The world needs 44 million more teachers by 2030, and the best candidates now have five or ten offers on the table. So why should they choose your school?

This week on Limelight, host Ian Hunter is joined by Ryan Jones, Co-founder of Teacher Recruit. Teacher Recruit is an international recruitment platform that connects schools and educators across more than 110 countries. Ryan works with school leaders across the Middle East and Asia every day, so he sees both sides of the hiring table.

Ryan explains how the global teacher shortage has flipped the balance of power in international recruitment, and what schools need to do differently to attract and keep great teachers.

In this episode:

• Why interviews have become two-way, and schools now have to sell themselves
• How schools are using social media, “day in the life” videos and networking events to stand out
• Why work-life balance and wellbeing now matter more to Gen Z and millennial teachers than salary
• How the recruitment season has turned into a year-round cycle, with adverts going live as early as September
• Why relying on one agency (at around £4,000 per hire) is no longer affordable, and the case for a hybrid approach
• How Teacher Recruit uses smart matching to cut shortlisting time, so schools don’t lose strong candidates to faster rivals
• Why building the platform around feedback from schools has shaped it from day one

If you’re a school leader, an HR lead or a teacher thinking about your next international move, this one’s for you.

Find Teacher Recruit
Website: https://www.teacherrecruit.com
For schools: https://www.teacherrecruit.com/for-schools
For teachers: https://www.teacherrecruit.com/teachers
Connect with Ryan: [Ryan’s LinkedIn link]

Find Lime EDU
Website: https://www.limeedu.co.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelimeinc
Connect with Ian: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianhunter7

Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube, and share it with a colleague who’s in the middle of recruitment season.

This week on Limelight, host Ian Hunter is joined by Pete Collison, Sales and Marketing Director at FFT Education. FFT is a UK-based not-for-profit that helps schools around the world understand their data and make insight-informed decisions, and it champions reading as a foundational skill for every student.

Pete explains why British international schools find it so hard to understand and benchmark the progress their pupils make. These schools are diverse, they’re growing fast, and their students are among the most mobile anywhere in the world. That makes for messy data, while expectations from parents, students and schools stay rightly high.

In this episode:

• Why absolute attainment (the grades) is only part of the story, and why progress matters just as much
• What value add really means: the gap between where a pupil was expected to get to and where they actually got
• Why schools in England have plenty of benchmarking data, and why international schools mostly don’t
• How FFT Aspire gives international schools pupil-level and subject-level estimates for IGCSE and IB, using CAT4 as the anchor for prior attainment
• Why heads of department are often the most powerful users, and how school groups can spot which of their schools excel at which subjects
• Why insight on its own changes nothing, and action without insight is a gamble
• What PISA tells us about the global appetite for comparing schools and systems

If you’re a school leader, a head of department, a group operator or a data lead in an international school, this one’s for you.

Meet FFT at GESS Dubai and FOBISIA
FFT will be at both conferences with its latest International Value Added Benchmarking Report. Pop over and say hello.

Find FFT Education
Website: https://fft.org.uk
FFT Aspire International: https://fft.org.uk/fft-aspire/international
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/fft-education
Connect with Pete: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petecollison

Find Lime EDU
Website: https://www.limeedu.co.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelimeinc
Connect with Ian: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianhunter7

This week on Limelight, host Ian Hunter is joined by Rajani Nalla, Founder and CEO of Trusity, an investor and startup mentor. They talk about one of the biggest challenges in education right now: what AI adoption really means for schools, teachers, students and parents.

Rajani is based in Dubai, and the UAE is leading the way. According to the OECD’s TALIS survey, 75% of teachers in the UAE and Singapore use AI, against a global average of around 40%. But leading the pack doesn’t mean the challenges have gone away.

In this episode:

• Why AI adoption in schools has moved faster than governance, and why so few countries have a standard AI curriculum
• How AI detection tools are throwing up false positives, and how that damages trust between students and teachers
• The risk of “outsourced thinking”, where children reach for AI before they’ve done the thinking themselves
• How AI that always agrees with you can give young people false confidence
• Why only 38% of teachers have been trained in AI, while they’re expected to detect it, use it and referee it
• What parents worry about most, from data privacy to the loss of critical thinking
• How Trusity’s TruPreneurs.ai puts AI to work building young innovators and entrepreneurs, with teachers kept firmly in the loop
• Why “we have an AI platform” isn’t enough, and the layers of data, infrastructure, compliance and security that sit underneath one

If you’re a school leader, a teacher, a parent or an EdTech founder, this one’s for you.

Find Trusity
Website: https://trusity.com
TruPreneurs.ai: https://trupreneurs.ai
Connect with Rajani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajani-nalla-193937a8

Find Lime EDU
Website: https://www.limeedu.co.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelimeinc
Connect with Ian: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianhunter7

Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube, and share it with a colleague who’s working out where AI fits in their school.

Everyone remembers the red slip. You'd bump your head in the playground, get patched up, and go home with a crumpled note in your book bag. The note often got lost on the way, and school leaders never had the full picture.

This week on Limelight, host Ian Hunter is joined by Daniel Neeld, Managing Director of Medical Tracker. They talk about one of the most overlooked parts of school life: how schools record, manage and share student health information.

Daniel explains why medical tracking is still such a challenge for schools in the UK and around the world, including:

• Paper-based first aid and medication records, and the risks they create
• The pressure on staff who manage medical needs alongside their day job
• Keeping parents informed quickly and reliably when something happens
• Why having the whole picture of every child matters for safeguarding and wellbeing
• How Medical Tracker is replacing the red slip with a simple digital system

Whether you're a head, a SENCo, a school business manager or a first aider, this one's for you.

Find Medical Tracker
Website: https://www.medicaltracker.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/medical-tracker
Connect with Daniel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djneeld

Find more information about Lime Edu Consulting
Website: https://www.limeedu.co.uk
Connect with Ian: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianhunter7

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