The International Schools Review Forum

Hi everyone,



A (39 year-old) Canadian friend of mine who is currently working in an Ontario DS is looking to go international.

She asked me for advice and I thought I’d put it to you all, as you all might think of things I wouldn’t have thought of.

She’s thinking of making the jump either this year or next.


Her biggest problem is that she has both a trailing spouse (an accountant who is willing to take a few years off), and THREE kids (2, 4 & 6 years old). The youngest doesn’t have to attend school yet though, and they are willing to send their middle child to a local school if that makes it easier to get hired.

She has:
- MA of Teaching, with Maths as her teachable
- BA of Science (Honours), Psychology
- Teaching English as a Second Language degree (from the Tokyo Language Arts College, might be worthless, not sure)


She's been teaching Middle School & Elementary for 13 years now, and is qualified to teach up to grade 10.
She has experience teaching:
- Maths *****
- French *****
- English **
- Psychology *
- EAL **

She also briefly taught History, Geography, Drama & Dance.

Before getting her teaching license in Canada, she taught ESL, English, and Psychology (as a TA) at a university in Japan for 6 years. She also passed the 2nd level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test while there.


She’s both an English and a French native speaker (Canada, eh?), and completed a Summer French Language Programme to get it up to the standard she would feel comfortable teaching French.



What would you recommend her to do in order to get into IE, except getting a divorce and put up two of her kids up for adoption?
Certain fairs, certain agencies, certain countries, certain schools, etc.?

A degree from the Tokyo Language Arts College probably isnt worth anything.

The travel ratio is 5:1 thats a logistical hire deal breaker, even for a maths IT who had a hard academic maths background.
Given child one isnt going to need to attend school yet that means that the other spouse has to be the stay at home parent or they need childcare, and even then they will need tuition waiver/place in a couple of years.
Whether the middle child is going to be able to function in a local DS is going to greatly depend on the location, further limiting the availability of ISs, but even then its not going to matter, the IS will simply follow the policy and leave it up to the IT to manage enrollment of their children, and while tuition places/waivers are the largest costs its going to be everything else from the 4 bedroom apartment/flat all the way down to the insurance thats going to essentially make them unemployable.

Enough lecture, so aside from the already previously mentioned divorce and adoption:

1) Leave the family situation out of the application, shes a newly single IT, get the job, relocate, get back together, and then self sponsor everyone else for relocation. This is going to be important even early in the stage as many associates and consultants with premium agencies will likely not want to take you as a candidate if your open about it.

2) Look at ISs such as QSI and elite tier ISs that dont really care (or care less) about family size.

3) Become a local and thus a LH, with regions like China with its vast number of vacancies you will find something. You relocate teaching ESOL to get in country then you recruit exclusively from inside the country, as a LH your costs become a non-issue. The IS doesnt have to be concerned with the costs of an OSH package.

4) Get accountant spouse into teaching (business economics) to improve your travel ratio. 5:1 is a non-starter, 5:2 is going to be difficult but its better than impossible.

5) Get the accountant spouse into one of the big multinational accounting firms (PWC, etc) and get the firm to sponsor the move, alternatively find a job locally for the accountant spouse and then job search for a teaching position locally.

6) Consider IE a plan C, something you would be interested in doing if the right opportunity came up, which is what it would take, but essentially thinking of it as a nice surprise instead of an actual career direction.

A 5:1 travel ratio is a logistical deal breaker, thats just not practically surmountable.