By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Education authorities have been struggling to determine ``reasonable wages'' for Indian English teachers, who will be assigned to schools in September. The prevalent view is that they will receive less than teachers from other English-speaking countries.
The government decided last year to open up native English teacher positions to India.
Currently nationals from the U.S., Canada and five other native speaking countries are eligible.
Under the new rule, Indians with teaching licenses in their home country will be allowed to teach English conversation classes at elementary and secondary schools.
Teachers from English speaking countries can earn some 2 million won per month, if they have a bachelor's degree, and in some cases monthly housing subsidies of up to 500,000 won.
The monthly wage for those with teaching licenses is set at about 2.2 million won, excluding housing subsidies.
Officials at the city and provincial education offices, which are in charge of hiring native English speakers, formed a consensus that they might not give Indian English teachers the same wages given to other native speaking teachers.
Kong Soon-taek, supervisor of the South Chungcheong Provincial Official of Education, said ``It is true that many Korean parents are unfamiliar with Indian teachers.''
``It would be tough for Indian teachers to compete with other native English speaking teachers, unless they take lower salaries,'' he added.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology plans to poll each city and provincial education office about the ``demand'' for Indian teachers before determining the number of those to be invited by the end of March.
The ministry is currently discussing the wage issue with the Indian embassy here. The embassy says the ministry has assured it that the terms would be ``comparable'' to what is presently offered to other teachers.
``Indian teachers are competent and qualified and will do a good job of teaching English. Koreans can understand the real quality of Indian teachers during the pilot project next year,'' an embassy official said.
The introduction of Indian teachers to Korea has been made possible after the two countries signed a comprehensive economic partnership agreement this year for the strengthening of bilateral ties between the two countries.