Page 14 - ELG1601 Nov Issue 441

Page 10 ELjobs November 2016

Issue 10 | November 2016

The danger

of gender

inbalance

Nicola Prentis proves that gender Brand marketing, talent recruitment, student enrolment
equality in ELT is not yet a reality Call to discuss advertising options +44 (0)20 3735 9672

ere’s a thought experi- And the gender balance of the
ment. Close your eyes audience? Based on attendee fig- Native speakers out of fashion
Hand picture a room full ures from Iatefl, 60 per cent are
of EFL teachers at a conference, female. This is also reflected in
waiting for the opening plenary the breakdown of (mostly native
to start. In walks the speaker, speaker) Celta and Delta candi-
and the room goes quiet. In your dates. In the largely non-native Matt Salusbury explains how plummeting school enrolments and
imaginary room, how much of global primary and secondary
the audience are female? What sectors the number is likely to be negative perceptions have made native speakers rarer in Korean schools
gender is the speaker? much higher. So, even if ELT ple-
After a year of counting ple- naries are on average only 5 per
nary speakers at ELT conferences cent off equality (though 15 per ative-speaker English of native speakers hasn’t been
worldwide, I can tell you that the cent away from being truly repre- teachers are becoming that effective. In the words of
reality is that 55 per cent of ple- sentative), we are yet to reach the Nrarer in South Korea’s Kim Joeng-keun, the man from
nary speakers are male. And that stage where gender equality is the state-school classrooms. This the ministry, putting ‘teachers
42 per cent of conferences have default assumption. decline seems to be driven pri- with the right talent in the right
more male plenary speakers than So why do conference organ- marily by plummeting school position is more efficient than
women, 32.5 per cent have more isers think this is happening? A enrolments and the accom- merely increasing the number of
women and 23 per cent have common complaint is that it’s panying financial squeeze. foreign teachers’.
equal numbers. harder to get publishers to pay But concerns over the ‘lower An influential 2012 Seoul
The picture is not uniformly to send female speakers. Another than expected efficiency’ of Metropolitan survey of well
negative. Iatefl, for example, has belief is that women are more native-speakers teaching on over 20,000 students and 12,000
worked hard to be representa- likely to turn invitations down. public-sector English courses is parents showed that over half
tive. ‘We try to lead by example,’ Without actual figures on the also a factor. of students and 62 per cent of
president Marjorie Rosenberg numbers, we can only speculate. English teachers’ association parent preferred ‘Korean teach-
told me. ‘Iatefl has supported Perhaps women’s refusals are Kotesol reports that Korea has ers with high English-speaking
the Fair List since its inception only noticed more than men’s. Or ‘among the lowest birth rates in skills’ over native-speaker
in 2013. Since 2000 we have maybe when a man turns down the world’, with ‘schools clos- English teachers. Lower-level
had 43 female plenary speakers an invitation, it’s assumed that ing’ and hiring of teachers ‘being students in particular found
and 39 men. The Iatefl trustees he’s busy. reduced … at all education levels’ it hard to communicate with
have more women than men at It is certainly not the case that (see the October 2016 Gazette’s native speakers, which affected
the moment and this is reflected women don’t put themselves for- Asia supplement, page ii). Less student motivation and con-
as well in executive and special ward – when Innovate ELT invited funding for public schools fidence. An unnamed North
interest group committees.’ plenary applications, as opposed nationally means ‘municipal and Chungcheong Province Office
Catherine Walter, 2016 win- to directly inviting speakers, they provincial offices of education official told Korea Times
ner of the ELTons Lifetime had a plenary ratio of six female no longer have enough money his province had drastically
Achievement Award, says the speakers to three male. to recruit foreign teachers’, as Courtesy Watchsmart cut native-speaker English
situation has improved since she Let us go back to the thought Kim Joeng-keun, the Ministry teacher numbers too, due to the
became the first female chair of experiment. I am going to guess of Education’s deputy director ‘increasing availability of well-
Iatefl some 25 years ago. She that, in terms of audience, the for teacher recruitment, told the educated English-speaking
suggested that the overall fig- room in your mind’s eye reflected Korea Times. ON THE SLIDE As the number of Korean schoolchildren declines, Korean teachers’.
ures probably conceal ‘wide the stats above. And the gender Within Korea’s public- so does the number of English native-speaker teachers Some of the native-speaker
variations between countries and of the imaginary guru giving the school sector, the number of English teachers seem to be
between organisations.’ opening plenary? I’d guess male. native-speaker English teach- public schools, down from just have at least one native-speaker moving into the hogwan sector.
Closer examination of the In fact, when Leicester Uni- ers has dropped almost 42 per over 8,500 in 2012. English teacher. Robert Dickey, past president
year’s data does suggest this. versity’s Russ Mayne and I cent since 2011, according to According to Kotesol, the Developments since then have of Kotesol, came up with an
British Council Algeria this year surveyed 520 people and asked data cited by the Times. In the total number of English teachers rendered native-speaker teachers estimate for the Gazette of the
featured an all-male plenary line them to think of ‘big names’ in capital, the Seoul Metropolitan across sectors – private language less necessary in Korea. Travel number of hogwans and pri-
up. IH Barcelona hasn’t had ELT, only three of the top twenty Office of Education’s native schools and universities, as well to English-speaking countries vate language schools teaching
an equal mix in any of the six were women. There’s a long way speaker workforce is down 43 as public schools – is falling, has become easier, and most par- English who would consider hir-
years I could find recorded on to go to adjust the bias in the per cent on five years ago, while with fewer than 15,000 E2 work ents are prepared to pay to send ing an expatriate at somewhere
its website. Ask to comment, gender we automatically associ- Gyeonggi Province (the area visas issued nationwide for for- their children to after-school between 4,000 and 6,000 nation-
IH Barcelona said, ‘Our confer- ate with guru status. n surrounding Seoul) has 63 per eign English teachers from the English clubs and hogwans ally, with most of these having
ence has earned a reputation for cent fewer native speakers in ‘big seven’ English-speaking (cram schools) to interact with a teaching staff of five or fewer.
quality and this is the one and Nicola Prentis is a writer its schools than it did five years countries in 2015, down from native speakers (often in more (This estimate’s based on the lat-
only factor we take into consid- based in Girona, Spain for as ago. Incheon – the port and air- 30,000 in 2008. informal settings) to supplement est – 2014 – ministry figures.)
eration with speakers, plenary or long as Brexit allows. She has port for Seoul – has shed 71 per Back in 2008 then President the more formal school English There are also more opportuni-
otherwise. It might interest you authored graded readers, Clil cent of its native-speaker teach- Lee Myung-bak’s administration classes they receive from rela- ties for native speakers in the
to know that at our 2016 confer- and speaking skills books, ers in the same period. As of recruited native-speaker English tively bilingual Korean teachers university sector, and Dickey
ence we had sixteen talks led by and has contributed to the early October 2016 there were teachers as national policy, while of English. estimates some 300 tertiary sec-
women and nineteen by men. Not Wall Street Journal and just under 5,000 native English Seoul Metropolitan pledged in But another consideration is a tor schools employ at least one
quite 50/50 but not far off it.’ Cosmo online teachers working in the nation’s 2009 that all their schools would perception that widespread use expatriate teacher. n

p14-15_ELG1116.indd 1 10/21/2016 7:11:53 PM