Voluntary Service Organisation (VSO) works through volunteers to help children in the world's poorest countries get the education they desperately need. It's a huge challenge as over 115 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school and one-third of those enrolled fail to complete five years of schooling, the minimum required for basic literacy.

Primary education is the only formal education many children receive and yet in some poor countries there simply aren't enough properly trained teachers for all the children who need them. As a volunteer with VSO, teachers can help by training their teachers. Working in an in-service or pre-service environment, primary volunteers help to increase the repertoire of teaching techniques available to their colleagues and inspire them to improve the quality of their lessons.

VSO are now looking for qualified primary teachers with at least 2 years experience at the time of application. Most jobs are for 2 years but there are also a number of opportunities in primary education for volunteers to go overseas for just 1 year.

VSO recruits qualified and experienced volunteers from a variety of skill areas, such as education and health professionals, IT trainers, management advisers, etc. For more information please visit www.vso.org.uk/volunteering.

A VSO placement is an excellent Continual Professional Development  opportunity and has recently been endorsed as such by five teaching unions, the GTC for England, the DfES and almost 60 LEAs.

Further Information

See: the www.vso.org.uk/education