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An Encouraging Development
The Asahi Shimbun carried a short blurb that is encouraging news for ALTs in Akita. The Akita school board says it will hire hire it's ALTs as full-time instructors.
Foreign nationals will be hired as full-time instructors at Akita Prefecture elementary schools starting next April, when English lessons become part of the official curriculum, its education board said.
Native English speakers or those who have studied in English-speaking countries for a certain period can apply regardless of nationality or whether they hold a teacher's license. All applicants must have a good command of Japanese, officials said.
The move is a first across Japan, the officials said. Assistant language teachers have so far been hired only on a part-time basis.
This is an encouraging development. A bit of job security should lead to happier instructors and better lessons. The move to make the ALTs full-timers mirrors a trend across Japan where companies in general have been shifting to full-timers over part-timers. Maybe the school boards have realized that hiring full-time instructors has the advantages of bringing some stability to the position and fewer headaches with dealing with a revolving door of instructors and their agencies.
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Comments
It is encouraging and it
It is encouraging and it does seem that BOE's are now looking to directly hire people who want to stay beyond the usual 1 year contract. A pleasant contrast to eikaiwa treating instructors like oranges to be squeezed dry then discarded.
This is indeed great news
This is indeed great news.
Only 46 prefectures left to go.
Was illegal anyway
Akita BOE came to the realisation that to sub-contract the work out to companies like Interac and Nova was illegal.It comes under the definition of "giso Ukeoi", or disguised sub-contracting. If the work is subcontracted out, the school and BOE have absolutely NO direct control over what the ALT does at the workplace. It is also illegal for the team teacher (Japanese) to tell the ALT what to do. Akita have seen this and worked out that they can get better ALTs by hiring them directly and cutting out the middleman, and the ALTs get a better deal.
Simple, but hard to get though to the Xenophobic BOEs
Xenophobic BOEs
How xenophobic BOEs may be is not the main reason many full-time positions are being axed. Whatever the middle man gets (and it is probably not that great for these kinds of contracts) is still generally less than having to pay someone full time with insurance, retirement, holidays, time between classes and all the other baggage that comes with hiring people yourself. Why bother with all that when you can just have someone come in, work a few hours and kick them out that door before they cost you any more? With a few exceptions, the safe money is on the outsourcing trend continuing.
Axe the lot of them.Maybe
Axe the lot of them.Maybe they will wake up.Teachers have the same value as a maggot in Japan.You have to undermine everything the Japanese teacher is doing.You lot shouldnt be offered anything because you are brainless and have no skills.With my education degree i can waltz into any position usually stepping over your stinking carcasses.
They might struggle to find
They might struggle to find enough people with a good command of Japanese. Put it this way, if you had a good command of Japanese then you can do a lot better than an ALT job.
What is the point in people
What is the point in people like you? If your life is so great, find something better to do than come on here and try to get people's backs up.
I'm not sure which is cheaper...
I had a mate working for Berlitz which sent him out as an ALT to a junior high school. He was getting 250,000, but he heard from an administrator that Berlitz was charging 500,000 a month. So it seems like it would be much cheaper to directly hire the ALTs even after taking into account pension, health insurance, etc.
Also, Berlitz was giving him the royal screw because whenever there was a school holiday that he didn't have to work at the schools, he had to go into the local Berlitz eikaiwa and teach lessons there for a few days. So basically Berlitz was getting him to teach at the branch on the BOE's dime.
Granted, his Japanese is shit and they would have to hire somebody to babysit the ALTs I guess...
I think it's great that
I think it's great that these schools are doing this but it does worry me that they are willing to employ people with no background in Education.
Also, I don't know much about Akita prefecture but it's not a place I would consider living in Japan for various reasons. I guess it really depends what salary/benefits they offer but to get people to live there long-term (with a good command of Japanese) might not be as easy as it sounds.
Do you still work for NOVA?
Is NOVA still operating?
WTF has happened here?
What is this blog coming to? Maggots, stinking carcasses, balls licking? Whats next, the KKK? I read this maybe once a week, but it seems to get more and more negative and amusing every time. Waaaaaay worse than gaijinpot or fuckedgaijin.
ok screw this
i just posted a comment about that chump with the happy memory nova site...and it hasnt been posted..so i guess i am being censored or something..
see ya in heke chumps.
Trip
Ok,
Those Nova forum posts make me feel like someones dunked a cane toad in my drink while I wasn't watching.......
Spam
CanadaJin, the spam filter ate your posts.
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. -Albert Einstein
Shawn
BUT THEY WERE SO BEAUTIFUL!
they were full of pure white-light hatred..my best work ever!
some clown had posted a link to some kinda Happy Fun Remember Nova As A Wonderful Experience Web Page Of Enchantment.
I have kinda stopped coming on here cuz ..well..the bickering was getting tiresome..but i HAD to reply to this guy!..how DARE he come in here where we go to bitch and moan..and tell us NOT to bitch and moan?
the gall.
hey wait a minute..you calling me spam!? curse you!