Teachers trained in Nigeria and Ghana will no longer be eligible to apply for the United Kingdom’s qualified teacher status (QTS), a legal requirement to teach in many schools in England.
The exemption took effect on September 9.
According to the UK department of education, teaching
qualifications and experience are assessed against strict requirements to
ensure that the department only confirm QTS for the highest quality teachers.
To remain eligible, a country must have a national regulator
that can confirm a teacher’s professional standing and be able to provide
authenticated references.
The UK education department said Nigeria and Ghana failed to
meet the second requirement.
“Our data shows that more than 70% of applications from
teachers in Ghana and Nigeria include work history references that use public
email addresses, such as Gmail or Hotmail, rather than a school’s official
email domain,” the department said.
“This means assessors spend additional time and resources
trying to verify information provided in applications.”
About 90 percent of applications are assessed within 12
months.
India was also scrapped from the list for not having a
national regulator that can confirm professional standing.
South Africa is now the only African country on the list of
eligible countries.
“We must be confident that the information applicants
provide is genuine. This helps ensure that overseas teachers awarded qualified
teacher status have the skills and experience needed to teach in schools in
England,” the department said.
QTS QUALIFICATIONS
To apply for QTS, teachers must have a valid passport that
has not expired; an undergraduate degree equal to a UK bachelor’s degree; a
recognition as a professional teacher in the country where they completed
teacher training; and a completion of all mandatory induction processes to gain
full teacher registration in the country where they qualified.
Teachers must also provide qualifications to show they can
teach children aged anywhere between 5 and 16 years old; have at least one
school year (nine months) of experience employed as a teacher in any country,
but must be from after they first became qualified to teach; and references
that can confirm work history and have an email address that uses the school’s
domain.
Depending on the country that they trained to teach in, they
may be required to have qualifications to show they can teach children aged
anywhere between 11 and 16 years old and have a teaching specialism in one of
the following subjects: maths, science, biology, chemistry, physics, French,
German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Russian, or Spanish.
However, since teachers in England are employed by
individual schools rather than the education department, some schools may
consider alternative qualification routes, although QTS remains a status
preferred by most schools.
The department said teachers who are not eligible to use the
apply for QTS in England service can explore other routes.
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