Like a growing number of teachers, she is leaving her job at a secondary school in west London to work in a school in Australia.
“Everyone knows someone who is going to teach abroad,” said Stewart, 27, who, after working in Australia for a year, returned to Britain for two and is now going back down under because she loved it so much.
“There’s no marking. You have the sun and you can meet friends, go to the beach, do water sports, have a barbecue. Everyone chips in with drinks and someone brings a speaker.
“I met so many British teachers when I was out there who said that they would not go back to UK schools because they had to work such long hours.”
A flood of British teachers is leaving the country — but not the profession — to work overseas. Destinations include Australia, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, China and Mallorca.
Salaries are often higher, and packages can include accommodation, cars and gym membership. A newly qualified teacher in the Australian state of New South Wales, for instance, earns the equivalent of £49,500, compared with a starting salary in the UK of £30,000. Some schools even pay your airfare.
After teachers’ strikes last year, the government raised starting salaries to £30,000, but in New South Wales, Australia, they begin at £49,500
MARK KERRISON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Lured by Instagram posts featuring sun-soaked beaches and desert camel rides, some, like Stewart, want to teach in the state sector. Others are leaving to work in the rapidly growing number of fee-paying foreign colleges, with private schools such as Brighton College and Dulwich College setting up, or linked to, overseas offshoots.
At the school where Stewart works — All Saints Catholic College in North Kensington — three other young teachers are also jetting off this year. Two are heading to schools in Australia and one to Thailand.
The head teacher, Andrew O’Neill, said: “It is not just the salary, but the cost of living. How can they afford to buy a home in London? I met a group of head teachers recently and they are reporting the same trend. We have had to scramble to fill jobs.”
Teachers are following in the footsteps of record numbers of British junior doctors who have left the NHS for better-paid jobs in Australia and the US. Just as has happened in the NHS, immigrants are now being paid by the UK government to train as teachers in order to help schools in England plug staffing gaps.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former chief inspector of schools, at the Jewish Free School in Harrow, north London. He described the exodus as a “brain drain”
LUCY YOUNG FOR THE TIMES
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former chief inspector of schools, described the exodus as a “brain drain” of some of Britain’s best young talent. “This country needs them. Derby needs them more than Dubai,” he said.
A generation that came of age during the coronavirus pandemic is “opting for an easier life abroad, often for financial reasons [but] also because they find life in the classroom challenging, with poor behaviour by children”, he added.
Official figures released by the Department for Education reveal that the number of teacher vacancies is at its highest since 2010. In physics, nearly one in three classes last year were taught by teachers without a degree in the subject. For maths, it is more than one in seven. A third of teachers quit after five years.
Dubai is a popular destination for teachers looking for higher pay and an “easier life”
ALAMY
Of the 664,645 staff at international schools, about 145,000 teachers — roughly one in five — are from the UK, up 50 per cent on the figure in 2014-15, according to the International School Consultancy.
Andrew Howes, the head of initial teacher training at Manchester University, said seven of the 120 newly qualified teachers from the PGCE teacher-training course have accepted a first job abroad this year.
Alex Gray, who left his teaching position in a grammar school in Birmingham for a post at a school in Dubai, said the trend for British teachers to take up roles in foreign schools is “definitely accelerating”
For the first time, the course also has 25 trainees from overseas with funding from the UK government. Some are eligible for bursaries and relocation payments worth nearly £40,000. Two migrant teachers on the course — one from Libya, one from Nigeria — have jobs in schools in Rochdale.
Alex Gray, 40, trained as a science teacher at Loughborough University, but left his post as head of biology at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, in 2015 to work as deputy director of science at GEMS Wellington International School in Dubai.
He said the trend for British teachers to work abroad is “definitely accelerating”. In Dubai, his salary is tax-free. With an £18,000 annual housing allowance, his package in his new job in the Emirates, as founder of a sixth form for Arcadia School, is in six figures, more than double what he was earning when he left.
Gray said he will not return to teach in the UK because his daughters, Ava, 10, and Olivia, 8, are thriving in better schools than they would attend in England.
“I have friends who did two years out here teaching, went back to UK schools and are now desperate to return,” he said. “I am told there are queues of teachers trying to get into school surveillance rooms in the UK to check the CCTV to try to work out who has been fighting in the playground or who stole something.”
It is not just teachers heading abroad. Rob Ford, 51, moved from his job as principal of Wyedean School in Sedbury, Gloucestershire, when he was asked to set up Heritage International School, the first international school in Moldova.
His school employs many British teachers and is looking to recruit more using agencies, such as Leopardfish. Ford said teachers feel they can get on with their job without political interference or “weird debates” on social media about culture wars or teaching styles.
Ford said he and his family would like to return to the UK at the end of his career.
Meanwhile, his niece, 22, who has recently qualified as a teacher, has asked: “Uncle Rob, how do I come and work abroad?”