Teaching abroad guidelines

While volunteer conservation and animal welfare NGOs tend to be experts in their respective fields (or partner with local conservation organisations which are), many organisations which offer volunteer teaching and coaching holidays are not specialists in education. Good intentions are simply not enough, though. We expect teachers in our home country to be trained, experienced and vetted, and we should expect teachers overseas to be equally up to the job. A child in Malawi or Brazil is no less deserving of a decent, professional education than a child in the UK or Australia.

In 2015 we reviewed our guidelines for all of our volunteer teaching and coaching holidays, in order to ensure the wellbeing of children overseas, raise the standards of the voluntary teaching sessions and safeguard local teachers’ jobs. In addition to interviewing voluntourism experts, we spoke to education professionals and specialists from within the TEFL industry, so that we could understand as many of the issues as possible, and come up with guidelines which are both ethical, and practical to implement.

Volunteers taking over classes for short periods disrupt the curriculum and flow of learning, particularly if the local teacher is not present in the classroom. A series of short term volunteers may end up repeating topics, or conversely, not refreshing students’ knowledge on what they learned with previous volunteers.

A lack of adequate screening, such as DBS checks (the Disclosure and Barring Service which replaces the CRB, Criminal Records Bureau), puts children at risk.

An influx of volunteer teachers – particularly ones who are paying fees – can reduce the availability of paid work for local teachers. In the worst case scenario, a local teacher may lose his or her job to make way for a volunteer.

Local culture should be taken into consideration during classes, but this rarely happens with short term volunteer teachers who may not speak the local language or have any knowledge of the country, its culture, religion or customs.

In order to ensure that the volunteers are genuinely benefitting the communities, tracking, reporting and monitoring needs to be factored in to assess the impact they are having. Just because something sounds beneficial, does not always mean it is!

Volunteer teachers and coaches must have an appropriate qualification, such as a TEFL certificate, a PGCE, sports coaching qualification or another relevant certification in youth work.

Anyone without the relevant qualifications or experience can volunteer as an assistant, supporting the teacher/coach. This could involve helping students practise their conversational English, or helping students carry out written or practical work under supervision by the teacher.

Teaching placements in schools should last a minimum of four weeks – and ideally one term – to allow the volunteer teachers to develop a curriculum, build up a relationship with students and make a real impact on students’ language (or other) abilities. Volunteers working in extracurricular activities such as after school support clubs, specialist language schools, or as coaches or teaching assistants may have placements as short as one week, if the sessions have been designed for students with this in mind.

Volunteer teachers must be at least 18 years old, in line with international TESOL standards which require that teachers should be ‘at a level to access tertiary education.’ Assistants and sports coaches may be as young as 16 (if the coach has the relevant coaching qualification).

A minimum of one day's training and orientation should be included as part of the placement, either before departure or once in the field. This should provide a background in the local culture, the institution where volunteers will be placed, the students' current abilities and what volunteers will be expected to cover over the duration of their placement.

Background checks must be carried out for any volunteers who will be working with children, particularly those who will be working unsupervised. Any organisation which places volunteers to work with children should have a formal child protection code, and volunteers must agree to this code before their placement is confirmed.

We spoke to a number of experts in teaching, TEFL and volunteering with children.

Ruth Taylor leads the UK-wide Impact International programme. This educates and equips university students who wish to volunteer abroad with the necessary skills, and informs them about wider international development issues.

Andrew and Caroline Brown have many years’ experience running English language schools and teaching initiatives in the UK and abroad. They have worked with senior staff from CELTA and Trinity College to define the syllabus for the introductory TEFL certificate.

Ben Beaumont is the TESOL Qualifications Manager at Trinity College London, one of the leading providers of recognised TEFL certificates.

Dianne Ashman is a retired teacher, with extensive experience in education management, training and monitoring. She now volunteers full time with the responsible volunteering organisation, People and Places. Dianne travels around the world assessing the schools they work with, and makes recommendations to ensure that standards are continually raised.

Andrew Brown: “The duration depends on various things – including the person, and what they’re able to do. A good, qualified teacher could walk into a classroom and have an impact in 10 minutes; someone who doesn’t have a CELTA is going to take a lot longer. So we have to be careful about saying there’s a minimum amount of time; one rule for everything would be a problem. But you still can’t have a revolving door of teachers. If, in the space of nine months, they’re got 26 teachers coming through, that’s not great. But it depends on what you’re trying to offer. If it’s a summer course or a holiday programme, them a two or three week placement can have a good impact. But if they’re going into a secondary school then it needs to be something that lasts for a term. It’s a hard thing to have one number that fits everything. It’s much better to have illustrated situations – so in this particular situation, this is the minimum we would suggest. In another situation, this is the minimum we would suggest.”

Ruth Taylor: “Would we ever welcome a planeload of 18-year-old, unqualified, Ethiopian students over here to the UK and usher them to our young people’s refuges in London? We would never allow that to happen; there should be background checks as we need to make sure they don’t have a criminal record, and that they’re trained to X standard. It’s about engaging in that conversation about why we think that’s appropriate only if the child’s not in the UK.”

“Many would think twice about taking medical advice from someone without a medical qualification or medical experience or trusting one’s car to a mechanic who has never repaired a car before, so I would ask why we would entrust the education of children, no matter their background, to those without a qualification or relevant experience.

“There are various ways to gain a relevant, accredited teaching qualification, with initial ones taking just four weeks to complete. Without such training in lesson preparation and student support, volunteers might end up doing more harm than good, which is a shame when, with training, they could very easily be helpful and effective in supporting students’ level of attainment.”

“When I went to the Gambia, my first volunteering trip ever, I took lots and lots of stuff from the Early Learning Centre and places like that. The Gambian lady out there very politely told me – “this is great, but we’d much rather you helped us make materials from things that are available locally.” She didn’t want the teachers here to say, “I could be a good teacher if only I had all that stuff from England.” She wanted them to see they can be good teachers with things they have available here. I’ve certainly seen all sorts of rubbish donated to Africa. It makes me so angry when you see these piles of old textbooks that we’ve thrown away and think they’ll want them. Why would they? Why would they want our rubbish? And old computers piled up in places where they haven’t got electricity, it’s just embarrassing!”