Geoff Brown, once a headteacher, will be housed at the Courtleigh Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica with fellow tourists seeking refuge from the scorching heat. Despite this, he is not there as a leisure traveler but as the managing director of the Hourglass Education recruitment agency, on a mission to recruit teachers to fill the vacancies in England’s classrooms. The need for teachers in England is similar to the 1960s, when it looked to Jamaica for public transportation drivers.
In June, Brown collaborated with school staff in interviewing 43 Jamaican teachers to start working at an academy trust in Hayes, west London, starting this September. An additional 87 teachers were signed up during earlier recruitment drives for the same start date. Currently, Brown is on a brief visit to Jamaica where he will be searching for 21 more teachers who are willing to start working come January.
Brown says that finding applicants is not difficult, and he estimates that he will interview about 110 teachers as potential candidates for the available teaching posts. ‘’Numerous schools have advertised but received no applications,” according to Brown. “You have two choices: you can hire anyone who is ‘warm and breathing’ or choose the smarter way and recruit from overseas. Increasingly, schools are seeking teachers from countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Jamaica. My experience suggests that Australians and New Zealanders come to England to work for about a year, travel around Europe, and perhaps take time off during the Christmas holidays to return home. Jamaican teachers, on the other hand, tend to stay long-term.”
Jamaican teachers earn one-fifth of the salary received by UK educators and instruct classes averaging 60 children per session, Brown stated. Despite these conditions, they possess the ability to teach in English and communicate fluently in the language. Furthermore, their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is modeled after the British GCSE, and their Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) is similar to the UK A-level.
According to Brown, the Jamaican recruitment drive is delivering beneficial results, and an increasing number of school administrators are turning to them for their personnel needs.
