Are there shortages of French secondary teachers?

[DoggerelBank]

I'm trying to help a friend newly arrived in the UK from a Middle Eastern country to work out a career plan. She's an experienced secondary teacher of Arabic lang and lit in her home country (so the equivalent of teaching English in a secondary school here). One option would be to teach Arabic as a foreign language, but demand may not be high enough for a full-time job. She's wondering if, instead, she'd be employable as a French teacher. She was educated in a French medium school, so her French is a very high standard - better than her English currently. She'd need to improve her English and do a French PGCE. But I'm wondering if she'd always be a last choice of hire because she's not native-level fluency in English. Also, she currently couldn't teach Spanish or another higher-demand MFL.
What does anyone think? Is there a shortage of French teachers and she'd easily find work after a PGCE? Or only worth it after enough years in the UK that she's genuinely native-speaker fluency in English? Are there ever opportunities for language assistants in secondary schools - TA level, while she gets her English up to speed?

There is definitely a chance for her! There is a massive shortage in language teachers. The Bursary to do a PGCE in languages is about 27K now. She would need to offer a language taught in mainstream secondary schools so French would do it.
There are schools who only require French so no need to learn Spanish. I work in mainstream and teach only French years 7 to 13.
But my heartfelt recommendation is for her to really visit some schools first🙏 teaching in the UK is very demanding and very different to where she is coming from and she might not like it at all

Yes, massive shortage of MFL teachers. Her Arabic may also be desirable. Lots of schools put first-language candidates through Arabic GCSE.

Thanks, @ThanksItHasPockets @orangeblossom23 . Do either of you know how TA-level positions work in secondary? Do they ever exist at a subject-specific level as a classroom assistant? Or is it always cover supervisor type roles, being in sole charge of a class when a teacher's absent? Do you sometimes have TAs allocated to a specific child with special needs?

So as a TA you do NOT cover lessons. Or better you should NOT. The role of a TA is to help specific students within a class generally in maths science and english or even doing one to one support. You will have students allocated to you that you help, primary and secondary is slightly different but as a general rule you never have responsibility for a whole class. Schools employ cover supervisors for this reason or HTLAs.
An HTLA is a Higher Level Teaching Assistant, you will have responsibility for your classes as well as covering classes, this role varies a lot. Some people like it others have the same responsibilities as teachers for less pay.
Being a TA can be useful as a term time job with fixed hours, you do not take work home but the pay is really poor

I don't think she could teach in a UK school without at least very nearly native levels of English, however desperate schools are for MFL teachers. Secondary teachers have to be able to write reports, do parents' evenings, not to mention potentially teach PSHE lessons etc in English.

Thanks, @AllProperTeaIsTheft. I don't disagree. But she's bright and will have to learn good English whatever she chooses to do. It's more that I don't want to suggest a path that is unrealistic however hard she works on her English.

When we recruit for MFL teachers we do tend to struggle as there aren’t many - we have had to even reduce our provision because of the lack of teaching colleagues.
We only offer MFL at GCSE and A Level now - it was whole school previously.

@good96 Whaaatt? Some schools don't teach any MFL at all in years 7 and 8? Hadn't realised it was that bad. Mind. Blown.

Generally speaking, in most secondaries, TAs are attached to funded students with significant learning needs. It won’t always be the same student, depending on the hours allocated, and sometimes different TAs are allocated when a student has very challenging needs/ behaviour to stop burn-out for an individual member of staff. Sometimes they provide specific interventions to groups to support literacy, supervise Support/ Nurture bases for children who find it hard to operate in mainstream or spend time adapting resources for visually impaired students. I’ve also seen well-qualified TAs be attached to core subject departments and have more of an intervention/HLTS role but all these individuals were qualified teachers .

The conditions, behaviour and provision will probably not be whst she is used to. I am an mfl teacher in.a secondary school.