2nd September 2020

Onboarding Our International Teachers

Every year in August, we host an event in Central London with everyone who’s just relocated to England to begin new roles with us! This event gives our new teachers the opportunity to meet our team and other teachers who have just moved to their area and have some amazing training sessions with our Partnership & Development team. It’s vital that we support our teachers in their new roles and we didn’t want them to miss out on this important event this year, especially given the current global climate!

As we’re not able to host large scale events at the moment, we decided to host a Virtual Induction this year for our new teachers, which spanned over 5 days instead of 1.

Virtual Induction Week

Every day during Virtual Induction Week, our international teachers received a video training session, specifically created by our amazing Partnership & Development team (they usually run our CPD events!) 

These sessions covered:

• An introduction to the Engage P&D team and an overview of Induction Week
• What to expect from INSET days
• Getting ready for the first week of teaching
• Important considerations in light of the coronavirus pandemic
• Taking care of yourself

On day four, we hosted hour-long live Q&A Sessions between our P&D Team and our teachers, who were split into groups depending on their phase/specialism. The feedback we’ve received was really positive – and that these sessions helped some of the attendees feel more comfortable and ready to go into schools this week.

At the end of our usual physical Induction event, we’ll head to a pub for a relaxed meet and greet and it was important that we still did something like this for our teachers. So, on Day 5 of Virtual Induction Week, we hosted some virtual Social Sessions with our consultants and other teachers who are due to start in their local areas!

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to our Partnership & Development team for curating some amazing video content to support and onboard our new international teachers and to all of our teams for embracing the change in our usual Induction event.

Great results

We asked our attendees for feedback and they gave us some great feedback. 

• The week as a whole was rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
• The training videos were rated 8.7 out of 10
• The P&D sessions were rated 9 out of 10

“Considering the restrictions because of COVID-19, I think Engage did a fantastic job of giving us teachers a basis to start the year! I had a great one on one with Mike and he answered my questions and I now feel more at ease heading into the start of the 2020-2021 school year!!”

Our teachers and support staff remain at the centre of everything we do, and we’re really proud to have been able to adapt and support them during this period of uncertainty.