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City educators debate use of Filipino English teachers
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sigmoid



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 1276

PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 5:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's the latest scheme: hire native speakers (volunteers) and pay them the same rate as local teachers...

Vietnam lays red carpet to welcome foreign teachers
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/education/57606/vietnam-lays-red-carpet-to-welcome-foreign-teachers.html

some excerpts:

Quote:
An agreement has been signed between the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and ELC, the Australian organization would provide thousands volunteer teachers to Vietnam in the next many years. They are the native English speakers from English speaking countries like the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa.

All the teachers would join the program �Teach and Travel in Vietnam.�

.................................................

Regarding the qualification of the teachers, Nguyen Ngoc Hung from the steering committee, affirmed that the teachers have university or post-university degrees in different majors, but all of them have to go through training courses and obtain pedagogical certificates to be able to join the program.

...................................

�We expect 300-500 English teachers to Vietnam every year,� he added.

When asked about the cost of the project, Hung said MOET plans to pay VND6 million a month on average to every foreign teacher, which is now equal to the current average monthly salary of a Vietnamese teacher.

Meanwhile, a foreign teacher would have at least 25 periods a week (45 minutes per period), while a Vietnamese teacher has 18 periods only.

Commenting about the scanty salary budget for foreign teachers, Hung said the salary is just enough to cover the basic needs for the teachers in Vietnam.

.............................................

Vietnam is seriously lacking English teachers, while the working teachers don�t have high qualifications, which is really a big barrier to the implementation of the national program.

...................................................

Admitting that sending Vietnamese teachers to overseas training courses is the best solution, MOET said that the measure proves to be unfeasible, because the state budget cannot afford the training courses.

.....................................................

The news that Vietnamese students would have the opportunities to learn English with native speakers has been applauded by schools, especially when MOET and the foreign partner affirm their high qualifications. Especially, the pay of VND6 million a month is affordable to the budget.
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LettersAthruZ



Joined: 25 Apr 2010
Posts: 466
Location: North Viet Nam

PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When I had lived in Hai Phong a few years ago, they were doing this s**t!

The local PRIVATE (for profit) University had teamed up with some Kiwi agency and they were sending over these recent high school graduates who had told me that they were led to believe that this was an exciting volunteer experience where they would bring English language knowledge to some totally destitute jungle/highlands village.

They just about lost it when I tole 'em that Hai Phong is the third-largest city in Viet Nam and that the PRIVATE university was a for-profit and, shortly thereafter, there were a few telephone calls back to their program coordinators!

This just looks like a new play on that scam....
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vabeckele



Joined: 19 Nov 2010
Posts: 439

PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 3:59 pm    Post subject: Lambs to the slaughter Reply with quote

We are getting it at both ends.

Yes, Letters, this is or was also going on in Danang. Actually the rhetoric is because food is cheaper et cetera, the wages are also lower - Funny. The fees to the students remain the same.

I am getting tired of all of the angles.

For some reason companies, as well as universities lately want me to pay taxes even though the work is under the table. When I think of all of the complications this entails...for everyone involved, jeez - you should see one of my contracts, one of them is really funny. I have two, one declaring tax and the other not so. This, even when the govt. administrator is right there closing the door on govt. involvement. Take this, and the stuff the Anglo Saxon countries are doing, what chance does an English teacher have here? As long as both parties get a new shiny centre or university...get to sell education products, the teachers can go fish.

When has it ever been different? One organisation wanted me to teach for free, volunteer, for a few months. When I found out they were all staying at the Hilton and the classes were all at the Hilton...jeez.
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mark_in_saigon



Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 837

PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think this kind of crazy stuff has always been going on, and will continue to. It is the nature of the system. I think that organization that has taken over the ESL employment ads on CL here in VN is a similar example. If you send them a serious letter, they will not respond, they know what they are looking for, just these very young, gullible people they can take advantage of. We have all met some of these kids, they come over on a hope and a prayer and get more than they bargained for. This is the way their system is here. I really believe there is a rather thin layer of the market that is for serious teachers, and a more or less equally thin supply of serious teachers. All this other churning around is for the larger share of the market which is served by any and all. It is not pretty. I think we all need to recognize what part of the market we are trying (and qualified) to serve so we can know what our approach should be and what we are up against (and to). All these infusions of non serious/unqualified/non native English speaker teachers just constantly alters the dynamics of the market, as even these (so called) higher level organizations are not immune from the greedy thoughts of how much more money they could make by employing these lower cost people.

I do not see any central authority making the thoughtful moves that would create a solution to these issues. It is always how to improve short term financial gain, not how to create an intelligent long term process for actually improving things.
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mark_in_saigon



Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 837

PostPosted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 3:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Remember this crazy story from a year or two ago?


http://tuoitrenews.vn/education/22538/vietnam-hub-suspends-project-to-hire-filipino-english-teachers

So now, a year or two later, this project comes to an end. Rather interesting seeing the same bs story repeated about wages demanded by British teachers (10 grand), and so how that supposedly justified paying the Filipinos 2 grand a month.

Quote:
They also demand a lower salary, a mere US$2,000 per month, compared to the $5,000 and $10,000 pay often sought by their Australian and British peers, respectively.


Then, this ridiculous reasoning:

Quote:
Hieu said the department did have plans to continue sending Filipino teachers to schools in the 2013-2014 school year, but some teachers were unable get a visa to Vietnam.

“The teachers and their families had their houses destroyed by the Super Typhoon Haiyan last November, so all of their papers were lost,” he elaborated, citing information from a Filipino manpower firm.

The Filipinos thus could not start teaching when the new school year began, due to what Hieu said was “an objective reason.”

“We decided to temporarily cease the recruitment of Filipino teachers, and allowed schools to hire qualified teachers from the UK, the U.S., or Australia,” he said.





Finally, right at the end, they add this nugget.

Quote:
Some Filipinos who taught at Ho Chi Minh City schools between 2012 and 2013 said they feel attached to the local educational environment.

However, some revealed that their monthly wage was not $2,000 as reported.

It was actually only around $900, one of the teachers said.



Well, I am sure that was just some kind of small math error, if you could get the payroll dept to look at it again, I am sure they can figure out what happened to the other 11 hundred bucks. Uh huh. Sure.
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ExpatLuke



Joined: 11 Feb 2012
Posts: 744

PostPosted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great stuff. Always good for a laugh. Actually even $900 is high for what most Filipino teachers who I've met make. $2000 is ludicrous, but so is 5-10 grand for a teacher. Do Vietnamese really believe that? There's nowhere in the world where ESL teachers are paid $10,000 per month. Really goes to show how uneducated the general population is if they swallow that.

To put it in perspective. I just saw a management position being offered by AMA with 130 work hours a month, part teaching part admin, and they were only offering $2000 per month.

Some people definitely got rich by this scheme.
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mark_in_saigon



Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 837

PostPosted: Sun Sep 28, 2014 6:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No one believed any of it. When it first came out, expat teachers rubbished this story from sea to shining sea. Even some of the natives chimed in.

Found it very amusing they put in another totally unbelievable part of the story blaming the end of the program on the hurricane.
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I'm With Stupid



Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Posts: 432

PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well there's a massive surprise for everyone.

No doubt these teachers were hired through some sort of agency, which is who the $2k a month fee was paid to, with the teachers getting a fraction of that fee. And I wonder who owned that agency. Rolling Eyes

But just out of interest, what sort of price would I pay if I wanted to hire a teacher from the British Council or RMIT full time to teach at my school or company? Because while the teachers would be on a minimum of $3k a month for a full time schedule, when you take the schools fee into account, it's probably not as far away as people on this thread think to the prices quoted in that article. Obviously still not $10k though. But $5k wouldn't be unreasonable.

Perhaps this was a pilot scheme for the actual plan, which is to hire British teachers "for $10k" with $8.5k of that going into someone's pocket.
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mark_in_saigon



Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 837

PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 4:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A few years back, I was told by someone who was in the VN end of the system that a very well known supplier of expat teachers to the public schools was billing 39 an hour for these guys, while paying 15 to the teachers. The 15 is like the average pay there, perhaps a few get a bit more, and some do not seem to be worth 15. So, less than half goes to the teachers in a supposed straight up "legal" deal. Not too different than the structure of a language center, however you do not have to pay rent or utilities when you send teachers out to public schools. I think these can be very profitable if you can beat back the extra hands reaching for the chicken wings as the tray goes by.
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skarper



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 477

PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 5:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think a lot of this is just sloppy journalism - they make up sensational numbers and print them without any fear of being challenged.

But a mark up on wages of 3x is normal and accepted in business. In fact - if you're not doing it you business is on a slippery slope. These dispatching agency obviously have lower overheads for rent and equipment etc, but probably have other overheads that offset this advantage.

The fantasy number is that a Filipino would cost anything like that. I expect you can get well qualified near native speakers for about 800USD a month. You just can't get parents to pay the inflated language school rates to have their kids taught by another Asian...

Sending in a 'rent a mob' of native or non-native teachers to public schools for an hour or so a week is NOT going to raise levels of English in Vietnam any more than it has in Japan or Korea. It doesn't matter how well qualified/motivated the teachers are.

What would work is to raise the standards of the local Vietnamese teachers of English - employ specialists who are based in the school full time and have a good level of English and understand modern methodology.

But that ain't gonna happen.
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I'm With Stupid



Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Posts: 432

PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 12:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

skarper wrote:
What would work is to raise the standards of the local Vietnamese teachers of English - employ specialists who are based in the school full time and have a good level of English and understand modern methodology.

Well actually the current plan is to have more than just English classes taught in English, especially at university level. Which is probably the right way to go, but will take a while to achieve. And they certainly do hire experienced foreign teachers to train local teachers in teaching methodology. The last Cambridge training day I went to was populated mostly by Vietnamese teachers, and I expect Scott Thornbury's talk on Saturday to be the same. So there's definitely progress in that respect, but it's a long way off the sort of training programmes that they have in Malaysia (although obviously the budget is much smaller).
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skarper



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 477

PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 7:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

IWS - that is an encouraging step in the right direction and I don't mean to be negative.

What IS needed though is to improve the pay and conditions of school teachers so that those with English skills join the profession and remain in it.

This is a worldwide problem in no way limited to Vietnam of course.

I have taught a lot of English teachers from Korea, Japan, Egypt and elsewhere whose level of English was elementary at best. This may be adequate for elementary school teachers (usually not specialists anyway) but these included high school teachers too.

Plenty of people in Vietnam speak great English - but they do not 'waste' their time training to be school teachers. They go into tourism, finance or some other business where they can make money.
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I'm With Stupid



Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Posts: 432

PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

skarper wrote:
IWS - that is an encouraging step in the right direction and I don't mean to be negative.

What IS needed though is to improve the pay and conditions of school teachers so that those with English skills join the profession and remain in it.

This is a worldwide problem in no way limited to Vietnam of course.

I have taught a lot of English teachers from Korea, Japan, Egypt and elsewhere whose level of English was elementary at best. This may be adequate for elementary school teachers (usually not specialists anyway) but these included high school teachers too.

Plenty of people in Vietnam speak great English - but they do not 'waste' their time training to be school teachers. They go into tourism, finance or some other business where they can make money.


I agree this is a problem. But the issue is that you can't then massively increase the salary of Vietnamese English teachers without also increasing the salary of maths teachers, science teachers, etc. These teachers would rightly question why English is considered more important than their subjects, and why English teachers are getting a huge raise, when maths teachers are arguably teaching their subject much more effectively and with much better results.

A possible solution would be to offer a massive salary increase only to teachers who have demonstrated a certain level of English judged by the IELTS test. But that sounds like it'd be rife for corruption. I can see why politically, it's far easier for them to hire teachers from the Philippines on bigger salaries, because no-one will question why a foreigner is earning more than them.
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skarper



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 477

PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Arguably - ALL teachers should be paid much more than they are and have better conditions - not just the English teachers and not just in Vietnam. Teachers are always underpaid, under-resourced and undermined in every country I've experienced.

Then they wouldn't have to run after hours classes in their homes to make up their income (and shouldn't be allowed to - I know, I know).

There is always the issue of the 'rubbish' teachers who will get benefits which they don't merit but that's the price you have to pay to attract more talent into teaching.

Of course, those making the decisions don't use state schools (and this is the case in pretty much all countries) so they are not going to do anything to fix them - in fact if the state schools fail that means even less competition for their own privately educated offspring...these folks are cunning.
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ielts_professional1992



Joined: 06 Sep 2014
Posts: 16

PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

why would people want a phillippine teacher theyre a third world country everyone knows vietnam wants to develop.vietnams probably the poorest country in the world to be honest that iv ever been to and i dont see what they got to learn from other poverty countries like filipines,instead they should look to countries like singapore or england dont shoot the messenger
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