In a recent press-release the Thai Education Minister, Nataphol Teepsuwan, has met with ambassadors to foreign English-speaking countries for help in recruiting an additional 10,000 teachers for the improvement of the education system in Thailand.
This is a fair statement and I am not getting Mr Teepsuwan's case for wanting this. From what I can tell he is one of the few people in the Thai government that I can say that I actually think he is genuinely interested in helping Thai people. I think he is going to have a very tough job accomplishing this though and I say this through experience.
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I was a teacher in Thai schools on and off for about 5 years. Some of the times, especially at the beginning, I can say that I enjoyed the job and things were good. However, over the years with increased meddling on the part of the government, the various bureaucrats kept "fixing a functioning system until it was broken."
Problem 1: Crowded classrooms
The first job I had was for a grade 6 class consisting of around 20 students. In an effort to cut costs, by the time I left the system had first been changed to classrooms filled with over 40 students. The system was made even worse in the last months (and eventually lead to me leaving the profession altogether) when they reduced the number of teachers and simply made us travel to teach multiple classes, each with 40+ students.
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The amount of hours we worked remained about the same, but let me tell you difficult it is to learn the names of as well as the strengths and weaknesses of nearly 200 students. It isn't difficult: It is impossible.
Problem 2: horrible pay and no benefits
When I started teaching back in 2006 the monthly pay for a first year foreign teacher was 25,000 Baht. I checked with a friend who still teaches in the same school district I was in and found out the pay is now 28,000 Baht. A 3,000 Baht increase over the course of 14 years is outpaced by inflation. Therefore, new teachers today are actually making less than I was back then.
Getting by on 25,000 Baht was a bit of a struggle (25,000B is about $750) . Unless you lived like a pauper, you almost always ran out of money by the end of the month.
We were also not given any health insurance, or any other benefits.
We still did it anyway because it enabled us to pull down a salary and remain in this country for an extended period of time without visa hassles. However, once the job became more difficult because of "problem number 1," most of the experienced teachers moved on.
Problem number 3: The requirements keep getting more stringent
Back when i first started the requirements were that you needed to have a college degree in anything and would be assigned to a provisional teaching position that could be revoked in the first 3 months if you did not perform up to standards. What these standards were are not clearly defined but basically you had to make some progress in education of the students as defined by your work colleagues and the administration.
Fair enough right?
Over the years I have seen the list of qualifications get longer and longer. Now you need all of these things
- A TEFL certification that you pay for yourself
- You need to attend a Thai Culture course that again, you pay for yourself
- You have to apply for and receive a teaching license that again, you pay for yourself (a massive racket because the school actually arranges this and collects the fees themselves)
- Your degree needs to be in something related to education such as English, Education, Literature, or basically whatever else the local headmaster determines is appropriate.
I will admit that in the early years I worked with a bunch of teachers who had fake college degrees. I would say about half of the staff had fake credentials they had purchased on Koh Sahn Road in Bangkok. Really good fakes to be fair.
These people, by and large, were actually better educators than the people who had genuine degrees. I don't know why that is, but it just happened to be that way.
Problem number 4: Certain nationalities need not apply
This changes from time-to-time and is based on the whims of some politician that probably doesn't even speak English very well themselves.
I have seen these nations being banned from Teaching in Thailand.
- Scotland
- Ireland
- South Africa
- basically anyone who is black regardless of nationality
As far as I know the South African ban is still in effect and there is no justification for this provided.
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I'm not trying to say there are no black teachers, but I can assure you, if you are black, your chances of being hired are NOT GOOD
As far as the ban on anyone black, I can assure you this is a very real situation. I knew a guy with a Master's degree in Education, was working on his PhD online, and had worked with the F**King United Nations but he couldn't find a job. Why? It was never stated to him but it was because he was black.
In an extremely insulting encounter in Bangkok, he was offered a job.... as the sports teacher. My friend Louis weighed about 120 lbs maybe, if he was wearing a backpack and carrying a rock, had never played sports in his life, and didn't even care for sports.
There is another story here about a woman of Indian descent who had 20 years of teaching experience in Australia, who couldn't find a job at all.
Problem number 5: Every other country in this region offers MUCH better remuneration
If you teach in Vietnam, Laoe, Myannmar, Malaysia, and even extremely poor Cambodia, you are going to get a significantly better salary than you will find in Thailand. This is the reason why Thailand needs so many more teachers at the moment. Everyone who thought of this as a career moved on to countries that will pay what they are worth. No one really comes to teach in the school systems here unless they are employed by an international program and these systems make their own rules, and have excellent salaries.
There are other factors of course such as not being allowed to have a visa to actually search for the right job for you and also the rigmarole of running around collecting the mountain of paperwork and stamps necessary to actually acquire a work visa and work permit but I think that these factors are going to make the Education Minister's task of DOUBLING the amount of teachers in this country a very difficult one.
The Minister (again, who I think is a good guy with virtuous intentions) and his team are not going to succeed in this venture and like many things, it will just be swept under the rug and forgotten about.
He either needs to reduce the qualifications or increase the pay. It's really as simple as that. No one with a Masters Degree in Education is going to come work somewhere for $800 a month when they can go to Vietnam and get twice that.
Until one of these two things is accomplished, there is zero chance in my mind that they will be able to find these new teachers.
The sheer racism part got me most. All I can say is good luck to them, am gonna show this article to any of my friends thinking about coming over there for the long-term
This was honestly wild to read, so much of it. I have a few close friends who have taught in China. Never known anyone to live in Thailand besides freelancers with visas. I’m surprised (and I’m not at the same time) to hear how selective they are about teachers not being from other countries.
Great article 👍
thanks pal. Yeah, the people I know who work in China, provided they are at a good school, are handsomely rewarded and most of them are quite happy there.
My friend was so happy that he married on of the Chinese teachers and brought her back to USA.
Sounds all too familiar. I started in a Chinese public school where i was teaching classes with 60 - 80 students. No support, interest or respect from the local staff, who didn't care if the students learned something or not. I was apparently one of the last South Africans to be hired in the city I'm living and working in now. It is really disappointing that education is replaced by silly marketing attempts to show something that doesn't exist.
I hadn't mentioned that but you hit on a good point there. They tend to want to hire the most photogenic people rather than the ones that are best at the jobs. As sad as it sounds, no school in Thailand would feature anyone who is black or ever dark skinned on their promotional materials.
One of my SA friends who is honestly one of the best early years education teachers I have ever met is currently in Myanmar where she has support, is compensated better than in this country, and is genuinely appreciated.
Yes, really is such a good opportunity at bi-cultural relations thrown down the drain as far as teaching in China/Thailand is concerned. Myanmar you say? Sounds interesting.
Well I'm black and that part really hit hard, considering I'm trying to exit Nigeria. I have a Post Graduate degree in education and I'm almost done with my master's in Aerospace engineering, Asia is on my mind but all I keep hearing about is their blatant racism.
yes it is an unfortunate aspect of society here and when kids exhibit blatant racism they aren't punished or event talked to. It is a part of society here. I was a teacher of a girl whose parents were both Indian (in Thailand) and even though her parents were born in India, they were Thai citizens. Nancy was her name and she was a sweet kid and actually quite smart.
However, she was relentlessly bullied by the other students simply because she was "Indian".. When I reported this to the other Thai teachers they just laughed and said that she is bullied because she is Indian...as if that was just the way things are and not the wrong thing for the kids to act. sheesh.
Man that's awful and if they can do that to Indians that are technically their neighbours, imagine how they'll treat a Nigerian. Is it a common theme in just Thailand or have you heard about it in other countries?
My friend that schooled in India said they always made him feel out of place because he's black. However, another guy that went to the Philippines actually liked it there.
I was going to say that other countries are offering much more these days as I know friends kids teaching in China and Korea. Most of these don't need degrees either and are well looked after. Ok China maybe not great right now due to what is happening but they get given loads of perks including free accommodation and one flight home per year. Thailand needs to wake up if they want to educate their kids.
My son had a Zimbabwean maths teacher in his last year at school and we had to get him to move class. It wasn't the teaching, but the accent was so strong no one could understand him. I didn't believe the other kids until we went to a parents teacher meeting and I had no clue what the guy was saying either.
awwww, poor Zimbabwean guy. I don't think I've ever actually met someone from that country.
Korea tends to be fantastic wages, but since the Koreans generally don't interact with the foreigners who live there, they end up being a bit isolated and most people don't stay there very long.
I have a few Scottish friends who are teaching in Busan and they are looking to get out after 4 years. But the good news is they banked a LOT of money in that time and got in great shape from not having much of a drinking social life!
We have loads of Zimbabweans working here these days as it is a neighboring country. We like loads of companies here have stopped employing them. They are great workers and well educated but we had a 100 percent success rate of theft out of every one of them. This is a problem as most are working and sending money back to their families and they are desperate. It worked out cheaper to not employ them as their schemes are normally fairly well thought out and they take large sums.
Generally I feel teaching jobs hardly pays a lot worldwide. I was a literature in English teacher to high school students and the condition somehow resembles the one in Nigeria here. They might find these new teachers in countries with worse pay in their countries
They may have to eventually do that. They have already started with Filipinos who will work for considerably less money than a European will.
It's quite a pathetic situation really, I don't see Thailand as a having a Terrible economy really, and for them to resort to this tactics to get teachers shows something is wrong
well the point was really that I don't think they will be able to get the teachers. In the press release it as just stated that financing has been earmarked for the expenses. It didn't indicate how much has been set aside and really, if they think they are going to double their teacher workforce while still having rather draconian systems in place as far as how those teachers are treated once they are around, I don't see any way that it could succeed.
I know I wouldn't go back to teaching even if the salary I made before was doubled. The problem isn't the money, it's the conditions of the job once you have it and how much BS is associated with keeping the job, even if you don't really want it / like it.
Other than the ones who work at private schools with very nice salaries, I don't know a single teacher in Thailand that is happy with their job. Which is sad.
This is terribly sad by all means. The situation in our private school is poor but the ones in our public school dines like kings really, this makes me compares the contrast here. I wouldn't want to work in Thailand though with all the conditions
This is crazy, honestly. While the minister is trying to do something good for the country and education, the local school directors are destroying everything.
While I (partly) understand why teachers from Scotland, Ireland and South Africa are banned, I don't understand why black people are not allowed. If they are afraid of an accent, they can do a test during the interview and if you pass, you can be hired.
I said I understand partly the ban of teachers from Scotland, Ireland and South Africa but only partly as it can be a very good thing to have teachers from these countries.
When I decided to learn English and was in search of a good school, my first and most important priority was to pick one that has foreign teachers! I have to mention that I started from scratch, from zero, knew only a few words from TV when I started. In the first year we had a local teacher, the second year we had a girl from Scotland. The first two months she said she's going to speak textbook English without any accent so we can understand her, then she's going to speak her native Scottish. And she kept her word. Then I had American teachers the next year and during summer courses, all kinds of teachers from England and the US.
Let me tell you that it was the best decision I made and I'm really happy I got the chance to meet these wonderful people, got used to different accents.
Reading your posts over the past two years gave me the impression that Thailand is not on the right track and this is not going to end well. They need to wake up, be more open to change and welcome foreigners not chase them away.
Yeah the Ireland and Scotland ban was definitely because of the accent and it would have been fine if they had stated the reasoning as such, but they released a press statement that Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa are not native-english speaking, which of course is wrong.
It's good that you took your education so seriously and judging by your writing I can see it was certainly a success!
Thank you for the nice comment. The truth is that school helped me a lot and for a good reason. I hope Thailand with realize these banned please can help a lot.
....although, in fairness - Whenever I went to Glasgow - I couldn't understand a f****** word they were sayin' lol
Scottish and Irish banned? Their accents are too thick maybe? How about Liverpudlians and Geordies? I mean the latter lot are almost Scotland and can be hard to understand for even me!
i agree with you there. I have met a few Geordies that I had to have them repeat everything they say several times. Also there are some portions of the States with super tough accents like in the south, but I think those guys are pretty unlikely to venture over to Asia to teach English anyway.
How true is this most of the time??! I am related to teachers and know quite a few. When we get together, we laugh at this very thing. Anyone can teach.. I don't think a degree is necessarily needed, but to be good at it.. that is a talent they have long before the degree.
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I could feel experience speaking throughout the blog. for sure, the education system needs renewal and hopefully this guy you mentioned about , will do some really good for people.
Great work. inspirational.
I taught English in Korea for a bit. Conditions are much better there and it is close enough to Thailand to visit a couple times a year.
They only accept people from Ireland UK Canada US Australia NewZealand and South Africa. They will not accept South Africans or Canadians who went to a non-English public high school for obvious reasons.
They also won't hire people with thick accents.
They also strongly prefer women.
They don't care a out your university degree for entry level jobs at private institutions, but a good tefl helps.
Most controversial they want a picture of you teaching....this will let them discriminate against you in anyway they see fit.
Actually, some
Yeah, i have heard good things about teaching in Korea, but I've never known anyone that did it for a real long time or tried to make a career out of it. My friends say that the Koreans are polite everywhere they go and that is great, but they also never really feel as though they are a part of the society. This could have a lot to do with the fact that neither of them appear to have made any real effort to learn the language, which I can relate to because I tried to learn some Korean and it was HARD.
Fitting into Korean society can be tough even when you know the language well enough.
I just got bored of teaching English, so I learned enough of the language to move into something else.
I have a few friends making a career of it. They usually get a master's degree and go teach esl at a university or get a teaching certificate (there are a few American ones you can get abroad) and teach at private international schools. A few others just start their own business. You can actually do quite well if your reputation is good, as Koreans don't hesitate to spend money on quality education.
oh those university jobs are incredible, great wages, a lot of respect, and it feels like a proper job with benefits and retirement programs and what not. Thailand isn't looking to hire those people though, they are looking to employ teachers at state schools, mostly elementary schools i would imagine and the classrooms will probably be packed to the gills!
A mate of mine has just left to go back to Holland - he speaks perfect English , and has been teaching here for years.
He was out of contract at a local school, and it was not renewed.(several months ago)
He has a house, wife, and children here, and cannot get another teaching job, so has to go back to Holland to provide for his family from there.
Understandably, it's all very depressing for him.
Do you have a link to the press release? I'll forward it to him, it might cheer him up!
Well i don't know if it will cheer him up because I would imagine that their decision to only hire teachers from Native English countries probably hasn't changed. Here is one of the articles about what i was talking about though.
The same situation is happening for a couple of people I know that have been teaching here for years also.
Cheers. The Bangkok Post, of course...
Nice to hear that the things we have been dealing with over the past 20 years are not isolated to just us. Pay has always been crap for public school employees. Especially those who are in non instructional areas like me. I make so much less than I would in the private sector and I don't even get my Summers off. The one good thing is the pension which will hopefully still be around by the time I retire. Even our health care which used to be pretty great has went down the tubes. The quality of care is still good, it just costs an arm an a leg to get the same level of service we had in the past. Likewise, the government is always pushing new standards and things that we need to be doing without giving us the resources or funds to accomplish them. Overcrowded classrooms are a problem in many places and you would think by now the data would show it isn't conducive to learning. They continue to allow it to happen though.
Howdy sir gooddream! Excellent post. "fixing a functioning system until it was broken." lol...so true of almost any government run operation. It sounds like they don't put a priority on education at all.