A little about us
With over 30 years’ experience, we are proven experts in recruitment and specialise in the education sector. Having seen the best and worst of recruitment agencies, Managing Director Alison Lester founded Red Lester in 2019 to focus on placing quality UK teachers abroad – always keeping the teacher at the heart of the process.
We’re a small company with a big heart, dedicated to matching great people with exciting roles, in the right place. We insist on getting to know all our schools and teachers individually, which allows us to successfully place candidates as soon as opportunities arise. This, we believe, sets us apart.
We’ve come a long way since placing our very first teacher in the Channel Islands. We now also work with fantastic schools across the Middle East – in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – as well as other Island locations including Seychelles and the Falklands. Wherever we go, we’re committed to providing our schools with their greatest asset; the right teachers.
If this excites you as much as us, get in touch to see how we can help.
Awards & accreditations
Award-winning recruitment agency
We always push ourselves to do the best job we can, and have been recognised amongst the best in our industry for our service to teachers and schools. These are just some of our latest awards…
Recruiter Awards 2025
Winner:
- Best Candidate Care
- Recruitment Agency of the Year, 1-9 Employees
Finalist:
- Best International Recruitment Agency
BESA Awards 2025
Highly Commended:
- Sustainability and Net Zero Award
Finalist:
- Team of the Year
REC Awards 2025
Finalist:
- Recruitment Team of the Year
- Sustainability Impact of the Year
Professionally accredited
We’re a Corporate and Professional Member of the REC (Recruitment & Employment Confederation), which drives recruitment standards in the UK and ensures our professionalism and the value we provide to clients and candidates. As members we adhere to their Code of Professional Practice and complete their annual Compliance Assessment to ensure we’re up to date with the very best standards in education recruitment.
Environmentally responsible
Trees for Teachers initiative – our ecological impact
We love placing fantastic teachers in schools abroad, but we’ll be honest… getting them there isn’t very green. So we consistently work hard on our journey towards being carbon-neutral as a business. Our successful Trees for Teachers initiative has been doing good for over three years and is a big part of our ecological impact.
Planes and ferries are an essential form of travel for our teachers to fulfil their new roles in international schools, so we simply can’t operate without them. But our initiative enables us to offset this carbon footprint and ‘give back’ to the planet every time our teachers travel.
Through our partnership with Carma we plant a tree every time we place a new teacher in an international school. When teachers embark on their first assignment with us, we’re able to tell them where a tree is being planted in their honour; news that can be shared to engage the school community in the importance of sustainability.
We’re proud to run an initiative that is simple, impactful and accessible, creating positive outcomes for business, people and the planet. We’ve now planted over 100 UK trees, taking our total to an impressive 2,646 globally and 47 species. This will remove a projected 757 tonnes of carbon emissions.
So, whether you’re a teacher or a school, you can rest assured that you’re doing your bit to protect the planet for the future generations you’re teaching, just by working with us. Join us and be part of this exciting initiative.
