Teachers trained in Nigeria and Ghana can no longer use the United Kingdom’s overseas‑trained teacher application route to obtain Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in England. The change, which took effect on 9 September, removes the two West African countries from the list of eligible nations for the QTS scheme.
QTS is a professional qualification that many schools in England recognise as a benchmark for teaching competence. The Department for Education (DfE) said that only countries that can provide reliable verification of a teacher’s qualifications, professional standing and experience may be included in the scheme.
One key requirement is that a country must have a national regulator able to confirm a teacher’s status and supply authenticated references. The DfE noted that more than 70 % of applications from Ghana and Nigeria use public email addresses such as Gmail or Hotmail for work‑history references, which forces assessors to spend extra time verifying the information.
India was also removed from the eligible list because it lacks a national regulator capable of confirming teachers’ professional standing. South Africa remains the sole African country whose teachers can still apply for QTS through the overseas route.
To qualify for QTS, overseas‑trained teachers must hold a valid passport, an undergraduate degree equivalent to a UK bachelor’s degree, and professional recognition in the country where they trained. They must also have completed any mandatory induction requirements, demonstrated the ability to teach children aged five to 16, and accumulated at least nine months of post‑qualification teaching experience. Employment references must be provided from schools and use an official school email domain.
Depending on the country of training, additional requirements may include qualifications to teach pupils aged 11 to 16 and a specialism in subjects such as mathematics, science, or languages. Because teachers in England are employed by individual schools rather than the Department for Education, schools may consider alternative routes into teaching.
“Our data shows that more than 70% of applications from teachers in Ghana and Nigeria include work history references that use public email addresses, such as Gmail or Hotmail, rather than a school’s official email domain. This means assessors spend additional time and resources trying to verify information provided in applications,” the department said.
<small>Source: Vanguard News — read the original story there.</small>
