By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

Elementary and secondary schools plan to create a blacklist of "incompetent" native English speakers and to ask immigration not to reissue English-teaching or E-2 visas to them.

Also, the schools will share information on individual assessments of foreign teachers among themselves. About 23,000 instructors are working in Korea, among them 8,000 are at the schools.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced Tuesday it has made several measures to improve the quality of native English speakers for conversation classes at schools.

The ministry will form an association of officials from city and provincial education offices nationwide to chart policy for the teachers.

The National Institute for International Education (NIIED) will team up with the association to evaluate their performance. But it has not yet made public what objective criteria will be used in concluding whether they are competent or not.

NIIED, which runs the English Program in Korea, or EPIK, will play a central role in operating training programs for the foreigners.

The government also plans to mandate new native teachers to participate in training programs for 10 days or more. During the programs, they can learn about skills used in teaching and managing classes along with Korean culture.

Currently, about 6,000 of the teachers placed at elementary and secondary schools for English conversation classes have participated in the training programs.

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr