boy walking on plank

Back to School – Looking ahead to August

We are so pleased to learn that many of our partner schools in China are getting ready to welcome students back into the classroom. It really does seem like such a long time ago that schools were closed and had to quickly switch to and implement their e-learning strategies for all year groups.

As well as the challenges that this would bring, schools had to keep pressing on with their recruitment for the next academic year. At INTA China, Will and I have continued to recruit Early Years, Primary and Secondary teachers throughout this tricky time. Yet even though we are very privileged to work with some of the top international and bilingual schools in China we have still met many an obstacle throughout these past months! We thought it would be useful to share with our network some of the trends we have seen and actions moving forward:

– As news broke of the virus in China, we continued to receive a healthy number of applications, but this slowed down as the virus quickly spread across Europe and the UK at the beginning of April. We are pleased to see that applications are now on the rise for teachers looking to secure employment for the upcoming academic year.

– We are seeing some concern amongst our teachers who have secured employment for August with regards to the documentation required to apply for their work permits. With government bodies closed here in the UK, this has resulted in the delay of obtaining legalisation and notarisation and will no doubt have a knock-on effect on when a teacher can apply for their visa. However, some teachers have been able to undergo this process despite the closures through emergency channels.

– This has also resulted in teachers questioning their confirmed start date and the likelihood of an August start. Some schools have mentioned the possibility that new teachers could be given the option to start online e-learning if there are paperwork delays which has been welcome news to teachers.

– With the above in mind, we have seen a number of our partner schools focus their recruitment on teachers who are already in China to ease the visa process and to ensure an August start

We are pleased that schools are still pressing ahead with their student growth strategies for the 2020/21 academic year, a positive indicator for the continued growth in the year to come.

Please do share your own experiences as we would love to continue the dialogue.