Expats
The teacher's secret
By Wang Wei and Alexandra Leyton Espinoza (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-22 11:51
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Although Michelle doesn't have a working visa or a background in teaching, the Brazilian teaches English full time to a class of 3-year-old children at a kindergarten in Wangjing, Chaoyang district.
"Most foreigners I know in Beijing are involved in some kind of English teaching activities. Some of them have a working visa and some don't," she said. "The easiest job a foreigner can find when they first come to Beijing is to teach English."
With a large number of unqualified foreigners teaching illegally in Beijing, the rights of children who are sent to bilingual kindergartens are being compromised. Only 21 out of 1,300 kindergartens in Beijing are allowed to hire foreigners as teachers, according to a list on the website of the Beijing foreign expert bureau, an organization in charge of foreigners working in China.
Zhang Yue, a human resources officer from the Oxford Baby Kindergarten who has been recruiting foreign teachers for four years, said numerous kindergartens hire foreigners who don't have working visas or any preschool education background.
"Those teachers don't have proper teaching experience and in addition, kids have to constantly adapt to new teachers. It negatively affects their learning," she said.
Chen Shengli, father of a 4-year -old boy studying at Beijing 21st Century Experimental Kindergarten, told METRO he thinks an experienced and qualified English teacher is vital for his boy to learn and improve his English.
However, some parents hold the opposite view.
Sun Ling, mother of a 4-year-old girl studying at Fortune Fountain Kindergarten, said the kindergarten only had one foreign English teacher and she gave classes twice a week.
"It doesn't matter if the foreign teacher has preschool education experience or not, it would be better for my girl to learn English from a native speaker than a Chinese," she said.
The regulations on foreign employment in China stipulates that in order to get a working visa, a foreigner has to be above the age of 18, and be employed by an organization authorized to hire foreigners.
Lin Song, a press officer from the administration of exit and entry of Beijing public security bureau, said cracking down on companies illegally hiring foreigners has always been a focus of their work.
Lin said companies violating the law on the entry and exit of foreigners in China will be fined 5,000 to 50,000 yuan ($730 to $7,300) and foreign individuals who work at a company in China without a working visa will see their contracts terminated and be fined up to 1,000 yuan.
In May this year, a kindergarten in Dongcheng district was investigated and later fined 30,000 yuan for hiring four foreign teachers illegally.
The four foreigners were also fined 1,000 yuan each. None of them had any teaching qualifications or teaching experience, according to a press release from the administration.
Furthermore, some foreigners with a proper working visa and teaching qualifications are discriminated against in many kindergartens simply because they have Asian faces.
Amy Tiu, 25, who is fluent in English, was educated at an exclusive English private school in Indonesia and worked for a development program in the United Nations, appears to be highly qualified to teach at any school.
Her looks, on the other hand, don't go well with what parents or the school expect of an English teacher.
"I applied for jobs as an English teacher, having better qualifications than others and still didn't get the job. I was told that my Asian looks would make the parents assume the quality of my English was lower," she said.
When Tiu finally got a job as an English teacher in a private kindergarten in Zhongguancun, her salary became another issue.
"They told me that my salary was lower since I look Asian. I had to finance my own flights home to get a working visa, while others received this as part of their packages," she said.
"This school didn't incorporate any clear structure in their teaching and employed under-qualified teachers just because they looked western," she said.
"I feel sorry for the kids who got this education. Some didn't learn anything."
Zhang said for Oxford Baby Kindergarten and most other bilingual kindergartens she knows, one of the employment requirements is they hire people with a typical European or American face to cater to parents' needs.
"Most Chinese parents believe only blond, white people with blue eyes are native speakers and their children can only learn to speak good English from native speakers," she said.
A teacher surnamed Hu from Beihai kindergarten, one of the best kindergartens in Beijing, said kindergartens need a transparent foreign teachers' recruitment mechanism to solve the problem.
"Malpractice in the job market for foreign teachers is quite common, so parents prefer their children studying with teachers with a typical European or American face over an Asian face," she said.
