eTEACH.COM is set to be the world’s most valuable on-line teacher resource, providing schools with major savings in recruitment costs and giving teachers access to thousands of jobs in the UK and world-wide.

eteach.com was formed by the acquisition of Appointments for Teachers (AFT) - the largest on-line teacher recruitment website in the UK.  The company is now investing £3 million in expanding AFT into a major new teaching “gateway”, which provides schools and teachers with improved recruitment systems, together with a range of additional benefits and services. 

Paul Howells, chief executive of eteach.com explains…
“Recruitment forms the cornerstone of eteach.com, but our new portal is so much more than just an advertising notice board for teachers. Through an exciting host of new technical advancements and developments, we can offer teachers new opportunities on-line that will improve their job finding, their professional development and their social life. We will establish a strong non-political community of teachers for the mutual benefit of its members, namely teachers and schools….”

“…..This is an exciting new step in teacher recruitment, which will revolutionise the ways in which schools source new members of staff.  Advertising through the site is more effective and much cheaper than advertising through traditional methods.  As the internet is global, schools will be able to attract the best teachers from across the world for less than half of their current recruitment costs, and because it is instant, teachers can be recruited in hours – not weeks, as currently happens.  This means that the education of children is not jeopardised as vacancies remain unfilled”.

The site will enable teachers to look for jobs world-wide at a touch of a button 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  The new technology utilised by eteach.com allows teachers, who receive free membership, to be immediately alerted to any new vacancies that are relevant to them. 

As well as new employment opportunities, the portal also gives teachers access to relevant information, such as on-line learning, school websites, Ofsted reports, LEA information, and geographical and relocation advice. There is also an intelligent search engine, that uses the latest “conceptual search” technology, which allows teachers to source relevant information to prepare lessons, and for on-going study and research.  Members can visit a community forum where teachers can share and exchange views on all interests and educational issues.

eteach.com estimate that recruiting teachers through their site can save schools more than 75 per of their annual recruitment costs (on average, anything up to £45,000 a year for large secondary schools) and gives schools the opportunity to recruit from a global market place.  Every time a school posts a vacancy, they are immediately alerted to teachers who are available and match the criteria required.

eteach.com is headed by a team of experts in the fields of recruitment, communication, internet and education.  Company chairman is Greg Clarke, chief executive of Cable and Wireless.  Paul Howells, chief executive of eteach.com and the principal share-holder, was a teacher before establishing one of the largest supply teacher agencies, LHR Education. David Phillips, chief executive of Insight Technologies is technical director, and Darren Phillips, former teacher and founder of AFT, is website director.

Biographies of the key players in eteach.com

Paul Howells, chief executive and principal share holder, started his career as a teacher in 1982 before establishing his own teacher recruitment company, LHR Education in 1991.  He successfully grew the company for nine years, developing it into the largest teacher owned recruitment company, with branches across the UK and worldwide, and with a turnover of £20 million.  He sold LHR in January 2000 to focus on the emerging internet revolution that he feels will provide the impetus to re-vitalise the UK Education sector.

Greg Clarke, chairman of eteach.com, was until recently chief executive of Cable and Wireless.  He joined Cable & Wireless early in 1995 as chief executive of mobile and was responsible for 50 cellular businesses in 33 countries. Prior to this he was vice president cellular for Nortel, based in Paris. In February 1999 Greg became chief executive of Cable & Wireless Communications.  On completion of the sale of Cable & Wireless Communications’ consumer business, Greg will assume the role of chief executive global services with responsibility for sales and customer service across Cable & Wireless’ operations in the USA, UK, Europe and Japan.  Greg is also a Non-Executive Director of Leicester City Football Club.

Darren Phillips, website director, is the founder of the Appointments for Teachers website.  He is a qualified teacher of Design and Technology and has worked as a department head for four years.  Darren was awarded the “Young Entrepreneur Award” at the Royal Show in 1988.  Since then he has run his own ceramics business, designed and implemented a number of websites before founding AFT.

David Phillips, technical director is the founder and chairman of Insight Technologies, a leading knowledge management software company specialising in Internet applications, and was also involved in the Appointments for Teachers web site from its inception. Having been involved in the Internet since its early days, David brings a wealth of relevant experience to eteach.com.

eteach.com services

eteach.com is an education portal for schools and teachers.  It offers a range of services including recruitment, news, an intelligent search engine, a library of links for teachers and a community forum.  Many of the services will be up and running from the launch date, with more services being added as the site develops.

Recruitment

Eteach.com offers an integrated recruitment system which links teachers and employers together via the vacancy posting and CV matching service.

If you are an employer you will be able to….

• Place your teaching vacancies quickly and easily to the recruitment database, the vacancy will appear live promptly after submission.
• Edit your vacancies at any time or ask eteach.com to do this for you
• Assign administrators to maintain your vacancies online
• Submit as many vacancies as and when necessary
• See instant matches of Teachers CV’s for your vacancies offered via the ‘CV monitor’ link
• Receive applications for your vacancies online
• Instantly see how many applications have been made
• View CV’s of teachers have applied who directly for your vacancy
• View any other matching CV’s on the database.
• Search the entire CV database for suitable requirements
• Perform keyword searches on teachers’ CV’s and also eteach.com’s unique ‘concept’ search facility in natural language on the teachers details. e.g. “please find a teacher who can teach the numeracy and literacy strategy to Key stage 1”

 If you are a teacher you will be able to….

• Search the database for instant ‘up to the minute’ vacancies.
• Instantly view all vacancies recently submitted.
• Submit your CV details via an online form and by a word document which will be sent to thousands of schools subscribed to eteach.
• Update your CV online as often as you require.
• Receive email alerts as soon as suitable vacancies are submitted to the system.
• Logon and logoff a mult-user workstation ensuring that your details remain private. You can also change you login password details at any time.
• Receive a weekly newsletter informing you of the latest issues and news in education.

Send your CV to us today.

Research technology

Using the latest “conceptual search” technology, teachers can quickly source information that will help them to prepare lessons, improve skills, write research papers etc.

The research engine explained
Before eteach.com, if you were researching about penguins you might go to Altavista and type in ‘penguin’ as a keyword. Your results could include web pages about any of the following: the character from Batman, the Mcvittees chocolate covered biscuit, the well known book publishers, wedding suit hire shops and if you strike lucky a, bird in the south pole. Research agents work on your behalf to find just the formation that need. You  could use a keyword search in the traditional way but you will find ‘concept’ searching much more user friendly and accurate in the fetched results.

Concept searching
A concept search uses artificial intelligent agents to busily find relevant information even while your are not connected to the system. When you reconnect you will find information which is more appropriate to topic of study. With concept searching you could type “a penguin is a flightless bird which eats fish and lives in the south pole.”

Channels

Library of relevant education links for teachers, giving them direct access to associated websites of interest, such as educational products or teaching resources.

Community Forums

A bulletin board system where teachers can share and exchange information with each other. The online community forum provides valuable support for teachers and schools. Teachers will find help with unique problems that they or their colleagues encounter in the classroom on a daily basis. They also have the opportunity to offer suggestions drawn from their own experience. The Forums offer many other uses for example: schools can make announcements of forthcoming events, teachers/schools can buy/sell unwanted items etc.  

Many other services are being developed and will be announced soon after the site goes live.