Page 31 - ELG2001 Jan Issue 468

El•Gazette 468.qxp_El•Gazette 468 08/01/2020 15:58 Page 31

FEATURES & COMMENT
Where are all the dominate the educational rankings produced
After all, Singapore and Estonia not only
by the OECD, but they also ace international
native speakers? English language tests. And as for the Dutch,
only one nationality outperforms them on
TOEFL – the Irish.
The only country in which it seems these
teachers would be welcome to teach at a
British school is, in fact, Britain.
Melanie Butler asks why international schools So why has this native speaker myth so
infected international schools? Because the
have swallowed the native speaker myth majority of parents enroling their children in
such schools are not native speakers of
English themselves.
WIKIMEDIA and one reason their parents enrol them in
Local children now outnumber expatriates,
an English medium school is so they can
master the language.
So, the super-rich of the world send their
children to an English-speaking country for
their education. The merely rich enrol them
in a local international school. While
everyone else who can scrape together the
money sends them to the local language
centre.
Why not just retrain more native speaker
EFL teachers to work in international
schools? It’s already happening. In China,
they can already teach the subject of their
first degree in local bilingual schools. And a
growing number of EFL teachers are taking
International schools face a shortage of native English speakers
qualifications like the International PGCEs,
which enable them to work in international
nternational schools are the latest The Chinese government now estimates schools, though not, thus far, in schools back
employers to face a shortage of native that more than 250,000 of the 400,000 foreign home.
English speakers, according to a story on teachers do not meet these requirements and The money is better. The job is more
IBritish website tes.com. Latest estimates are therefore working illegally. prestigious. You even get things like pensions
suggest the sector will need This is hardly a surprise. If every single and paid flights home for the holidays. But in
1 million teachers by 2029, up from the citizen who left Australia, Britain, Ireland the unlikely event that every Tefler wanted to
current level of 450,000, the article reports. and New Zealand to live abroad in 2018 had do it, there still would not be enough to solve
“I have calculated that there are just over been graduates with Tefl certificates going to the international school problem.
4.5 million teachers in the UK, US, China to teach English, they couldn’t have How many are there? Tefl workforce
Australia and Ireland, the traditional replaced the ‘illegal’ teachers. statistics are practically non-existent, but
recruiting countries for native-English- Native speakerism has dogged the EFL when it comes to the British at least we can
speaking international school staff,” Liz world for decades. It’s a myth based on the make an educated guess.
Free, director of the International premise that if most children acquire their L1 There are 5.5 million British citizens living
Leadership Academy, told Tes reporter from parents who are native speakers, it abroad, with an average age of 53, according
Claudia Civinini. logically follows that anyone can acquire an to the InterNation survey of expatriates.
Some 13 per cent of them are teachers,
academics or otherwise involved in
Singapore and Estonia not only dominate education, giving us a total of 700,000.
the educational rankings produced by the Roughly a third, some 230,000, live and work
in schools and universities in other English-
OECD but they ace international English speaking countries. A further 150,000 are
working in international schools. If we say
language tests. another 50,000 are in the University or
Further Education sectors, that leaves a
“Will one in four teachers from the UK, L2, but only from a native speaker. Not only maximum of 270,000 in EFL. If you throw in
US, Australia and Ireland really work on the is the logic dodgy, there is no empirical all the other English-speaking countries, you
international circuit annually?” asked Free, evidence we can find to support it – at least can easily double that. Though, given the
who is based in the Netherlands. “Probably for children over the age of three. But you backpack nature of much of the EFL market,
not.” can see why parents, and governments, might not all these native speakers will be graduates
All this will sound familiar to EFL school believe it. or hold a Tefl certificate.
owners, especially those in China. At the Why the same myth exists in international Still, there may still be just about the right
beginning of 2019, the world’s largest EFL schools is harder to explain. Who on earth number of qualified native-speaker Teflers in
market introduced a legal requirement for all could object to a Singaporean teaching maths the world needed to staff China’s current
foreign teachers in the country’s 50,000 in English or an Estonian teaching biology in language school requirements or to keep the
language schools to hold a passport from an English? Why shouldn’t a Dutch primary international schools in business for five years
English-speaking country, as well as a first specialist work in a British school in, say, or so.
degree and a Tefl certificate. Dubai? There’s certainly not enough to do both.
editorial@elgazette.com 31