Teaching graduates facing a 47,000-person queue for a permanent job in NSW are being welcomed with open arms halfway across the world.
Lauren Goldsmith has just secured her first full-time job, weeks before the Notre Dame student is due to finish her teaching degree.
Come January she will be in front of a year 3 class in a school in Blenheim, England.
Along with her friends and fellow students Caitlin Wallace, Jake Kercheval and Joshua Hudson, Ms Goldsmith saw a campus presentation in May from an international recruiter looking to fill teacher positions in England, which is in the grips of a teacher shortage "crisis".
Inspired, they signed up, and this week they were interviewed by UK principals touring Australia to recruit.
Ms Goldsmith and Ms Wallace have already secured full-time jobs and will head over on two-year Tier 5 visas.
"It's such an amazing experience to be able to go over to London and see the world while I'm at it," Ms Goldsmith said. "I'm young, I don't have any commitments, no children or house, if I don't do it now I know I'll regret it."
Her experience is in stark contrast to the 47,000 teachers in NSW who were as of March 2015 looking for permanent jobs – as many teachers as are currently employed in the public school system.
In the UK, the situation is the opposite, says Ashley Eastwood, the head teacher of a seven-school federation in the south east of England, who was in Sydney this week to recruit.
"There's a teacher shortage crisis in the UK," Mr Eastwood said. "There are not enough people coming through the universities, and there are too many people leaving the profession.
"I wasn't able to fill several vacancies in our autumn term.
"And you've got a surplus of really high-quality teachers."
He blamed the high cost of living in the south-east of the UK, and high levels of student debt for pushing teachers out of the profession, which like in Australia is relatively lower-paid.
"This is my first trip to recruit teachers and I've been really impressed with the depth of their theoretical knowledge," he said. "It's feasible we could go back having recruited 10-15 teachers."
In the UK principals of state schools have "absolute autonomy" in terms of hiring teachers and paying them - a system that is quite different to the centralised department structure in NSW public schools.
Ms Goldsmith said that while early literacy and numeracy teaching were similar in the two countries, the UK had quite different curriculums in other areas. She hopes that the experience will stand her in good stead for her future prospects.
Mitchell Jones from UK recruiters Protocol Education Australia said Australian teachers who work in the UK are better placed to get permanent jobs when they come home.
"Specifically they look at Australian teachers for roles over there because of their training - we have extended degrees here with high levels of quality and training.
"When they do come back, they've got that point of difference on their CV that makes them infinitely more employable."
