What is the 190 PR Visa Process for a Primary School Teacher?

When we first started exploring the idea of moving to Australia, we had no clue whatsoever on what the visa process entailed or how many types of visas there are!

So, What is the 190 PR Visa Process for a Primary School Teacher?

It can be a bit of a minefield, but after support from our migration agents, as well as lots of research on the Australian immigration website – https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/. We now have a pretty decent understanding of our process for a 190-skilled nominated permanent residency visa. 

We are using Sterling Migration to support our application process and so far they have been absolute diamonds.

From the free initial phone call to the emails throughout the process so far, they have been professional, informative and supportive. We are well aware that many expats have successfully completed the visa process themselves.

However, with one of us turning 40 imminently and using all of our savings for the move, we cannot afford for anything to go wrong and therefore prefer to use the agents to check everything for us as we go along. 

During our initial phone call, we made it very clear that we wanted a pathway to permanent residency. Having two school-aged children and uprooting our whole lives is a pretty big deal. Therefore we want to ensure that we can reap all the benefits of PR and not have the worry of moving back to the UK again after a short period of time. 

With my career as a primary teacher being on the shortage list, a 190-skilled nominated visa was recommended. If you are unsure whether or not you could be eligible for a 190 visa, check out https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/ to see if your job is on the shortage list. 

Once we had instructed our agents to open our case and completed some compliance checks, it was time to start collating evidence to submit my skills assessment to AITSL- the governing body for teachers in Australia.

A skills assessment demonstrates the training you have undertaken for your profession. The full list of evidence you are required to collect is available here but the general list is: identification documents, wage slips, pension statements, bank statements, degree and PGCE certificates and transcripts and a letter from your university to confirm the location and length of time of your teaching placements. 

Start collating this ASAP! It takes a while to scan it all in and for the university to reply to your request. 

As I have been teaching for 14 years, I am applying for maximum points for experience in my job. However, I only had to provide evidence for the last 8 years of teaching to achieve this. 

All applications for a 190-skilled migration visa will require you to complete a skills assessment, however, the criteria for each profession will vary so you will need to research the correct body to submit your assessment to. 

Each profession also has varying time scales for applications. The usual time frame for teacher skills assessments is around 4 weeks. However, they are currently experiencing a large volume of applications and so as I write this blog, we are going into week 8 of waiting and potentially another two weeks to wait. 

The biggest lesson you will learn in this whole process is that you need to be patient! 

Once the skills assessment comes back successfully (fingers crossed!) there is a second element for teachers to submit which is called an SES (Skilled Employment Statement). This confirms your experience in the profession and must be on the school’s official documentation, completed and signed by your employers. 

As the skilled nominated visas are points tested and the pool is very competitive, you will want to earn as many points as possible. It is highly recommended that you complete a recognised English exam (such as PTE or IELTS) to gain either an additional 10 (proficient) or 20 (superior) points.

See our other blogs for further information about these exams. You will need to complete the exam before you can submit your expression of interest so again, my advice would be to get this booked in and start revising as soon as you can. 

Currently, this is the next stage for us and we are excited to be able to submit our expression of interest.

This is a crucial part of the process as this is the point where Australia knows you want to go there! We intend to apply to as many states as possible to widen our chances of being invited. The minimum number of points you need to get to this stage is 65. If you are unsure of how many points you have visit https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/help-support/departmental-forms/online-forms/points-calculator 

We currently have 85 points which hopefully sets us in good stead once we are in the pool to be invited to apply. We will also receive an additional 5 points once we are nominated by a state to apply. 

Once the EOI is submitted, some people opt to have their medical examinations and police checks done- also known as frontloading the visa. This could speed up the visa application process once we are hopefully invited to apply. However, others err on the side of caution as these checks have a time limit and you could end up paying twice. 

Each year, different states allocate a certain number of visa applications to migrants and these are published each year. You can wait up to 2 years to be invited to apply for a visa and so that patience really needs to become a virtue at this point! We are dreading the waiting around but we know it will be worth it. Once you are invited, you only have 60 days to lodge your visa. When this is completed, you then have to wait again for the visa to be approved before you can finally think about packing up and moving to the other side of the world. 

The timescales for different visas vary massively. For those who are not applying for a PR visa, they tend to get over to Australia a lot quicker. The current processing time for a 190-skilled nomination visa is between 12 and 15 months. However, we are adding onto this the months which have gone by so far just completing and waiting for the skills assessment (currently 3 months). 

What is the 190 PR Visa Process for a Primary School Teacher? Well, I hope this post goes someway to answering that question.

Please note that this blog is based on our own experience so far and further research from the Australian Immigration website.

We are by no means experts in the field and do recommend that you seek advice from the professionals for any specific information you require.