A better class of teacher

Rising demand

Data from the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs show that China currently needs at least 100,000 foreign teachers and the number is expected to rise. That has resulted in a mixture of good, bad and indifferent expats flocking into the teaching market, where competence varies greatly between institutions and different parts of the country.

Last year, China Business View in Xi'an, the capital of the northwestern province of Shaanxi, conducted an investigation into eight expat English teachers in the city; three worked for legitimate language schools, while the others were introduced to their students by friends or via the internet. None of them was able to provide proof of their qualifications, the report said.

Some of the teachers had strong accents when they spoke English because they came from Russia or Africa, while some had worked in nursing or other professions in their home countries and had no teaching qualifications or experience.

Zhang Fucheng, vice-president of Yanshan University and a political adviser, said many schools and establishments hire foreign students or tourists without gaining the approval of the education authorities or departments related to foreign experts' affairs. They do so partly because they find the application procedure too complicated and there are no punishments, even if the illegality is uncovered.

Many schools employ unqualified teachers to meet the soaring demand from a new generation of parents who want their children to have English lessons as early as possible and are willing to pay the high fees demanded.

"Almost all the students in my daughter's class are taking English courses after school, and most have attended classes taught by a foreign teacher. My daughter started learning English in kindergarten. A foreign teacher came once a week to play with the kids, assisted by a Chinese teacher, but it was hard to gauge her influence on the younger children," said Li Jinhui, the mother of an 11-year-old in Beijing.

Later, Li transferred her daughter to an English school that doesn't employ foreign staff because she believed the expat teachers were not worth the high fees－usually more than 20,000 yuan ($3,000) a year. However, she said many parents still send their children to institutions with foreign staff "because they want to provide the best for their children, and maybe those who do not speak English themselves still trust a foreign face.

"Rather than have a nonnative speaker teaching English to my kid, I prefer my daughter to learn English from a Chinese teacher at a credible training institution. She can hone her language skills when she has the opportunity to study abroad in the future," she said.