Cross-country teacher recruitment in the Commonwealth will be regulated by a new code of conduct this year.

The Commonwealth Working Group on Teacher Recruitment will look at measures to protect countries which have invested heavily in teacher training from poaching from other countries. The group, made up of officials from 12 Commonwealth countries including the UK, was set up following last year’s conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, which expressed concern about the poorer countries’ abilities to invest in education.

Paul Howell, of education recruitment website eteach.com. said he was not sure what the UK’s stance would be, although he was aware that South Africa had made representations to the UK government about an education “brain drain”.

“We’re increasingly doing international recruitment for our clients,” he said. “The situation is that we’re paying more money so we’re going to start pulling these people in.”

But he stressed that issues of language and equivalence of qualification made it less likely that schools would look for staff from the less well-off Commonwealth countries.