How Have The Uk Border Agency's New Regulations For Migrant Workers Affected The Education Sector?
In November 2008, in order to limit the number of ways migrant workers could access the UK employment market (there were at least 50 different ways prior to that date), the UK Border Agency (UKBA) substantially tightened the immigration laws. Sixteen months on, Bonny Parker examines the impact that this initiative has had on the working population and the education sector in particular.
The UK has long been battling to maintain a consistent supply of well-educated, experienced teachers. Until recently, we have relied upon the skills and knowledge of migrant teachers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Jamaica to bolster the UK-centric workforce. However, that gap has been widened again due to the new points-based system, introduced by the UKBA in November 2008 and aligned with the system currently used in Australia and the US.
The Government recognises the importance of migrant workers to the UK labour market, acknowledging this in the documentation the UKBA produced to support the introduction of the new laws: "??Migration makes a substantial contribution to economic growth, helps fill gaps in the labour market, including key public services such as health and education"?? We cannot fill our many job vacancies from the domestic labour market along. Many of these are in key sectors like health and education."??
However, it also recognises that: "??Migration can also have a number of associated costs or adverse impacts. The challenge for the managed migration system and for all who use it is to help to ensure that the potential benefit can be realised without compromising on control or security"??"?? It can be deduced that the Government want to encourage all migrant workers to contribute to the UK economy and become reliable and integrated members of the community.This move can be clearly seen when you consider the criteria for employing a skilled worker (Tier 2); for the migrant, the UKBA"??s new points system no longer operates on qualifications alone. Migrant workers must now be able to prove that they are financially sound, speak good English and have a specific level of expected earnings.
In the past, when schools hired temporary migrant teachers, they were supported in the work permit process by either their umbrella company or a recruitment organisation. Now, under the new regulations brought in to introduce more control, employers must directly apply for a Sponsorship Licence, later awarding the worker a certificate of sponsorship allowing them to work in the UK; the UKBA has decreed that recruitment companies are only allowed to hold a sponsorship licence to employ their own staff Therefore, the onus now falls upon the employer alone to ensure that the worker is eligible to work and continues to be so, with serious implications for both on a civil and corporate level if this is found not to be the case. The UKBA has effectively shifted the burden of monitoring the migrant worker population from the government agencies onto the shoulders of poorly informed and supported employers.
Broadly speaking, non-EU migrant teachers can no longer work in the UK unless the LEA or the school itself is willing to sponsor them once their visa has expired. Under the rules of Tier 2, schools must pass the Resident Labour Market test by proving that they cannot fill the post with a resident UK worker before they can consider employing someone from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and the timelines for which they must advertise for the vacancy are extremely long. This application process in itself has become a time-consuming, expensive and complicated way to recruit teachers and most schools are instead opting to employ UK or EU-trained teachers in these subjects "?" teachers who may not have the same level of experience or the skills as their non-EU colleagues.
In addition, the former working holiday visa allowed young Jamaican and South African teachers to come and work in the UK on a supply basis. Schools were able to hire them on a term"??s supply and then extend that to a contract, if they felt that the teacher had settled in well. Now that visa has been replaced by the Youth Mobility Scheme in Tier 5 of the new points system, supply teachers cannot come in by that route any longer as they have to be hired on a contract only. As a result, there is a vast reduction in the number of young, enthusiastic twenty-one to thirty-one-year old teachers who are able to help out in schools that may desperately need their skills and extra help.
Another drawback for migrant teachers is that, unlike their EU colleagues who can automatically secure QTS (qualified teacher status) in the UK "?" without any assessment whatsoever - if they have qualified in their own country, many non-EU teachers who have only four years from their first day of UK teaching to gain UK QTS simply run out of time or cannot secure one of the limited Overseas Trained Teacher Programme (OTTP) QTS placements. Even though they are quality, experienced teachers with up to four years"?? UK teaching experience, they are then barred from teaching unless they take a year out and self fund a PGCE course. Thousands of quality teachers are lost to UK schools because of the "??Four Year rule"??.
As a result of all these changes, education experts in the UK such as former head teacher, Geoff Brown (now MD of Dream Education) worry about the quality of teaching that children in the UK are receiving from possibly a lower standard of teacher, particularly in the more challenging schools where EU teachers are much less willing to take up appointments and yet their non-EU colleagues would have previously been happy to work at such schools.
Although the UKBA conducted a widespread consultation on the migration issue before introducing the new measures and the number of companies that responded ran into the hundreds, only a handful of recruitment organisations responded and the voice of the recruitment sector was not fully represented in the final discussions before the immigration bill became law.
This has had a significant impact on the ability of umbrella companies and recruitment organisations to employ migrant teachers as they are now unable to satisfy the UKBA"??s awarding criteria and therefore no longer qualify to apply to sponsor a migrant worker: the UKBA does not view them as "??true employers"?? who would have full responsibility for deciding the worker"??s duties and functions.
The original thinking behind the new measures was to reduce the routes to access the employment market to just five. As a result, the number of jobs available to non-EU teachers through the shortage occupation route has been reduced over the past year by 200,000, from one million to just below 800,000. While there is undoubtedly more of a balance in the supply and demand ratio for teachers in the UK, the knock-on effect of the new regulations is that schools are still crying out for the kind of experience and skillsets demonstrated by migrant teachers, particularly in the key areas of science, maths and special needs.
Here at JSA, we strongly believe that, whilst the UKBA were right to introduce measures to manage the number of migrant workers in the UK, the regulations that were subsequently brought in were bureaucratic and confusing. To compound the issue further, the Border Agency and HMRC each have a completely different set of requirements as to what constitutes an employer, providing little consistency in the guidance issued by government agencies.
The UKBA has already started to re-examine this overly complicated operating model and subsequently opened up a second consultation period with prospective employers, looking at simplifying the immigration rules. This consultation period unfortunately ended on 3 February this year. However, in order for the UKBA to understand clearly the way in which umbrella companies engage with recruitment organisations and their temporary workers, it is vital to ensure that the voice of the recruitment industry is heard and represented going forward.
To this end, if this industry is serious about effecting change, it is essential that we now call for further consultation specifically addressing recruiters, encouraging the UKBA to re-open the dialogue with recruitment organisations and umbrella companies and establish whether there are any possibilities of simplifying the laws further regarding what constitutes an employer. It is important that government agencies such as UKBA and HMRC continue to hold active debates on the issue and communicate better with each other to try and resolve it. The government must undertake much more detailed consultation into the employment market as the current view is far too simplistic and the enormous value of migrant workers within the UK workforce has been missed. Geoff Brown, who has campaigned long and hard about this issue, suggests that six or seven key recruitment organisations and schools should sit round a table with the UKBA and open up the discussion once again as a matter of urgency.
The impending general election is bound to have an impact on the situation but it will depend very much on how high up on the agenda education is placed. We can only hope that the situation regarding the employment status of recruitment organisations and umbrella companies will be addressed as a matter of urgency and that, regardless of which political party wins the election, government agencies will start talking to each other to resolve the confusion in order to restore the balance once again. The way things stand at the moment, this situation is simply a time bomb waiting to explode.
The final word on the issue must go to Geoff Brown, who comments: "??Recent changes in immigration and employment legislation: The UKBA Tier 2 Points based system, the shortage occupation list, the four year QTS rule and the Youth Mobility Scheme have had a very dramatic and negative effect on the number of quality, experienced overseas trained teachers coming to teach in UK schools.
At Dream we have had to turn away literally thousands of quality overseas trained teachers who could have made an extremely valuable contribution to the education of secondary pupils throughout the UK. Without a doubt the number, and quality, of teachers available for recruitment in many of our challenging schools has fallen to unprecedented levels.
I believe that the interaction of recent Government legislation has had an extremely negative effect on the education of thousands of pupils and that many of our challenged schools and their pupils are suffering badly.
Although Government numbers may show that teaching posts are being filled, I would suggest that many are being filled with teachers who are simply inadequate for the positions: many are teaching the wrong subject, many are lacking appropriate teaching experience, many cannot deal adequately with the behaviour of more challenging pupils and, in an ever growing number of cases, many teachers have had little, if any, experience of teaching a curriculum that relates to the UK National Curriculum. Indeed many have never taught in English before.
I would urge the Government to reconsider their policy on restricting the numbers of Realm Commonwealth teachers and would like to offer my services to meet with Government officials to both discuss my concerns and to assist them in the formulation of a revised and positive approach."??
A shorter version of this article appeared in the March issue of Recruitment Consultant magazine.
