The International Schools Review Forum

Hi all,

Looking to get into the International School circuit for the 2022-2023 school year. Curious to hear about how schools and admin are planning for recruiting during this upcoming year for the following school year. COVID has thrown everything out of whack, so I’m unsure how that’s affected enrollment and positions for the upcoming years. Thoughts would be appreciated! TIA.

Schools in SE Asia that I know of will be using Schrole, Search Associates, and their own websites to collect and peruse CVs. Skype and Zoom interviews will be the norm. Make sure you're fully vaccinated if you've to attend face to face interviews in London. Unless infection rates drop significantly and vaccination rates go up, the probability of holding a job fair in Bangkok is quite low. Be prepared to share your remote teaching and learning experiences and you might be even asked to demo a synchronous Zoom lesson. Enrolment at big schools in China is down, while this is not very significant at tier 1 schools in Thailand and Singapore.

Are schools anticipating average student enrollment? Lower enrollment due to COVID? Trying to figure out job prospects and availability of future positions or if schools will not be recruiting as much due to lower student enrollment from COVID. I'm looking at SE Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar-- minus the whole coup situation :-/), so good to hear that Thailand and Singapore Tier 1 are not shifting as much.

If a tier 1 school with 2000 students loses about 100-200 over the next year due to COVID-related reasons or otherwise, new admissions can more or less make up for that. I don't have first-hand information about the lower tier schools, although I did hear in some cases they have been severely impacted and have difficulty flying newly hired faculty into the country. All of this might change between September 2021 and July 2022 as more countries open up and airlines slowly expand their flying network. The only way to return to some form of normalcy and minimise the damage is to vaccinate students in large numbers as we are currently doing with adults, albeit Thailand is slightly lagging in vaccination due to poor planning and a sudden spike in infections.

If you're an experienced teacher with solid credentials, I'd say target the top-tier schools in Thailand and Singapore. Based on my conversations, most faculty will stay put for another year or two. The number of vacancies might be slightly greater than the previous year, but personally, I think 2023-24 will be a good year to venture out.

Its not going to change much of anything beyond what happened last year. The only real deviation from last year being virtual fairs as opposed to on site recruiting fairs. As such the various jobs services will remain popular. Schrole and ISS are splitting, so expect to see more of a presence from ISS in managed recruiting. Instead of a rep playing gate keeper to a database of jobs, think of ISS more in line with getting a job spec and then an ISS rep doing the recruiting and candidate identification (think TES managed recruiting or Carney Sandoe).

Enrollment is down generally, but thats likely to be a result of remote learning last year and how ISs generally managed and responded (poorly) to tuition/fees and remote learning. A not insignificant portion of parents are simply not interested in paying top or full coin for online learning. Even if ISs can physically open their ISs they may not have the faculty available to put an IT in those classes if they cant bring in ITs.

Many ISs will still be waiting on important factors for this year rather than recruiting for next year in October. Its likely early recruiting will be comparatively small compared to pre-COVID. January will see an increased amount of recruiting as ISs know more and are better able to predict relocation and thus hiring.

Do be prepared to respond to some inquiry about virtual or remote learning. You should already have a demonstration lesson in your digital portfolio. Given privacy concerns and the medium (youre already likely interviewing over some form of synchronous platform) a recorded virtual teaching demonstration is unlikely. You should have prepared a single lesson plan showing adaptation and modifications for virtual, hybrid and in-person instruction. Pursuing a certificate in content and delivery tools and application such as Google educator (or Apple or MS) or some other certificate platform (IE. Coursera) showing proficiency in digital learning will have some utility.

I tend to agree with @fine dude that the uncertainty this year is likely to result in more ITs than is average remaining with their current ISs in 2022. It would be to your advantage to position yourself in country in a location you would like to be and thus recruit locally should any windows open up in the foreseeable future.

Agree with much of what's been said before.

But I'm not sure that people are choosing to stick rather than twist - perhaps in smaller numbers, but certainly not as many as I'd expected. I've been surprised by the amount of movement - but maybe it's just more than the bare minimum I was expecting.

Maybe I'm just more cautious but I wouldn't be looking to move at the moment in these circumstances. Unless maybe it's the circumstances that are causing people to move?

Most of our staff re-signed for 2021-2022, which is good. However, we are already anticipating changes for 2022-23 and will recruit via several methods - online, in-person, and reference/word of mouth. You can't go wrong with Search or ISS, in my opinion, with Search being preferred. At the same time, we have teachers who seem to think GRC is the answer, but never seem to land anything there. Other teachers use Teachaway, TIEonline, Teacher Horizons, with Brits being partial to TES (tesjobs.co.uk). Whatever works is the best one. At this point, I think the honest answer is, "Who knows?", but hang on for the ride!

Same position on GRC. It seems great, no cost, they have a respectable roster of ISs, theyve adapted an approach thats demonstrated to work, theyre a bit exclusive, and a little early in the recruiting event. They have come a long way from their beginnings when they were nothing, but the number of ITs successful with them is really small.