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44 million teachers are need globally by 2030 – a shortage that affects developing and developed countries alike, as demonstrated across the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth is home to 2.7 billion people, with more than 60 per cent of the population aged 29 or under. 33 of 56 member states are small states, including many island nations, sitting alongside G20 countries including Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and the UK.

Around the world, there are 250 million out-of-school children. More than 40 million of those children live in just two Commonwealth member states, Nigeria and Pakistan. Of the 763 million young people and adults who lack basic literacy skills, more than half live in the Commonwealth.

Mirroring the rest of the world, teacher shortages in the Commonwealth are largest in the countries where needs are greatest, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where 1 in 3 of the additional teachers that must be recruited by 2030 are needed.

The poaching of teachers: modern-day neocolonialism

As the teacher recruitment and retention crisis has deepened in wealthy Commonwealth countries like the UK, so have efforts by these countries to recruit overseas trained teachers (OTTs). Alongside Canada, Germany and the U.S., the UK hosts the largest number of OTTs.

In February 2023, the Department for Education widened a scheme which allows overseas teachers to gain qualified teacher status (QTS) in England without having to retrain to include a number of additional countries including Ghana, India, Jamaica, Nigeria and South Africa.

Teachers who qualified in 48 countries are now eligible to apply for QTS, the legal requirement to teach in many English schools. Commonwealth countries make up just 10 of the eligible countries but accounted for over three-quarters of applications awarded between 1 February 2023 and 31 March 2024.*

Over 2,300 teachers from Ghana were granted QTS – the highest of any country. A further 655 teachers were recruited from Nigeria. Over 300 teachers from India were recruited and almost 200 from South Africa.

What’s more, this doesn’t show the full picture – there are several other routes for overseas trained teachers to work in England. Some employers have paid OTTs on the unqualified teacher pay scale until they are granted QTS. This can take years since it usually relies on the support of the employer – meaning teachers can lose out on tens of thousands in earnings despite doing the same work as their UK trained colleagues.

The UK is not alone in its aggressive recruitment of OTTs

Whereas in the UK teacher migration is typically from the Caribbean and Africa, Australia and New Zealand recruit heavily from Oceania, particularly small island states like Fiji and the Cook Islands.

New Zealand has relaxed its immigration rules for overseas secondary school teachers due to shortages, with overseas secondary teachers put on a fast track to residency.

The Fijian Teachers’ Association reported that last year, 100 qualified early childhood education teachers left the country, with a further fifty teachers migrating to Australia at the end of December. A significant loss from the workforce of a country with a population less than one million.

Countries are sounding the alarm about the loss of qualified teachers

In Ghana, teacher recruitment and retention has not kept pace with increases in enrolment, particularly following the extension of free education to secondary high school in 2017. In October 2023, the National Association of Graduate Teachers in Ghana (NAGRAT) reported that as many as 10,000 teachers in the country had left for developed countries. A survey by NAGRAT revealed that eight in ten trained teachers would migrate from Ghana given the opportunity.

Nigeria’s deep-rooted education crisis is being exacerbated by the loss of its teachers. Over 20 million children are out-of-school, yet classrooms lie empty. The Universal Basic Education Commission estimates a shortage of almost 200,000 teachers in public primary schools– dwarfing the numbers required in the developing countries.

As the Global Report on Teachers identifies, comprehensive data on teacher migration is not available, and while teachers may migrate for a range of reasons, teacher labour migration tends to mirror general migration patterns driven by the pull of better wages in the destination country.

This mirrors the finding of the recent Global Status of Teachers 2024 that globally low pay is the most common cause of teacher shortages. This points to the need for all countries to tackle the root causes of teacher shortages by transforming the status of teaching into a high-status, high-retention profession, where teachers are valued, empowered and paid competitively.

Exploitation of OTTS is rife

Teachers, like any worker, should have the mobility to pursue the opportunities that are best for themselves and their families. However, when teachers from less developed countries that cannot recruit and retain sufficient teachers themselves are exploited as cheap labour to fill gaps in the global north, something has gone seriously wrong.

For example, Caribbean teachers typically arrive in the UK with full training and years of experience. Despite this, they are often paid as unqualified teachers, leading to a salary gap of at least £10,000 compared to their UK-trained counterparts. In the absence of relocation funding, teachers incur significant debt from the expenses involved in relocating. Certificates of sponsorship tied to work visas further keep OTTs tied to bad employers since finding a new sponsor can be very difficult.

One of the most prolific offenders is the Harris Federation, England’s second largest academy chain, with 54 state-funded schools. In recent years Harris has increasingly recruited teachers from the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, even flying out its own staff to do interviews.

At the end of February, following a strong strike ballot, NEU members secured a landmark victory against the Harris Federation in their fight against excessive workload, an unfair and punitive pay progression system and the unfair treatment of Caribbean and other overseas trained teachers. This included significant improvements in the terms and conditions of employment for OTTs that will reduce their workload in their first term with Harris and transfer the costs of gaining QTS to the employer, whilst also ensuring that they paid in accordance with their years of experience.

Teacher migration is not new but, is on the rise

As Leighton Johnson, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, identifies the migration of teachers is “not a new phenomenon”, but there has been an “alarming increase” post-pandemic. He added that shortages in Jamaica mean there are now “subject disciplines that schools have had to stop teaching”. This follows the recruitment of almost 500 teachers from Jamaica to teach in England in 2023 alone. What’s more, analysis by the National Education Association found that almost 800 J-1 visas were issued to Jamaican teachers to teach in the USA in 2022.

The Commonwealth has previously come together to identify sustainable solutions to this challenge. In 2004, Commonwealth Education Ministers adopted the Protocol for the Recruitment of Commonwealth Teachers, which aims to balance the rights of teachers to migrate internationally against the need to protect the integrity of national education systems and the human resource investments countries have made in teacher education

20 years later, with teacher migration on the rise again and shortages of qualified teachers at record levels, it is vital that the Protocol now adapts and responds to prevent the exploitation of OTTS and protect the investments source countries have made in their education workforce.

Renewed commitment and collaboration across the Commonwealth is needed

That’s why the NEU and its counterparts in the Commonwealth Teachers Group (CTG), which represents the Commonwealth teachers’ and education unions that are affiliated to Education International, are calling for Commonwealth member states to recommit to the Protocol with a focus on promoting equity and inclusion, supporting mutuality and reciprocity, and ensuring that teachers’ rights are defended and monitored.

The aggressive recruitment of teachers from Commonwealth countries is having a devastating impact on their ability to deliver good quality education. This is a moral question that the Commonwealth can no longer ignore. A child in Lagos has the same right to access a qualified teacher as a child in Liverpool, and Commonwealth members states, like Australia and the UK, must accept their share of responsibility for the global teacher shortage.

Development cooperation also has a key role to play. Building on the recommendations of the High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession, the NEU’s report Prioritise Teachers to Transform Education sets out a roadmap for how donor governments can support the recruitment, retention and training of qualified teachers in the Global South.

There is also an opportunity for Commonwealth countries to learn from successful strategies for addressing teacher shortages. For example, from Singapore where primary teachers earn at least 50 per cent more than similarly qualified professionals, and teachers are provided with a wide range of opportunity to earn seniority and higher pay, including promotion along teaching, leadership and senior specialist paths.

With just five years to until the SDG 4 deadline, the shortage of qualified teachers represents one of the greatest barriers to universal primary and secondary education. Education ministers in the Commonwealth must put the teacher shortage crisis at the top of their agenda when they next convene – beginning by committing to the Protocol for the Recruitment of Commonwealth Teachers.

A version of this article was originally published in the March 2025 edition of the Commonwealth Teachers Group newsletter.

*Analysis by the NEU of Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) awards made to teachers who applied for QTS between 1 February 2023 and 31 March 2024. Source: Teaching Regulation Agency: Annual Report and Accounts - For the year ended 31 March 2024