Starter Kit. Idea 340 of 500. Cluster 16
Teacher exchange: a Sri Lankan teacher a year in Britain, a British teacher a year here, arranged privately
The mechanism, from the book
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a place. The other 130,000 are a market that nobody has built for, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The first step
Find one school in Britain, through a Sri Lankan teacher abroad or a twinning contact, whose head would host a Sri Lankan teacher for a year if their own teacher could come here. Write down what each side would pay: travel, housing and salary cover. Then ask a school here to agree to the same. Two heads who say yes in writing, and the cost sheet, are the proof.
- Who pays first
- A British school head who wants a teacher to gain experience abroad and will pay the costs of an exchange arranged for them.
- What leaves today
- Teachers who go abroad to gain experience often stay, when an exchange would bring the experience home after a year.
Ask first
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask which schools in the division could host a visiting teacher for a year.
Check before you spend
Visas and permission to work for each teacher, both schools' written agreement, and whether each teacher's employer will hold the post open.
Find out these three numbers
- What would housing and travel cost each side for a year?
- Which head teachers would sign up in writing?
- What salary cover does each school need?
A comparison from the book
Meiji Japan. Chapter Eleven
"Meiji Japan employed more than 3,000 foreign experts on fixed contracts, and as the contracts ran out, Japanese trainees took over."
A visiting teacher is worth most when local teachers take over what the visitor brought.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.