Hire qualified English teachers

With the increasing need for English tutoring in China, foreign teachers, especially native English speakers, are widely seen as a major indicator when evaluating a English training school. Therefore, higher standards must apply to the selection of foreign tutors in order to screen out those that are not qualified to be tutors, says an article on Guangzhou Daily. Excerpts:

Foreign language teachers in Beijing are now required to show genuine language teaching qualifications or have five years or more relevant work experience.

This policy change is seen as a necessary response to the current chaotic situation in the private English teaching industry, particularly the poor management of foreign teachers. On the one hand, the tuition fees can be unreasonably high, simply because there are Western faces in the class; on the other hand, incompetent foreigners are able to exploit the loopholes in supervision and fail to deliver the goods in teaching.

A native speaker is unlikely to be capable of teaching his or her mother tongue without proper training. However, to lower their costs of hiring teaching staff and to gain instant popularity, some private English training institutions are willing to hire any Western expats and rebrand them as professional tutors, regardless of their teaching qualifications.

Of course, unqualified foreign teachers are not the only problem, there needs to be consistent supervision over the management of these institutions as well. Private training institutions are designed to be a useful addition to public education, while serious problems such as child abuse in such schools have shattered parents' faith in them, due to the looser restrictions.

Therefore, to make sure all private schools enroll qualified foreign teachers, parents and students should be entitled to supervise them and have access to the teachers' qualifications.