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[voltaire]

Looking for a new position recently and chatting to friends who have done the same in the last six months, the consensus is that ESL teaching here is going down.

The English course schools (i.e., EEC,EEP,ILP etc...) are hard pressed to find students for the 4:00 to 7:00 time slot which was formerly their peak hours because of the ever increasing amount of traffic. People just can't spare the time to make it to the center. As a result there are far fewer full-time jobs available for ESL teachers, and so less sponsorship visas for expat teachers.

Another factor in the decline in the fortunes of the English Courses is the rise of the so-called 'National Plus' Schools. I have observed several of these institutions at firsthand now, and quite a few more at second. National Minus would be a more appropriate name as the state of all teaching, let alone the English is a travesty.

The fact that they are regular schools for children run on the basis of pure profit is very telling. I wonder that it isn't against the law! It is certainly against any moral law. I don't really want to give examples. I have done in my 'High/Scope Too Weird' thread, and I suppose you readers will have plenty of horror stories of your own to tell.

From the ESL teacher's POV the National Minuses often pay better than the English Courses, but you have to work traditional school hours rather than the laidback 3:00 to 9:00 p.m. schedule of an ILP-type of school, and are responsible for the little souls and mental well being of actual human children - all day long.

But what I and my colleagues find is that the students who attend Natinal Minus schools and who also attend even an Englis First course speak far better English than those who just attend a National Minus, where thet just go ahead and speak Indonesian all day.

The English Courses still do a better job because the National Minus schools are mainly staffed by low paid Indonesians who teach their subjects in Bahasa while only the ESL teacher is speaking English throughout his/her class.

I worked in one place where the constant campaigns to get the students to speak English inevitably failed because as they students told me (their ESL teacher) "We would speak English, if the teachers did."

I knowof one particular school wheree the high school chemistry teacher would giggle when he said 'Good Morning' to me because it so amused him tho hear himself speaking English, and he and the others received a measly Rp 2,500,000 a month while the students' parents were shelling out $2500 every three months - and there were nearly 1,000 students.

Hence do I despair for the future of English teaching and more especially learning Indonesia.