More on Foreign Teachers in Elementary Schools
While it may have missed almost everyone in the ROC, the MOE announced this week that they will be postponing their introduction of foreign teachers into elementary schools until January 2004. The stated reason for the delay is SARS.
So secretive is the program that no one knows anything about it; including where the teachers will come from. Unlike JALT, EPIC and NET, the MOE has not set up their own recruiting procedures. Instead, they are relying on the assistance of diplomatic representatives from English-speaking nations. That's right; the AIT and all those other offices have been asked to assistance the MOE in developing this program. My understand is (I qualify this; my understanding up until SARS) that these offices have made no attempt to hire anyone. Why would they?
While the initial announcement of the program stated clearly that no local teachers would be hired, all this may be changing. A good friend of mine, whose girlfriend's uncle is an MOE official, told me that the uncle had asked him to teach in the program when it develops. He thought the compensation package described to him would be acceptable, but decided not to leave his current job.
Despite his satisfaction with what was offered him, he was in no way offered the huge package that many local teachers seem to believe this program will be paying. The pay package was in the 60,000's. He makes considerably more than that at his current job teaching kindergarten supplemented by children's classes in the evening. The idea of short hours and summer vacations sounded extremely appealing to him. If in fact anyone gets the top of the scale, the number of people will be very small.
With this amount of confusion, it is entirely possible that the MOE will do some amount of heir hiring locally, especially since their recruiting procedures seem so poorly organized. I suspect that they will have no choice. If you are interested in this, you could contact the MOE http://www.moe.gov.tw/
Bear in mind that public schools are not likely to be any friendlier to foreign teachers than colleges and universities. The huge variation in working conditions is likely to reproduce itself here as well. Schools in Taiwan are used to the idea that teachers work overtime, conduct extracurricular activities, and generally do whatever it takes to assure the success of their students. In a sense, it's not much different from back home. The MOE appears to have no orientation developed, so don't be surprised if you start hearing horror stories once foreign teachers start getting placed.
7:54:08 AM 
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