The Seoul education office this week announced a plan to pull out nearly all native-speaking English teachers from public middle and high schools in the city. It cited low cost-effectiveness of hiring them at secondary schools where the focus of English class is put on reading and grammar.
The measure will not affect native teachers employed at elementary schools, where education officials say English lessons are mostly speaking-based.
It is necessary for the education office to reconsider the policy, which we see is based on reasoning that goes against the very purpose of deploying native speakers as assistant English teachers at public schools.
English speaking lessons are equally or more needed at secondary schools. Middle and high school students should be allowed to continue having opportunities to learn from native-speaking teachers to become more fluent in the language beyond basic expressions. Few would believe that speaking lessons at elementary schools are enough to shift the focus of English education at secondary schools to reading and grammar.
Instead of trying to calculate the cost-effectiveness of native teachers, it may be better for education authorities to guide secondary schools on working out more programs to better utilize them and thus help students further improve their English-speaking skills.
The country’s primary and secondary schools began hiring native English speakers as assistant teachers in 1995 to enhance lessons in the practical use of the language. The measure was also motivated to help narrow the gap in English learning opportunities between children from affluent and poor households.
The English divide in Korean society remains wide along different income levels.
According to a report released in June, less than 20 percent of students from households with a monthly income below 1 million won ($880) receive private English tutoring while the corresponding figure exceeds 70 percent among students from families earning more than 5 million won per month.
The gap in spending on private English education widens to as much as 10-fold between households with monthly earnings above 7 million won and those below 1 million won.
In recent years, contradicting views have been raised over the effect of teaching by native English instructors at middle and high schools. While some argue it is not cost-effective as most English lessons at secondary schools are allocated to reading and grammar, others say it has been useful in enhancing students’ English skills through public education.
The Seoul education office, partly pushed by city councilors who further slashed its reduced budget for paying native teachers, has leaned more toward the critical view than other regional authorities.
Under its plan, only 20 to 30 out of about 180 native-speaking teachers in the city’s high schools will remain at Seoul Global High School and 10 other schools designated for special English education by the end of next month. All of some 260 native teachers at middle schools will have their contracts terminated by next February. Those who want to stay in the country will be redeployed to elementary schools after a screening process.
Even if agreeing to the cutback plan, its implementation schedule appears too hasty to prepare for the massive departure of native teachers.
According to a study conducted last year, only 26.7 percent of Korean teachers in Seoul are capable of teaching their students only in English, with the proportion further down to 18.5 percent at middle schools and 11 percent in high schools.
To back up their decision, Seoul education officials citied another finding of the study that showed more than six out of every 10 parents preferred Korean teachers who “have a good command of English” over native speakers. Though the number of young Korean teachers with fluency in English is increasing, it is hardly expected that the large number of outgoing native instructors can be fully replaced by qualified Korean teachers in such a short period of time.
The cutback is also in contrast to measures taken by education offices in North Chungcheong Province and other regions to increase native-speaking English teachers and expand lessons to draw the best from them.
Seoul education officials should be reminded that the cost-effective approach without proper complementary measures might do more harm than good. Particularly, it would further disadvantage students from less privileged families, who would otherwise have no other chance of learning from qualified native English teachers.
