By Cho Jae-hyon
Should Korea continue to hire foreign English teachers at public schools? It is a complicated question. The answers will differ depending on whom you ask.
Policymakers are cautious or secretive about the matter. They almost without exception, say they plan to trim the number of foreign teachers not drastically in a short period of time but gradually over the long term.
But long term is an ambiguous phrase. What seems clear at this moment is that the authorities are reluctant to make public the timetable or other details of the reduction plan, saying they are concerned that any hasty revelation would only weaken workplace morale.
That may sound considerate of the teachers? Not necessarily. Rather, their ambiguous attitude is heightening job insecurity for many foreign teachers who want to stay here indefinitely.
The teachers, extending their work contracts on a yearly basis, are in a situation where they are not much different from other non-permanent Korean workers who employers think are expendable.
The education authorities in Gyeonggi Province are apparently leading the move to trim foreign teachers they have hired under the Gyeonggi English Program in Korea (GEPIK).
A recent veto of extra funding by the Gyeonggi Provincial Council, which was needed to pay foreign teachers in the latter half of the year, makes their job security even more precarious.
At the behest of the education office, many schools in the province have not been renewing contracts with their foreign English teachers, driving hundreds of them out of work.
The problem is that they are not properly informed of the termination of the contracts in advance. Ignorant of what’s happening underneath the surface at their schools, the foreign teachers are often given notice of contract termination at the last minute.
Of the 1,119 teachers recruited under the GEPIK program for this year, 300 have already been let go. Many of the remaining 819 teachers are unlikely to have their contracts extended beyond September in the wake of the latest budget cut by the provincial council.
Shown the door, these foreign teachers will have to look for jobs at places other than public schools.
Unmistakable in the writings posted by these teachers on their online forums and communities is their frustration with the Korean authorities for what they call dishonesty.
Uncertainty sparks rumors. As officials are not forthright about how they are going to run the program to recruit foreign teachers, rumors have been circulating that public schools in Gyeonggi will hire them for only the next couple of years and phase out the program afterwards.
Since the mid 2000s, they have aggressively recruited foreign teachers to upgrade English education at public schools. They hoped the program, though costly, will help students speak English fluently once they graduate from high school.
It’s hard to measure by how much these foreign teachers have strengthened English conversation skills. Some institutes have researched the efficacy of the program but produced no reliable outcome so far.
It costs about 40 million won for one foreign teacher a year. In Gyeonggi, the annual costs to hire 2,000 foreign teachers amounts to 80 billion won, which breaks down to about 40 billion won for those picked under GEPIK and the other half for those recruited by respective schools and districts.
The authorities now say that they cannot continue to fund the expenditure and need to restructure the program, moving to replace foreign teachers with less-costly Koreans.
A senior official from the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, who oversees the GEPIK program, says that his office will make sure it will secure a sufficient budget next year to maintain the number of foreign teachers at the current level of 819.
Asked about the rumor that jobs for foreign teachers would disappear in two or three years, he said it’s not true.
“We will have to trim the number of foreign teachers gradually in the long term, replacing them with Koreans. But we will not phase out the program abruptly.” However, the authorities have had their credibility undermined by freezing the hiring of foreign teachers in a manner that is not considerate of the teachers, making them hostile toward their host country in some cases. Tens of thousands of foreign teachers could become either goodwill ambassadors of Korea or hold a major grudge against the country.
It’s a matter of jobs that educate our children. Not only for the teachers but also for their pupils, the program to recruit and lay off the foreign teachers should be more transparent and predictable.