Hi- I have been teaching in Northern Ireland for 11 years now and my husband has just finished his phD in Education. We would love to move to the Alberta/Victoria area with our two children but just don't know how to get started. We recently went to an Immigration Fair and were told that it's very difficult to get a teaching job in Canada in Elementary Schools or Universities Has anyone managed to make the move recently and have any advice? Thanks.

Welcome to the forum.

As far as I know there are no school boards in Alberta or B.C. recruiting overseas at the moment, all positions are being filled from within Canada.

In addition in order to obtain certification in Alberta you must either be a Canadian citizen or have permanent resident status, the same most likely applies in British Columbia.

http://www.education.alberta.ca/teac...uirements.aspx

When you say you want to move to the Alberta/Victoria area, what exactly do you mean? Victoria is on Vancouver Island on the west coast nowhere near Alberta.

Cheers
Steve

It's possible but not easy. It also takes far longer than you'd expect as there are so many layers of bureaucracy that it at times feels like you're hitting your head against a brick wall.
It also depends on what you teach and where.
My girlfriend has started and got a great teaching job and contrasting it to inner London is amazed by the professionalism of the staff. So the difficulty in getting into the system perhaps is indicative of something.
I'm still waiting for to be processed (hopefully will be teaching a few weeks) but will still need to do extra university course credits. You definitely need to either a source of savings to keep you going or you need to get another job till the teaching starts.
Certainly not the easiest profession to crack, however, if you go up to the more remote areas they are in real need of teachers.

This Wiki article may help............http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Teaching_in_Canada

Best of luck.

Thanks everyone for your replies.... I guess we'll have to save some money first then apply for teacher certification.

it may not be as simple as "apply for certification"
Many provinces won't certify you until you are a permanent resident and as you may have gathered getting PR without a job is not much of an option at the moment

As was stated in my response above for Alberta.

Here is the first response to a simple Google search "Teacher certification Canada" http://resource.educationcanada.com/certification.html Perhaps the OP can do some research while saving up.


Home page for the above website. http://www.educationcanada.com/