An Overseas Teacher: My Experience of Coming to the UK With Prospero Teaching

My name is Stephanie and I am a secondary teacher from Belgium…

I applied to Prospero Teaching in October 2015 and the following Monday I got a call from Lotte, an Overseas Candidate Manager. We talked about what was going to happen, which documents I needed and etc. She also mailed me information about housing, QTS and the different types of contract that I could get with Prospero Teaching. She was very clear and this got me even more excited about teaching in the UK than I already was.

After a few weeks I came into contact with a Consultant dealing with schools in North London, Laura. She asked me a bunch of questions to make sure that I really wanted to work in North London and then gave me a Guaranteed Pay Contract starting the second week of January. Every step of the way Lotte and Laura were there to help me with everything from paperwork to answering my many and varied questions.

January 10, 2016. I arrived in London with my excitement and to be honest,a little bit of fear too. It wasn’t that I was all alone in a city that I’d never been to, but more about the fact that I had to teach in a different school system, in another language… Still the excitement took over and I was so happy that I finally was teaching because in Belgium there weren’t enough jobs for newly qualified teachers. In the beginning you have a lot of different schools and after a few weeks some schools and students begin to know you, so it gets easier to teach them. And Laura then set me up with some interviews to try to get me a more longer term roles.

Now I have my more steady job at a UK school. I really enjoy my work there. Sometimes it is hard, but I enjoy the little victories that I have with my students. My co-workers are really helpful and very patient with me, because they need to explain the English education system to me. Through the school I also get a NQT-training that’s really helpful to learn more about this ‘strange system’.

To make a long story short … If you are a teacher from Belgium and you want to teach it doesn’t matter where you teach. I had to move to another country to do what I love and I don’t regret my decision. And I know that it sounds like an advertisement but it is true. If you are planning to move to the UK for a teaching job, I would recommend Prospero Teaching. They will help you every step of the way.  🙂

By Stephanie, Secondary Teacher

We’ve got plenty of experience of placing teachers from overseas in teaching jobs in the UK. With that comes plenty of support and advice which you can read about in our blogs for overseas teachers.

Are you an overseas teacher already teaching in London? Do you have any advice for other overseas teachers who can’t find work in their home countries? They and we would love to hear from you.