The future of teacher and school leader recruitment

A presentation for the COBIS Bursars and Heads of HR Conference on Thursday 4th February 2021

 

International School Recruitment in a Post-Covid-19 World - Tes Webinar

A Tes Webinar given on Wednesday 9th September 2020 looking at the likely impact of Covid-19 on International Teacher and School Leader Recruitment for 2021.

Video here

Slides here

 

4 red flags to check for in an international school

Most international schools are highly professional, above board and are great employers – but, as with most industries, there are some cowboys out there who cut corners to make a fast buck. However, unscrupulous schools are easy to spot if teachers do their own "due diligence" and check out their potential employer. Here are my four key red flags to watch out before you sign on the dotted line…

1. 'Visa runs' 

Reputable schools will ensure that a work visa is in place before you start work – it will either be sent to you in advance or left so that it can be collected from the visa desk at airport arrivals. Sadly, this will not always be the case. Some international schools expect new staff to enter the country on a tourist visa, which they will then change to a resident work visa in due course.
A tourist visa is usually only valid for 30 or 60 days and there are per diem fines for staying beyond the allotted time. So, if the 30 or 60 days elapses before the work visa has been processed, schools expect teachers to go on "visa runs" – i.e. to leave the country and re-enter on another tourist visa. I’ve heard of cases where teachers have had to go on visa runs throughout their first year working. Although the travel costs are usually picked up by the school, there is a personal cost in time (for example, a lost weekend) and in terms of settling in and establishing a normal life (a work visa is often required to get a local bank account).
In most countries, it is illegal to work on a tourist visa and, again, there are hefty penalties for both the employer and the employee if caught. This puts the new teacher in a very vulnerable situation. One of the major reasons why schools are not able to process work visas promptly is that the school itself does not yet have all of its paperwork in place. New schools typically have to go through a long process of documentation involving several government departments before they can get the status to sponsor work visas. In their rush to meet a September opening deadline, many new schools are forced to cut corners – visa runs are a symptom.

2. Cash payments and employer shock 

The norm in international schools is for your school to pay your salary into your local bank account. However, there are times when this is not possible because you have not been able to set up a bank account because your visa paperwork is not in place. In these cases, the school has no alternative but to pay the teachers in cash, which can be hugely inconvenient for the teacher.
 In similar vein, there are many examples of it only becoming apparent at the first pay day that the de facto employer is not the school for whom you’ve been working for the past month, but some other third-party company. This happens because schools (particularly UK franchise schools) enter into partnerships with local companies who own and manage the school.

3. Accommodation anomalies 

Many international schools provide accommodation to teachers as a benefit for the first part of their term of employment. Sadly, there are many cases in which schools do not deliver the type of accommodation that was promised at interview. In some cases, flats are smaller than expected or of a lower quality; in others, they are in a totally different part of the city, necessitating a lengthy daily commute. At its worst, single staff are informed for the first time on arrival that they are required to share an apartment – or even a room.

4. Beware the scams: jobs that don’t exist 

Check that the job actually exists. There have been a number of scams in the past decade in which scammers use the names of prestigious schools to con prospective teachers. The scammers send out job offers on amazing terms but to clinch the deal, the unsuspecting candidates are required to wire a few thousand dollars to a purported travel firm so that visa papers and work permits can be processed, money which they say will be refunded once they have joined the school. Suffice to say that no reputable school requires candidates to pay costs up front in this way.

“Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted” 

Moving abroad is costly and involves making personal sacrifices (resigning a good job in the UK, relocation, etc). Because of this, most teachers are so invested in their move that they have no alternative but to play along when a bad employer moves the goalposts. In practice, when things go wrong it is very difficult for a new teacher to challenge a school over its poor practice during the first months of living abroad. The choice is binary: put up, shut up and stay – or quit. All this can be avoided if teachers do their own research before committing to a particular school.

Due diligence checklist 

Contact teachers (via LinkedIn or other social media) who are working or worked recently at the school and ask them:

1. How long did it take you to get your work visa? 
2. Did you or any of your colleagues ever have to go on a "visa run"? 
3. Did you or any of your colleagues ever get your salary paid in cash? 
4. Who is your actual employer? 
5. Who pays you each month? 
6. Did your school accommodation align with your expectations from interview? 
7. Are you planning on renewing your contract when it ends? If not, why not? 

Look for the kitemarks 

One way to identify the more established and reputable schools is to research the international organisations to which schools can belong. The international schools in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) and the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA) have extensive inspection regimes, which will ensure that a high standard of best practice is followed in the schools that bear their kitemark.

This article was published in Tes on 16/01/2019

Seven ways to help new staff settle at your international school

Most international schools need to recruit between 10% and 25% of their staff each year. They rely on being able to attract talented individuals to move to a new country or to move abroad for the first time. Given that the prospect of relocating can be very daunting, a school which develops a reputation for having effective structures in place to support these teachers will have an advantage in what is an increasingly competitive international recruitment market. Here’s seven ways in which international schools can build an effective induction programme to support staff moving abroad. 

1. Guiding new staff through the red tape 
   The induction process for teachers moving to work abroad usually starts months before the adventure begins. There is a certain amount of paperwork that is much easier to do whilst still in the UK, such as getting a local Police Clearance or producing attested copies of Degree and Teaching Qualification Certificates and, where relevant, Marriage Certificates. Given that most teachers haven’t even heard of ‘attestation’ let alone how to complete this complex process, it is important that schools have a strong (and patient) HR team who will put new joiners at ease by guiding them through what they need to do in a timely manner. 
2. Connect new staff through Social Media
   Teachers who are moving abroad can feel quite distant and isolated from the school community they are joining. One way to overcome this is to connect those joining the school in September via Social Media. For example, at JESS the HR Department run a ‘JESS New Starters’ Facebook group which allows the new cohort to get to know each other, to ask questions and, which, over time, has become a repository of FAQs. The group builds a sense of camaraderie so that when they all finally meet at the ‘New Staff Social’, they already know each other. 
3. Relocation Advice 
   One of the most difficult decisions for someone moving abroad is to work out what items they need to take out to the new country. The temptation is to ship too much out of a fear that it won’t be available or will be too expensive abroad. Rather than reinventing the wheel, school HR teams can help by pointing new staff to local online forums and networks (such as ExpatWoman.com). 
4. Meet and Greet 
   The most seasoned traveller will tell you that arriving in a new country knowing that this is now ‘home’ is a totally different experience to going on holiday. It can be an emotional time and a familiar face can be most welcome. It is common practice for members of the school’s senior management team to meet new staff at the airport and to ensure that they are settled into their accommodation, which is usually provided or arranged by the school in the first instance. 
5. Teacher Buddy 
   Schools often allocate new staff ‘teacher buddies’ in the summer term prior to the ‘big move’. This gives an important point of contact for the new teacher, who can help the new staff member both before their arrival and to settle into the school and the expat community.  
6. Living in Limbo 
   It usually takes a number of weeks for Visa and Residency paperwork to be in place. During this time, it can be difficult to buy a car, lease an apartment, get insurance and set up a mobile phone account. A good HR team provide support by advising new teachers on what they need to put in place for this transitional time. (In practice new teachers usually need to take the same steps that would were they to be visiting the country as a tourist.) One of the most practical things that a school can do is to help new staff with WIFI in these early days, for example by lending 4G dongles to new staff. 
7. Introduction into Local Laws and Customs 
   One of the most important parts of new staff induction in an international context is to provide some guidance on local laws and customs. It is vital that ex pat staff understand the expected norms of behaviour when in public, especially at times of key religious and national festivals. For example, there are a range of attitudes in the Middle East around dress code, which not only vary from country to country but also from context (the street, the shopping Mall, the Government building, the beach). It is much better that schools take the time to run sessions on local expectations, than their new staff learn what is and what is not acceptable the hard way. Some schools take the process of induction to the next level by providing classes in the local language to facilitate this process. 

First impressions count, and that applies as much to schools as it does to teachers; so, HR Departments are very much in the front-line when it comes to recruitment and the on-boarding of staff. In the highly competitive world of teacher recruitment, a good HR team who communicates well and puts candidates at their ease is an enormous asset that can make the difference between securing and losing the top applicant. The HR team’s work is not over once the preferred candidate has accepted the post: HR’s role in the induction process is crucial in ensuring that new staff settle and quickly find their stride in the school. This is true of all schools, but the challenges facing HR teams in International schools are even greater as they play a crucial, guiding role in helping staff and their families through the process of moving abroad and finding their feet in what is often a strange, new country.

This article was published in Tes 12/06/2019

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Education

What is AI? 

Artificial Intelligence refers to those computer systems which are both autonomous and adaptive; i.e. they are systems which have the ability to perform complex tasks without constant guidance by a user and they also have the ability to improve performance by learning from experience. The process of getting computers to learn without being explicitly programmed is called Machine Learning. 

We are all familiar with the increasing role that AI is playing an increasing part in our lives. Machine-learning is managing our email junk folders; it is suggesting the next word when we are texting; it is labelling and organising our photo albums; and it makes suggestions on what we should buy next from Amazon or watch next on Netflix. Most of these functions rely on ‘Supervised’ Machine Learning algorithms that are developed on the basis of an initial training set of data, which is then supplemented as further information becomes available. 

AI and Ethics 

Ethical concerns about AI revolve around ‘algorithmic bias’ i.e. around the validity of the way in which the algorithm is constructed and usually around the nature of the training dataset. These arguments take three forms: 

1. Concerns about Bias: the training dataset on which the algorithm was originally constructed may not reflect the composition of the wider population. To take an extreme example, a dataset that is based on American billionaires is likely to be white, educated, aged over 45, male and, by definition, rich.
2. Concerns about Fairness: the training dataset is based on accurate historic data, but those data reflect unfair practices. For example, in 2011 the City of Boston MA launched ‘Street Bump App’ which maps the location of potholes that needed repairing around the city by collecting data from the accelerometer in the Smartphone. The app successfully collected data and saved the City time and money in surveying the roads. However, a review of the project after 12 months showed that a disproportionate number the potholes identified and repaired were in affluent middle-class areas, to the detriment of those in poorer areas. This was almost certainly because affluent middle-class residents were more likely to own a smartphone and were more likely to download the app. In similar vein, data scientist
   
   Cathy O’Neill, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, has voiced her concerns about the way in which the algorithms are being used in the US criminal justice system. The police are using historic arrest data as a proxy for crime data to drive preventative policing models. Because of this, the algorithm simply reinforces historic practice by sending the police back to the neighbourhoods which they are already over-policing; and are not sent to neighbourhoods which have crime, but those crimes are found. The irony is that, in these examples, the intention was to create algorithms which were free from human bias, however, because of the way in which they were constructed that had unintended consequence of perpetuating historic inequalities. 
3. Concerns about Unethical Behaviour: the dataset is deliberately skewed or designed to behave in a dishonourable way. AI is fundamentally an ethically neutral platform. It can be used or misused like any other technology. History teaches us that most technologies are misused at some point. 

In order to avoid historic or intentional bias, it is necessary to develop new protocols. Once designers deviate from historic data and endeavour to build an algorithm which is based on data which is deemed both unbiased and fair, they are presented with some quite serious ethical challenges. Here there will be parallels here to the debates about the value of positive discrimination in the workplace. One way to manage AI is to establish some protocols which will ensure that we avoid algorithmic bias - and here diversity is the key. There needs to be a Diversity of Background and a Diversity of Mindset of the team building the algorithms to avoid “group think”; a Diversity of Data that comprises any training set; and Diversity of Algorithmic Models used. 

Looking ahead it is likely that there will need to be formal regulation of algorithm design (rather akin the way in which financial services is regulated) which will entail the development of regulatory function of ethical audit. This role will ensure that algorithms are not subject to intentional or unintended bias. 

The Ethics of AI in Education 

The use of AI in education is in its infancy. We are beginning to see adaptive learning platforms, such as CenturyTech, being used in schools, primarily to supplement and support what teachers are doing in the classroom. Whether or not this is the first tentative step towards the ‘Holy Grail’ of fully adaptive and personalised learning that does not require teacher input is a debate for another day. Looking ahead it is like AI in Education is likely to pose some significant ethical issues. 

1. First, as those who are embroiled in GDPR know only too well, there are a whole range of concerns about the security, ownership and privacy of personal student data that is captured and stored within an AI platform. There will need to policies and protocols in this area. 
2. Secondly, there are concerns about the fairness of access to AI technologies and the potential for AI to increase the ‘Digital Divide’ between those who can afford access to the technology and those who don’t. 
3. Thirdly, there is a danger of having a biased training set on which educational AI technologies are founded reinforce social/ cultural/ etc. stereotypes. For example, it is quite possible that the dataset for an AI learning platform might be skewed because the early adopters all come from affluent fee-paying schools who can afford to provide access. 

Assessment Algorithms. 

Perhaps the greatest ethical issues might come around AI being used to make significant summative assessments of students’ abilities in the allocation of places at university or into the jobs market. We have already seen the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms preferring their own assessment platforms to consideration of A-level and Degree results in order to find recruits who have the most potential (e.g. ‘Big Four’ look beyond academics – Financial Times 28/02/2016). It is quite possible to conceive of a time when both universities and employers, motivated from the noble intention of assessing potential and facilitating social mobility, will rely on their own assessment recruitment algorithms to identify suitable candidates. If this were to have it would be vital that any algorithm be subject to rigorous ethical audit to ensure that it meets a standard test of fairness. 

Final Remarks 

We have only begun to realise the potential that Artificial Intelligence has to shape C21 society and, sadly, social and ethical debate is struggling to keep up with the development of the technology. There needs to be an informed debate about the place of AI in society, and particularly of how it is going to be applied in education. In order to do this, we need a much greater understanding in society of how AI and Machine Learning work – and that is a challenge which I hope will be taken up by schools over the coming months and years.

This article was published in Digital Strategy Edition 2, March 2019 by the ISC Digital Strategy Group.