;I had consulted a UK teaching agency that assured me my qualifications were acceptable and that teaching jobs were two-a-penny in the UK. My husband had three degrees and 10 years’ experience working at universities. […] Filled with enthusiasm, we embarked on a search for work. My husband could find no university work as the competition was fierce and the work ethic so high that it was quite common to find degreed people doing clerical work that required no qualifications. He found work as a temp, doing data-processing, paid by the hour. As for me, I had had 13 years’ experience teaching in South Africa. I soon found out that my BA and HDE did not qualify me to teach in Britain. Furthermore, in our region—south-west England—there was no real need for teachers and the head teachers to whom I applied for work did not want to employ “foreigners.”
Grant Barrett