Brexit: EU citizens face paying £4,345 ‘teachers’ tax’ to work in UK for five years

Extra ‘red tape’ before teaching qualifications are recognised will also add to existing recruitment crisis, Liberal Democrats warn

EU teachers are likely to face fees of £4,345 to work in the UK for five years after Brexit in a move that will worsen an existing recruitment crisis, ministers have been warned.

They will also need to overcome red tape before their teaching qualifications are recognised – adding further delays to a process that can already take up to four months in England, the Liberal Democrats are warning.

The party is accusing the government of planning to “throw away the rights of EU teachers to work in the UK”, despite promising some limited financial and other help to vital NHS staff.

The threat has emerged after a 35 per cent plunge in recruits from the continent since the Brexit referendum – and after teacher-training targets were missed for the seventh year in a row.

“Thousands of EU teachers each year come to the UK to keep our schools running,” said Layla Moran, a Lib Dem MP and potential leadership candidate.

“Now, Boris Johnson wants them to pay through the nose for the vital work they do. It’s nothing more than a teachers’ tax.

“It is shocking that the Tories want to give the cold shoulder to EU staff after Brexit when we are in the middle of a teacher recruitment crisis.”

The “tax” – adding up to £4,345 over five years – will be imposed because of two separate changes planned by Mr Johnson’s government, the Lib Dems have calculated.

From next year, EU citizens are set to require visas to come to work in the UK. Teachers from outside the EU need a Tier 2 visa, which costs £1,220 if it is for more than 3 years.

On top of this, the Conservatives have announced a big hike in the immigration health surcharge, paid by all migrants towards NHS costs, to £625 a year.

The government will recognise teaching qualifications from the EU unilaterally, but teachers would require their national regulator to write a letter confirming their professional standing.

This would inevitably add more delays to a process that can already take up to four months in England, the Lib Dems said.

Furthermore, should the UK crash out of the post-Brexit transition period at the end of 2020, those regulators would no longer tell the UK whether teachers had been sanctioned in their home country, the party warned.

The number of teachers from the European Economic Area (EEA) – the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway – has already dropped from 4,795 before the Brexit vote in 2015-16 to 3,103 in 2018-19.

And, for the current academic year, just 29,850 teacher trainees were recruited – a shortfall of 3,510 – with the biggest problems in physics, modern foreign languages, maths, chemistry and computing.

A government spokesperson said: “We will deliver on the people’s priorities by introducing a points-based immigration system in 2021 to attract the brightest and best talent from around the world and will set out more details in due course.”