Thailand Prepares To Lose English Language Teachers

Thailand Prepares To Lose English Language Teachers And Ajarns

Thai Foreign Education System Update - 2015

What's Going On With The Teachers?

Planning to cull English Foreign Language Teachers by replacing them with the Thai English Language Teachers. In a perfect world, this would be a great idea, to get rid of all the rabble that calls themselves a 'teacher'.

This isn't a perfect world, the students need a native teacher, so they can understand the tonnes and intonations of the English language – and for fun! Asian teachers are often criticized for their tough approach on students, take China for example, work work work, no play! Thailand follows China's lead, they only care about the grades. The number 1 job of an TEFL teacher, is to provide a class based on language skills rather than grammar. But, apparently the ministry of Education (Thailand) doesn't believe in this.

Great Students need Great Teachers

Thailand's plan is to Recruit the British Council trainers/teachers to teach up to 500 thai teachers that are proficient in English. This scheme is aptly named 'train-the-teachers'. These 'trained teachers' then will go back to the local government schools and 'train-the-teachers' on how to teach English language. This in itself would be poorly ran as they are planning to train these teachers in a small amount of time.

Teach English in Thailand v Teaching English in China

Deputy Education Minister Teerakiat Jareonsettasin has stated the following:

"A group of teachers [will] join the programme [and] will be selected from all over the country. They have to be very good in English because after the six-week training programme, they must be role models and trainers for other English teachers in their schools or schools near their area."

Why are the Government doing this you may ask?

...well to Save money. Foreign Teacher earns sometimes triple the amount of a Thai teacher. For example a native English teachers salary (starting) could be 33,000thb and compare that to the 6000thb that young Thai teachers receive, then you can understand their reasoning.

As Thai teachers get older, their salaries rise until they are on the same amount as the foreign teacher. One of the reasons the foreign teachers salary is so high, is because otherwise 'teachers' wouldn't come to Thailand and teach the students.

Find Out About The Process of Teaching in Thailand

Realistically – would teachers engage in this? Probably not, Thailand has a culture of 'losing face' and this happens quite easily. If another Thai teacher, tries to teach the Thai-English teacher spoken English, then the Thai-English teacher won't be happy and won't bother learning.

What can they do to improve the standard of teachers that they receive?

Many of the teachers from native countries give the English Teaching Community a bad name, through laziness, and bad behavior. They show lack of respect by not showing up to work, and create havoc in the small towns that they inhabit, or quite cruelly use the local girls, to make themselves feel better.

There are genuine foreign language teachers out there, the one's who go the extra mile. But sadly, as is the case at the moment. The decent teachers will stop working in Thailand, the students will then be left with some degenerate.

How Can They Improve The Quality of Ajarns?

Thailand could employ the same system as China, whereas, all Native English Teachers, need to have a degree and at least 2 years work experience. They also need to be a lot tougher on Visa regulations, for example in Isaan (north east Thailand), there are many teachers working illegally. This year they changed the working visa regulations, and made it more difficult to obtain double entry tourist visa's, hopefully this will not satisfy the young-hippy-traveller brigade that only teach with the means to earn money for beer.

Thailand really do need the native teachers, and we hope that this plan to train-the-teacher will be somewhat effective, even if it only proves that this whole strategy is wrong. Time will only tell, and with the implantation of ASEAN, Thailand might just realize how important native teachers are.