The salad plays Cupid's ally!

[davewitley]

Tabouli wrote:

> Any thoughts from British listmembers?  Any websites for this sort 
of thing?  I've heard rumours that Australians are actually 
considered to be good employees by British employers (contrary to 
stereotypes!), and the UK, like the US and Australia, must have 
hordes of international students who need language assistance and 
study skills training and the like.  And she's not a university 
student with a six week ESL certificate looking for holiday work, 
she's actually a qualified specialist with lots of experience...

There is certainly a shortage of teachers in ordinary schools - I'm 
not sure about international students, though.  The pay and 
conditions aren't brilliant.  Successive governments have played on 
the public perception that teachers work from 9 to 4 for 40 weeks in 
the year to jack up their workload, mostly with tests for pupils at 
every level.  (Since the tests are used to evaluate the schools they 
are becoming more and more useless to evaluate the pupils as schools 
compete to work the system.)

As for websites, the Department for Education and Science is at

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/index.htm

That led to:

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/Useful_Sites/

Anyway, some questions your friend might want to ask herself:

 - would he do the same for her (I don't know about the 
practicalities of working in Aus long term if you are British)?

 - what does she think of living in Britain as such: the people, 
shopping, leisure, the people, climate, transport, the people, etc.? 
Would it matter what part of Britain?

 - (I was suggested to ask this one, with genders transposed, before 
getting married) would she be happy for this man to bring up her 
children?

 - is his family important to him, and, if so, what does she know 
about them, will they be a problem?

 - cost of living: if she gets a job in the SE, and doesn't have a 
sizeable wad of cash from Australia, forget independently buying a 
property bigger than a garage: reckon nearly £100k per bedroom, 
roughly speaking.  Reputable lenders will offer up to 3x salary to 
buy, but she needs to watch that she may stop earning before the 
typical 25 year term is up.  Lenders are flexible so shorter term not 
a problem, but need to do sums on repayments to ensure she can cope 
if e.g. she has a child but no longer a man.  It's not so bad in the 
N and W.  Renting isn't cheap either.

 - if it didn't work out but only after a baby came, where would she 
want to raise it?  Would the child be allowed back into Aus?

(I assume she has done the basic stuff like has he asked for money, 
has he cancelled dates at the last moment etc indicating a con man)

David