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VIEWS Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO) Retirement – a new way of life!


JOHN WHITELEY retired from teaching at 62 as a Deputy Head. For a couple of years at home he kicked his heels around until his wife said, “You need a project!” He applied to VSO and the rest is history.


I went to Uganda to volunteer as an education adviser to the inspectorate in Masindi District. I had never been an adviser or an inspector, but the level of sophistication in the office there was low. My practical approach to solving problems and my UK experience stood me in good stead. There wasn’t much inspecting to do since the inspectors never had enough fuel for their vehicles.


I had the freedom and opportunities to do two things. I ran training courses about mathematics teaching in primary schools. The teachers enjoyed the courses, but it wasn’t clear how much real change I was able to make to their practices. Secondly, I did quite a bit of teaching in schools. This valuable


experience helped me to learn about the real issues which came with teaching in rural Uganda, like teaching 100 children with just a stick of chalk. How do you mark 100 books? Is rote learning a good idea? The answers to these questions require whole-school policies as well as training individual teachers. To be honest, I didn’t think the inspectors had many answers and neither did I. The last two terms I spent in Uganda however, were the best part of my teaching career. My wife also came with me as an accompanying partner and I was


able to work with disabled children and get them assistance which they would not have accessed otherwise. I then volunteered with VSO in Malawi. My second placement


couldn’t have been more different to my first. This programme enabled me to work more closely with the children. VSO’s partner, onebillion, is an education software organisation which places iPads in Malawian schools to help children learn maths and language. They identified 70 urban


and rural schools, all of which had a connection with a teacher training college. At each school they built a learning centre, 7½ metres by 5, equipped with 30 iPads. The iPads are charged by way of a solar panel on the roof, batteries and a voltage regulator. A server connects all 30 iPads together with the teacher’s iPad, which controls them all. The iPads are loaded with an application which takes the children


through the first two years of the Malawian primary syllabus. The children hear instructions in their local language, Chichewa, through headsets, and interact with their screens to answer questions and learn topics. Each topic has a test and the children are awarded on-screen certificates after completion. The children pick up any iPad at the beginning of a session. They


identify themselves to the server by tapping on their photo. The server tells the iPad where they left off and they carry on from there. Every learning centre is connected via the internet to onebillion's


London office where they have a record of each child's progress. Apps for the iPads can be downloaded from https://unlockingtalent.org/apps My role in Malawi was to assist the teachers in getting the learning


centres to work, organising the children, solving IT issues and helping teachers to build on what they have learned from observing children. A problem-solving approach is required rather than a profound understanding. This may be the future for efficient education in


Africa. It’s not cheap but the children, even from remote villages, take to this like ducks to water. They love it!


uhttps://www.vsointernational.org/educationroles April 2017 British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)


Forget PISA, UK teachers are top of the world


This month, regular Education Today contributor PATRICK HAYES, Director at BESA, heralds the lead the UK’s teachers are taking in today’s globally-connected world.


In my role at the British Educational Suppliers Association, I am increasingly spending a lot of time in China, where there is an incredibly strong demand for UK education, and the products and services that accompany it. Indeed I was there last December when the


influential PISA global education rankings came out. China came above the UK in both maths and science, but I was struck by the fact that despite this, the respect and appetite


for the UK’s approach to these subjects was huge. During my whole time there, I didn’t meet a single person who said they wouldn’t prefer to send their children to be educated in these subjects under the UK education system, if they had the chance. Our holistic, creative and knowledge-based approach to teaching these subjects, underpinned by a rigorous pedagogy, was regularly cited as reasons why. This is one of the reasons why I was pleased to see UK teachers


topping the league in recent research undertaken by TES Global, which found that the UK is “home to the world’s most popular teachers”. They found that UK teachers are “embracing the sharing economy” with over a million resources now being downloaded from the TES.com platform on peak days, with over 180 countries taking part. It’s encouraging to see UK teachers leading the way in this


innovative approach to collaborating globally. However the success and reputation of the UK’s teaching profession overseas can create challenges. The leading researchers into international schools, the International Schools Consultancy, has found that the number of English-medium schools has increased by 41.5% in the past five years alone, reaching a total of 8,257. In order to accommodate that rapid growth, they believe that the number of teachers required within 10 years will be 780,000. There are just 509,700 teachers currently teaching in the UK, so


given around 42% of international schools offer a UK curriculum, this means that almost as many teachers will be needed to teach the UK curriculum abroad as there are currently teaching in the UK. It’s no wonder then that around 10% of UK teachers are saying they are seriously looking or certain to be teaching abroad in the next three years. The former chief inspector of Ofsted was so concerned he warned of a “teacher brain drain”, with reports that in 2014/15 approximate 100,000 full-time teachers from the UK were working in the international schools sector. This is taking place at a time when the UK is facing an


unprecedented teacher shortage with over 40,000 teachers leaving the profession a year, often citing workload pressures as the primary reason. At a time when immigration restrictions make it ever harder to bring in talent from overseas, this has the potential to become a very serious issue indeed. Education is one of the UK’s great success stories. But in order for


this industry to continue to thrive, we need to ensure we have sufficient teachers in UK classrooms, and equip them with the resources they need to ensure they continue to provide our children with a world-class education. Surely there are few things more important than that?


uFor information from BESA contact: uPatrick Hayes u020 7537 4997 upatrick@besa.org.uk uwww.besa.org.uk


www.education-today.co.uk 7


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