An ISR Member writes:
Hi all,
I’m trying to gain a bit of perspective on which International Schools are requiring vaccinations for current and/or new teachers attempting to gain employment. Also, if someone declined to be vaccinated or reveal their vaccination status, would that significantly inhibit their job prospects? What is the current situation in your school/country?
In Taiwan, unvaccinated teachers (at my school) can continue to work as long as they provide a negative test once a week, usually at the expense of the teacher.
P.S. I’m not looking to ‘release the hounds,’ so please keep it civil. We’re all worldly adults who can consider another’s perspective, right?
Thanks guys 🙂
ISR Members reply:
In Mainland China at my school, students age 12 and above, and ALL teachers, must be vaccinated – full stop.
All teachers in Pakistan must be vaccinated per government orders. They are also pushing through a mandate for students 15+, and 12+ will follow.
In Saudi you are not allowed any kind of public life at all without being vaccinated. Malls, SCHOOLS, grocery stores, etc. all require showing your government app with proof of vaccination on your phone before entry.
Vaccinations required in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia to start. I have friends at schools in all three countries and the schools require vaccination as they reopen.
My school in Beijing does not require vaccinations…yet. If they ever do, it will be because it is a government mandate. The vast majority of expat staff have been vaccinated. I’ve been told most of the hold-outs are Chinese staff.
I can imagine lots of schools will prefer teachers to be vaccinated, so not being vaccinated or refusing to disclose your status probably will impact your chances of landing a job, although there will be plenty of schools that will not ask you about it.
Note: The preceding is transplanted from the ISR Member Forum where site Members will find 72 informative entries on this timely topic. See Mandatory Vaccination . GO to Member Forum
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No school of substance would consider an educator who isn’t willing to undergo a simple, common sense measure to ensure the safety of the children. Nor should any educator of substance have any respect for such an individual.
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Years ago I had an unpleasant reaction to my yellow fever vaccination, but I didn’t mind since it was required to travel to Brazil. The benefits far outweighed the “cost”. So what? International teaching/living = Covid vaccination. Deal with it.
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Is it only the unvaccinated that are worried about telling people they are not vaccinated or are there people out there who are vaccinated that don’t wish to share this information?
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I am in China and we are not required to be vaccinated.
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Let’s get back to the point of this post and not the pros and cons of vaccination.
My school in Beijing hasn’t required it yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were told to soon. Like the other post, most of the international staff have had the Chinese vaccine, and the hold outs are the local staff (mainly because “there isn’t really any COVID here, I’m not going to leave China, so why should I bother?”)
Equally, there are a number of countries which are starting to require full vaccination before a visa is given, and I suspect that this will increase over the next year.
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Medical exemption? According to the cdc, the only permanent contraindication is a known allergy to a component of the vaccine. All other medical reasons are just temporary until a specific situation is handled.
Click to access summary-interim-clinical-considerations.pdf
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What about those who cannot take the vaccine due to medical reasons?
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What about them? One poster mentioned below about medical exemptions in their country. Probably other countries have them. But it’s going to be complicated. For example, Canada. There are possibilities to enter Canada for work reasons even if you’re not vaccinated. But not if you just want a vacation. If for work, and you’re not vaccinated, you’ll have to jump through extra hoops for testing and quarantine and proving your employment etc. And entry still isn’t guaranteed, the immigration officer decides on the spot when you try to enter.
But that’s just government regs. It’s been pointed out already, if the school knows you will have to run that government gauntlet but still won’t be guaranteed entry, if they know that even once you’re in, you will be a high risk for yourself and others, that they will have to perpetually expend extra effort, face extra risk and be held responsible by the community should anything go wrong? With all those truths, I have to suspect the school will be less inclined to offer you a contract.
It might not be fair, but it’s reality.
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Seems like a pretty consistent trend, just based on comments so far, that vaccination will be needed for those wanting an international career. Whether it’s a country’s legal requirements or a school’s preference/hiring policy, doesn’t make much difference.
For those advocating personal choice, you still have one, but recognize that your vaccination choice will impact your career options. (As it probably has already. Many countries have long required that teachers prove vaccination status for multiple diseases such as measles.)
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I work in Germany, currently teachers must either be vaccinated or be tested 3 times a week. However, the government is considering making it mandatory in certain fields. There is already a president here, as all teachers must prove proof of measles vaccination.
In addition, I’m going through the recruitment process and many school seem interested in knowing vaccination status, regardless of their countries regulations for teachers. Not being vaccinated makes things much harder for the the school trying to arrange visa’s and entry into a country, possibility of you having to quarantine after every exposure, cost of test, this becomes a headache as far as subs and covering classes. If a school is in a debate between two equally qualified teachers, one vaccinated and one not, I strongly believe that the school will go with the vaccinated one just to make things easier for the school.
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I also work in Germany and my school isn’t requiring the unvaccinated teachers to take any tests. I wish they would.
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You can’t get on a plane in Canada as of Oct 30th without being double vaxxed. Good luck to those anti vaxxers trying to secure a job abroad. Work on your row boat skills.
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In Saudi Arabia all teachers, student grades 7-12 must be vaccinated to attend school and soon, once the approval comes for KG to G6 that will also be mandatory. You may complain and rant and rave about how it is “unfair” and whatever you want to insinuate or believe is irrelevant. The COVID numbers speak for themselves in this country compared to the USA ( of which I am a citizen and I am willing to bet the bulk of the skeptics posting here are as well). #1 Point…..the USA regulations that could have been enforced early on to take control of the spread and avoid so many lives lost….were not only because of political motivations. #2 The “magic” words “it is my civil right”…..that some people in the USA invoke any time they want to justify something they don’t want to do…..does NOT wash in most other countries around the world. AND unless you accept that reality, you will never be happy as an international teacher.
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This will be the year that labour laws are tested in many countries with vaccinated and unvaccinated staff.
I would not hire a non-vaccinated person. It would simply be too much of a headache dealing with potential outcomes if they were to become infected, or infected and pass it on (yes I know that vaccinated people can as well, but in the eyes of parents, it’s not the same).
I do find the whole privacy thing around whether someone has had the vaccine or not bizarre, particularly if it is about applying for paperwork to another country.
If you had been working in a country with yellow fever, you wouldn’t be refusing to show off your yellow fever certificate for your vaccine if asked.
It is certainly going to be an interesting challenge for recruiters. Many based in Western countries, with strong laws protecting people, will be challenged when schools are saying their staff must be vaccinated, yet there is no country mandate for it.
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Jesus!
People lost their common sense.
These jabs are made by compagnies making millions…who are not responsible in case of side-effects. Joke?! If you are sure about your product, why doing this?
Why vaccinating perfectly healthy young kids and see some of them develop myocarditis afterwards? Why some super healthy tennis players cannot play anymore this season after the jab?Why 2 of my friends caught it again while being fully vaccinated? Will we have to get jabbed every 6 months? Do you really think that if some nurses are ready to qui their job in France it’s because life is better without an income? Is it a sane world where you have to show your number, your QR code to sit at a cafe?
Why not vaccinating fragile, older people instead of the whole population?
I could go on and on…
I am done.
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You conveniently forget to mention that over 2 million people have died. All of them unvaccinated. Sorry but you people are morons and stopping the rest of us returning to normality.
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All pharmaceuticals and medical procedures have risks and it is your discretion to use them or not.
We did not have the time or resources in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC to make decisions about who may or may not have a strong reaction to covid and overload an alreadt extremely stressed health care. (Remember the refrigerated trucks in New York with dead bodies in?) The vaccine helped reduce transmission and lessened severity. A government’s role is to act in the best interest of the it’s nations people.
I am sure in time we will resort to only the vulnerable having boosters. The rest of us will rely on immunity tests and anti viral meds.
If you are really a teacher I feel for your students.
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Sure you are done. In international schools at least.
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Why get in a car when you have a non-cumulative 1% chance of dying – a far GREATER chance than developing myocarditis. If that’s the position that international teachers want to cling to, then they won’t be international too much longer.
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I had Covid before the vaccination was available and I almost died last year. I still have effects from my illness a year later. In refusing to be vaccinated, you are part of the reason Covid is mutating and continuing to prevent us from living normal lives, and the reason many people will be permanently disabled or die from getting the virus. You are a terrible person.
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I had to prove that I had my MMR vaccine or get it again in order to teach in Singapore. Vaccine mandates are nothing new, especially for international teachers.
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Russia has pretty recently made it legally required for school employees to be vaccinated. First doses required within the next couple of weeks. Exceptions possible on medical grounds: either if you have medical conditions that make vaccination dangerous, are currently pregnant, or if you had Covid within the last six months so you aren’t eligible yet. Maybe other small medical technical exceptions. But basically they’ve said it’s now time, no more delaying if you work in a school.
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The country – Qatar – and school I work in do not require mandatory vaccination; to work, a weekly test is required. Unvaxed are pretty much locked out of social activities though.
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You forgot to mention that in Qatar we have a phone app and you pretty much have to have vaccination or the neg. covid for just about any activity, getting into any building/mall let alone your job. I am happy with the current low infection numbers and low numbers of deaths overall – which came about due to a very strong governmental response and vaccination campaign to control the disease spread. The silliness of stating that you only have a 1% chance of dying….well talk to the long haulers…if this was like the common flu no one would care. The multitude of long term effects after suffering from this virus are much worse than the 1% risk of dying. My age group 50-59 has had the highest death rate here so I am happy for the strict controls that we have had.
Thinking that you are going to treat 100’s of millions of people and not have some small level of adverse response is unrealistic. Life is a bell curve, most of us will receive protection with the vaccine, but as stated in a previous response, there will always be a small percent at each end that will not be helped or could be harmed. But, those people are just as likely to die from the infection as well.
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My partner and I work in two different international schools in Singapore. Neither school nor the government has mandated CV19 vaccination. At both schools, weekly testing is required REGARDLESS of vaccination status if you teach students 12 and under. This is carried out at the school at the school’s expense.
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Well SG has now announced if an unvaccinated person with Covid requires hospitalisation they will have to pay the entire cost of that stay and all treatment.
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The statement above about needing to be vaccinated to teach in Thailand is incorrect. I’ve worked in Thailand for 10+ years, I’m vaccinated and most teachers I know are as well, but there has never been a mandate from the government requiring all teachers get vaxxed. Some schools may be requiring it, but painting it as necessary to teach throughout the whole country is false.
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I am applying to countries now and have been asked in interviews if I am fully vaccinated and have been told it is a requirement. These countries have been Singapore, Malaysia, a school in Rio, a school in Romania. I think a lot of schools this year during interviews will be asking that question either as a country requirement or a school.
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That’s interesting. I heard general uptake in Romania was poor. Any idea how much of the population has been vaccinated?
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A more important question – any idea of how much of the school parent population has been vaccinated?
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This is interesting re: Romania. They have one of the worst vaccination rates in Europe. Right up there with Ukraine or Latvia. The problem that I noticed while working through this insanity last year is that you can work in these countries and try to protect yourself but the children are still exposed/carriers and many of the families that I worked with would not get vaccinated and were engaging in a lot of high-risk travel, large gatherings, etc. Very frustrating and now the 4th wave is already causing big problems in Eastern, Central Europe and the Baltics…again. So teachers will likely be required to have vaccinations but I seriously doubt the schools will have any consistent requirements or enforcement of measures for parents.
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If you travel internationally, many transit stops (e.g. Singapore) require you to be vaccinated, as do certain airlines (e.g. One World group). So if you teach internationally, you will be stuck without vaccination.
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For many years, in all of the countries I worked in, you were always required to disclose your HIV status as your visa required you to be HIV negative. In addition to this was the requirement to know your TB status by chest x-ray.
I do not understand why people are so hesitant to disclose COVID vax status with cries of “privacy” and “personal information is MY information”. Surely we have all been doing this for years in our home countries as well as in our work countries.
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All of our teaching and support staff is 100% vaccinated, all voluntary. But being in a small country, continuing to be shut down as COVID went through would likely have led to job losses among teachers and support staff, so people chose to get the vaccine. Moving forward, I think vaccinated applicants or those willing to be vaccinated who are have not yet been, have an advantage. Decent medical plans want vaccination and costs for non-vaccinated members or schools will increase, I believe. Or COVID related costs on non-vaccinated staff will increase, making premiums increase. It is a complex, interrelated issue, but yes, I see mandatory vaccinations coming, if not this year, within the next year or two for sure.
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What country?
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Dominican Republic.
Everyone (students and teachers) 12 years and older must be vaccinated or present a weekly negative PCR test; at the expense of the person opting not to be vaccinated.
This requirement is for everywhere: banks, restaurants, malls, etc…
It is a requirement now to work in the Dominican Republic in the public and private sector.
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In Kazakhstan, you should either be vaccinated or show a negative PCR test weekly at your expense. This requirement applies to all students aged 18+.
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Well, first of all, the hope is that you’re able to get vaccinated and not shrugging it off as some sort of hoax.
Second, many schools that I know of are strongly advising teachers and school employees to get vaccinated, as well as students 12 years of age and older. If they choose not to – for whatever reason – they are subject to twice weekly tests at their own expense. They even offered a cash incentive and free transport to the vaccine site for any school employee who wishes to get vaccinated. All good things but there are still some muppets who believe in, well, something else.
How will this work in the future?
My guess is that schools will find ways to ensure you are vaccinated. If you say that. “you’d prefer not to say (if you have the shot or not)” it’s a pretty easy read to pass on. Regardless of the reason you chose not to get vaccinated. This will be more difficult in schools that adhere to strong local labour laws but in the interest of public health, it will play out like it does when parents don’t want their kids to get any vaccine. Go to the local private religious school. Or to Mexico. Or Florida. Or (insert country with not great healthcare here).
I’d have to say, as an administrator, I would not look favourably on your decision. I’d wonder what other careless, irresponsible decisions you would make at my school. I’d wonder how long until you yourself get sick – or worse yet, get someone else sick at my school.
So, while you may enjoy getting jabbed with the Freedom Variant, it’s likely that you won’t have a job in many places – at least in places that put student, parent, and teacher wellbeing at the forefront of its mission.
But maybe there are alternatives to being a teacher for you – perhaps Youtube? I hear you don’t need a jab to proselytize any type of crazy that you want on there…oh, wait. Okay, maybe Youtube isn’t for you either. But Gab, Rumble, and MeWe are options!
Good luck! (But you don’t need luck when you have your immune system, right?)
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I’m interested to know how you deal with your vaxxed staff who come down with covid and “get someone else sick” at your school? Do you call them muppets as well?
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I have two degrees in biology and studied immunology at graduate level. I teach about vaccination in class and am a strong advocate of vaccination in general.
I’m also a skeptic about the COVID vaccines for the following reasons:
1) unproven new technology
2) rushed into production by a right-wing administration under conditions of mass hysteria
3) Pfizer’s own studies lacked statistical significance
4) Persistent reports of viral protein accumulating in circulatory system and gonads
5) Indisputable evidence of inability to prevent infection and transmission of COVID (most new cases in heavily vaccinated countries are occurring with already-vaccinated people)
6) Extremely low death rates for all age cohorts except 60 and over, raise legitimate questions over whether vaccines can pass Hippocratic oath test for younger age groups (the benefit must statistically exceed the harm).
7) Obvious inferiority of vaccine relative to natural immunity, which is possessed by a large fraction of global population and increasing over time (this is textbook immunology, vaccine generated immunity is a inferior subset of natural immunity 100% of the time)
8) Very strong evidence that vaccination with only one viral protein is causing an evolutionary response in viral populations of more infectious, more lethal strains
9) Rampant censorship of scientific debate over this issue raises urgent questions as to the reliability of official statements including those from nominally scientific and public health entities
10) Obvious official corruption involving kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies, etc. (Are we supposed to uncritically trust big corporations now?)
11) Manifest failure of vaccination to stop new waves of cases in heavily vaccinated countries (this is most likely due to #8, and discussion of this hypothesis is being censored)
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I think there are some good points here, but I’m a little shocked that a school administrator would make a post with such sarcasm regarding such a sensitive topic.
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Re #5 — in the US, the places with the highest rates of new cases are “red states” where there are higher concentrations of unvaccinated people, and most of the new infections are among unvaccinated people.
#7 may be true, but in order to build up a natural immunity to a disease, you must first become infected with it. And the people who don’t survive that infection are of course immune to it, but the trouble is, they’re now immune to everything else as well.
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I wouldn’t like to be a student at your school, as you don’t show any ability to critically think through issues or any respect for diversity of thought/opinion. You are, however, very good at disrespecting people who have a different view on issues.
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To Johnny – you are aware that the mRNA delivery system has been around (and tested) since 2005, right? This is a great story – and reveals that a lot of the myths about the delivery system are exactly that – myths. This link works, it is not paywalled… https://wapo.st/2ZqLJF7
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