit smaller.”

But he is not naive and knows that there is more than the weather to prepare for in England. “Some colleagues in England have told me that not every day is a paradise,” he said. “But I would like to have a bit of a change and widen my horizons.”

The Tes survey found that in general teachers in other countries are more than twice as likely as British teachers to consider teaching abroad.

While almost two in five UK teachers would be prepared to move abroad at just a term’s notice, according to a Tes survey - 78 per cent of teachers outside the UK would consider moving to another country within a similarly short time