By Philip Tubeza
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: June 26, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—The exodus of Filipino teachers to other countries is expected to continue in the coming years, according to a labor group.
The Public Services Labor Independent Confederation (PSLINK) said on Wednesday two places were the likely magnets for Filipino teachers—the United States, which would need two million teachers in the coming decade, and Arab countries, which would need at least 450,000 teachers.
The group said teacher shortages, growing populations, and expanding educational systems in many other countries coupled with the dismal work conditions and salaries at home could push local teachers to go abroad.
“Demand for teachers across the United States continues to remain high even if the North American country’s economy is in a deep recession,” said Annie Enriquez-Geron, PSLINK general secretary.
“There are estimates that the United States will need to employ an additional two million teachers in the coming decade to maintain its current educational standards and closer to three million if it strives to improve them in order to stay globally competitive," she added.
Geron said more than 10,000 foreign teachers are recruited by the United States every year to fill its demand.
“There is also very high demand for new science and math teachers in the US with estimates by the Business-Higher Education Forum in Washington putting the figure at 200,000 at the least," she added.
In the last 10 years, around 4,000 Filipino teachers—mostly math, science, English, and special education teachers—left the country. This figure included only new hires for teaching jobs and did not include those who left the country for work other than teaching, the paper said.
The top destinations were the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the paper added.
According to a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) study, Geron said, the Arab states will face “the greatest teacher shortage in the drive to provide every child with a primary education by 2015 as the region will need to raise the current stock by 26 percent and create another 450,000 teaching posts in less than a decade.”
“As more developed countries face a graying workforce, they are increasingly resorting to the recruitment of skilled teachers from less developed countries. This phenomenon had already been foreseen by (European) countries since the ’90s, warning that aging teaching forces may eventually lead to shortages,” Geron said.
“For instance, more than 60 percent of all primary teachers are over 40 years of age in Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands; and more than 40 percent are over 50 years old in Germany and Sweden,” she said.
Geron said another factor contributing to teacher shortages in more developed countries was the declining interest of their nationals in entering the teaching profession.
According to a survey conducted by the temporary staffing agency Manpower Inc., teaching is the second hardest job to fill in the US. Many of their nationals, the study said, would rather pursue other more financially rewarding careers than become a teacher. Low salary and unattractive working conditions were often cited as reasons not to enter the teaching profession, Geron said. (But for a teacher from a developing nation, salaries would still be significantly more than what they earn at home.)
“Unfortunately, instead of addressing employment conditions of the teaching sector, governments of more developed countries are finding it more convenient and economical to recruit migrant workers, many of whom are offered lower pay and contractual jobs that deprived them of their due benefits,” she added.
Geron said the dependence on migrant skilled teachers in developed countries was leading to aggressive recruitment strategies by their governments, recruitment agencies, and the private schools themselves.
“There have even been governments which have created special agencies just to recruit teachers from other countries. Private teacher recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom have mushroomed to more than 100 while there are more or less 70 in the United States,” she added.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
MP takes up cudgels for RP fishers in UK
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: June 11, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—A Scottish lawmaker is taking up the cudgels for some 500 Filipino fishermen facing retrenchment and deportation in the United Kingdom after the British government ruled that only fishermen from European Union member states may be employed in the United Kingdom’s internal fishing fleets.
British Member of Parliament Angus MacNeil, echoing concerns by his fishing industry constituents in Scotland’s West Coast, said the implementation of the new regulation would be “catastrophic” since more than two thirds of the fishing boats there are manned by Filipinos.
“This issue is going to seriously affect fishing boat owners in the Western Isles, as there are many hard-working fishermen from the Philippines employed on boats in the islands. Fishermen’s leaders inform me that the fishermen are highly skilled and have completed all the necessary training courses,” MacNeil said in a statement quoted by the European fishery sector website www.fishnewseu.com.
It was reported that MacNeil was seeking a meeting with officials responsible for borders and immigration to propose that the Filipino fishermen be given temporary work permits.
“We see many nurses from non-EU countries working in the UK, with many of them on temporary work permits; I cannot understand why the same cannot be done for the fishermen,” MacNeil added.
The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation is also working to appeal the Borders Agency regulation.
The UK Borders Agency had earlier ruled that all vessels working within a 12-mile limit of the British coast cannot employ non-EU nationals without valid work visas. The Filipinos did not have valid visas and therefore were working illegally in UK’s territorial waters.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: June 11, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—A Scottish lawmaker is taking up the cudgels for some 500 Filipino fishermen facing retrenchment and deportation in the United Kingdom after the British government ruled that only fishermen from European Union member states may be employed in the United Kingdom’s internal fishing fleets.
British Member of Parliament Angus MacNeil, echoing concerns by his fishing industry constituents in Scotland’s West Coast, said the implementation of the new regulation would be “catastrophic” since more than two thirds of the fishing boats there are manned by Filipinos.
“This issue is going to seriously affect fishing boat owners in the Western Isles, as there are many hard-working fishermen from the Philippines employed on boats in the islands. Fishermen’s leaders inform me that the fishermen are highly skilled and have completed all the necessary training courses,” MacNeil said in a statement quoted by the European fishery sector website www.fishnewseu.com.
It was reported that MacNeil was seeking a meeting with officials responsible for borders and immigration to propose that the Filipino fishermen be given temporary work permits.
“We see many nurses from non-EU countries working in the UK, with many of them on temporary work permits; I cannot understand why the same cannot be done for the fishermen,” MacNeil added.
The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation is also working to appeal the Borders Agency regulation.
The UK Borders Agency had earlier ruled that all vessels working within a 12-mile limit of the British coast cannot employ non-EU nationals without valid work visas. The Filipinos did not have valid visas and therefore were working illegally in UK’s territorial waters.
UK limits nursing student visa requests
By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: February 27, 2009
MANILA, Philippines – Overwhelmed by the 47,000 student visa applications it received in 2008 mostly from Filipino nurses, the United Kingdom has decided to restrict their number under the National Vocation Qualification (NVQ) from its Manila office.
“At the moment, we are processing 10 NVQ applications a day, subject to review,” Oya Arriola, spokesperson of the British embassy in Manila, said Friday.
In an announcement, the embassy said the UK Border Agency International Group noted the 22 percent increase in these applications.
Most Filipino nurses choose to take health-care courses in the UK and apply for NVQ visas to get jobs as professionals in the field in the UK.
“In accordance with this decision, instructions have been given to our commercial partner, VFS, who operate the Manila Visa Application Center, to put these restrictions into immediate effect,” the advisory said.
“Our reason for doing so is the overwhelming increase in the number of applications that we have received over the past year,” it said, noting a 22-percent increase over 2007 applications.
The British embassy said increasing Manila’s staffing for 2009 was decided.
In a related development, Philip Leonard, chairman of the International Student Advisors Corp., a recruitment consultancy firm, said that starting April, the British embassy would implement a point-based system for Filipino nurses and other health-care professionals wanting to work in the UK.
Thus, Leonard advised these nurses to focus on getting higher education degrees, particularly the BSc (Hons) Degrees on International Nursing or Social and Health Care over the Further Education Course such as the NVQ.
He said student visas for higher education degrees were still being processed.
Together, the restriction on NVQ visa applications and the point-based system would slow down the process of getting nursing jobs in the UK, Leonard said.
“In fact nurses should really not be looking to undertake NVQ courses as it does not represent their current education standard, something the embassy has been keen to point out to students as this is why many nurses applications for a student visa fail because the course they are enrolling in is academically much lower than the Filipino qualifications already gained,” he said.
Leonard said the new points system for Tier 4 student visas was expected to require 40 points.
“You will need to gain the 40 points under the new system, 30 of these points will come from your UK education provider, who must be registered and approved for Tier 4,” he said.
“The remaining 10 points will come from providing adequate funds for your time in the UK and proof you have paid your tuition for the first year and that your documentation is in order. Other points required may be from IELTS [International English Language Testing System],” he added.
Leonard, whose company he claimed has been able to send over 500 Filipinos who want to work as nurses to the UK, said the new points system was good for all stakeholders.
“Universities, students, vocational work placement providers, and the British government will have a far more transparent system to deal with,” he said.
“This will hopefully exclude those organizations and educational providers who have in some cases been abusing the system in order to simply get students to the UK without actually providing a worthwhile course for the students to follow,” he added.
Many Filipino nurses and other health-care professionals have resorted to studying again in the UK in the hope of getting a job there after.
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: February 27, 2009
MANILA, Philippines – Overwhelmed by the 47,000 student visa applications it received in 2008 mostly from Filipino nurses, the United Kingdom has decided to restrict their number under the National Vocation Qualification (NVQ) from its Manila office.
“At the moment, we are processing 10 NVQ applications a day, subject to review,” Oya Arriola, spokesperson of the British embassy in Manila, said Friday.
In an announcement, the embassy said the UK Border Agency International Group noted the 22 percent increase in these applications.
Most Filipino nurses choose to take health-care courses in the UK and apply for NVQ visas to get jobs as professionals in the field in the UK.
“In accordance with this decision, instructions have been given to our commercial partner, VFS, who operate the Manila Visa Application Center, to put these restrictions into immediate effect,” the advisory said.
“Our reason for doing so is the overwhelming increase in the number of applications that we have received over the past year,” it said, noting a 22-percent increase over 2007 applications.
The British embassy said increasing Manila’s staffing for 2009 was decided.
In a related development, Philip Leonard, chairman of the International Student Advisors Corp., a recruitment consultancy firm, said that starting April, the British embassy would implement a point-based system for Filipino nurses and other health-care professionals wanting to work in the UK.
Thus, Leonard advised these nurses to focus on getting higher education degrees, particularly the BSc (Hons) Degrees on International Nursing or Social and Health Care over the Further Education Course such as the NVQ.
He said student visas for higher education degrees were still being processed.
Together, the restriction on NVQ visa applications and the point-based system would slow down the process of getting nursing jobs in the UK, Leonard said.
“In fact nurses should really not be looking to undertake NVQ courses as it does not represent their current education standard, something the embassy has been keen to point out to students as this is why many nurses applications for a student visa fail because the course they are enrolling in is academically much lower than the Filipino qualifications already gained,” he said.
Leonard said the new points system for Tier 4 student visas was expected to require 40 points.
“You will need to gain the 40 points under the new system, 30 of these points will come from your UK education provider, who must be registered and approved for Tier 4,” he said.
“The remaining 10 points will come from providing adequate funds for your time in the UK and proof you have paid your tuition for the first year and that your documentation is in order. Other points required may be from IELTS [International English Language Testing System],” he added.
Leonard, whose company he claimed has been able to send over 500 Filipinos who want to work as nurses to the UK, said the new points system was good for all stakeholders.
“Universities, students, vocational work placement providers, and the British government will have a far more transparent system to deal with,” he said.
“This will hopefully exclude those organizations and educational providers who have in some cases been abusing the system in order to simply get students to the UK without actually providing a worthwhile course for the students to follow,” he added.
Many Filipino nurses and other health-care professionals have resorted to studying again in the UK in the hope of getting a job there after.
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