Throwaway for obvious reasons.
Interac employee, recently everyone in our branch got e-mails about using our work days over the summer to teach remotely in Fukuoka. We also had a online demonstration recently, which thank god was a shitshow.
Now, astute observers will quickly note two things.
1. Fukuoka already has ALTs placed there who can teach there, and
2. There aren’t really classes in the summer, certainly not enough to justify training all the Kanto North employees.
It’s pretty clear what their midgame and endgame is.
Short term, they want to reduce the number of ALTs in country, and instead have them remain in their home countries. Saves the company a shit ton of trouble with housing, visas, and probably taxes/health insurance.
Once BoEs are sold on the plan and it’s up and running, the long term goal is to switch from native English speakers to whoever will accept the lowest price. India has a minimum wage of around 600 rupees or less per day. They can absolutely get people on that screen for 100-yen an hour. No need to pay them for any time not worked; they can easily get a pool of teachers to teach on demand.
Of course, this will be terrible for students, JTEs, and current ALTs alike. But the amount of money they stand to make is absolutely ridiculous.
The one comforting thought here is that this demonstration was, as said before, a shitshow. And that was with an experienced head teacher already in Japan, teaching with probably a handpicked and prepared JTE in Fukuoka.
Still, not happy with what they’re trying.
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I’ve worked pretty extensively with Indian contractors across a few different jobs.
One company I worked for paid their Indian contractors well, and they were able to attract the cream of the crop. I worked with a lot of *very* smart Indian people, who worked hard, and worked well independently. Strong critical thinking skills. Things worked pretty well. Not perfect, but overall it was good.
Another company I worked for paid their Indian contractors very poorly. Obviously far more than India’s minimum wage, but they paid as little as they could get away with. I cannot begin to describe the terrible quality of the people this attracted. They couldn’t even follow basic instructions consistently. Forget about any sort of independent action or thought. To say it was a total shitshow would be a wild understatement.
If Interac is hoping to pay Indian contractors even less than tech companies pay Indian contractors, the level of fail will be spectacular.
Is it really going to change outcomes for students? Let’s be honest here.
I don’t care even even a little bit about them hiring Indian ALTs. As long as they hire for skills, they will at least be just as good as random white people with no training.
But trying to ALT remotely is just asinine. A language teacher needs to be in the same room to be effective.
It is not Interac’s plan nor any other ALT company’s but rather that of the BoEs. Online lessons have been a thing for a while now and with the Japanese ES teachers themselves teaching in the classroom, there’s less need for the more expensive live ALTs.
Some BoEs have already dropped their contracts for live ALTs for only online lessons.
BoEs are probably even hoping for AIs to truly kick off to completely remove the human involvement.
Interac sounds like a particularly spectacular brand of evil.
I have no relation to the English teaching industry, but I just wanted to say that as someone from Canada, it took me a while to realise that you were talking about an ALT company called Interac, and not the Canadian Interac debit card system. I was really curious how you were going to explain how some new debit technology would destroy the ALT industry in Japan.
How is this going to be terrible for students? I’m genuinely curious. Almost all ALTs are totally untrained and the consensus in the literature is very clear – “native speaker” does not mean much of anything in language teaching, all other skills equal.
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Computers? Internet? In Japanese schools?
First I’ve heard of it
Didn’t that defunct Coco Juku try this before going under?
I seem to remember them purging most of their staff and hiring remote teachers from the Philippines.
Brother, put down the tinfoil hat.
Dispatch companies backfill open positions and take the admin work off the hands of City Halls.
No one is coming for the industry of the Assistant Language teacher. Dispatch companies are just a financial waste and practice bad business. Something everyone has known or will find out.
i’ve known plenty of indians and they do have a pretty good grasp on fundamental english speaking but… now i can’t help but imagine trying to communicate with a japanese person who has picked up some of the accent from their online tutor(s) lol
I think eventually you will just have AI generated teachers. Not just for language learning, but in a lot of areas.
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Good if that means this is the start of the death of the ALT industry. Its a waste of taxpayer money and has been since it was introduced.
English instruction needs a complete reform and gutting the current system (unintentionally in this case) is the best course forward.
So what?
No offense to ALTs but the program doesn’t work. It is not like off shoring it will make things worse.
Don’t worry, I am sure there will be eikaiwa/ALT services in the future that pride themselves on providing more stereotypical foreign teachers and labeling the company as “premium”.
I understand how and why interac would want to do this but what evidence do you have for this? It’s seems like a big jump to go from working remotely one summer to having all online Indian teachers at 100 yen an hour.
And in ten years from now, when you talk to a Japanese person with an Indian accent….
> Short term, they want to reduce the number of ALTs in country, and instead have them remain in their home countries.
Would people actually do that?
I mean, what’s the point?
Just out of interest, do they use assistants to the language teacher from India already? Are there any issues when some folks have a really heavy accent, or do they just not survive the interview?
Do they even interview, orally?
Disclaimer: Am not an education professional. But have an interest in how fucked up the English class at school might get for our two lads.
Interac is a shit company. Never work for them.
Ah. So interac will be going out of business soon enough. Never worked for them but they sound awful. Good riddance.
This sounds like a lot of speculation
>teach remotely in Fukuoaka
Will the students be at a compulsory education school while these online lesson are in progress? Or will it be at some Eikaiwa?
If Eikaiwa then the ALTs on an ‘Instructor’ visa can simply turn around and say “I am only allowed to teach at compulsory education schools on my visa”
Of course the ALTs on a table 2 visa (spouse, LTR, PR) that visa restrictions work around won’t work though.
Your post sounds like a pretty poor take to me as someone with similar knowledge of the situation. Last I had heard was Fukuoka had a single ALT for their JHS and none for their elementary schools which don’t have full classes to my knowledge. Having a teacher to do part time work there would be difficult. You can expect to see areas with less kids go towards online classes for elementary school.
The early grade classes were in my opinion, not great and a waste of time having a native speaker sing a song to 6-8 year old kids.
The 4-6th year students get groups of 1-3 students per teacher. Some classes work well, some have technology issues, sometimes the students are quiet.
While Interac is by no means the greatest dispatch company, they aren’t the worst from stories I have heard.
” Short term, they want to reduce the number of ALTs in country ”
No, because that would decrease the company’s profits. This is just another avenue for them to make a quick buck; although, you won’t see any of that additional profit. However, I totally agree the labor needs of one branch should not be the problem of another branch. I guess the company dropped the facade of being separate financial entities after it was forced to enroll all of its employees in shakai hoken.
The number of ALTs has only increased since I came to Japan. I believe this is to meet the demand for MEXT’s new course of study which has increased the number of hours in which English is required to be taught.
I don’t know much about ALT anymore but maybe you’re jumping to conclusions?
In the longer term though I actually could imagine some kind of video link for ALTs so who knows?
During the pandemic I was approached by a colleague about starting an online Eikaiwa, with teachers stationed here. His plan was to pay them 700 yen an hour. He wanted me to recruit people.
His basis for this was to compete with dirt-cheap online conversation “lessons” offered by companies in places like the Philippines.
“Once BoEs are sold on the plan and it’s up and running, the long term goal is to switch from native English speakers to whoever will accept the lowest price.”
You underestimate the stupidity and stubbornness of BOEs to get off their asses and try new things.
The whole program is junk and should be scrapped, the BOEs already have JTEs who understand grammar better than most ALTs anyways and can speak english.
If the students want more exposure they can study abroad or travel after high school?
No one will go for being a remote english teacher. The only reason anyone becomes an ALT is for an easy visa while they look for s real job.
I’m so interested in how you’ve heard about remote English teaching (which has been a thing for a long time) and suddenly jumped to the conclusion that the dispatch company are going to focus their hiring on India and pay the lowest price possible?
Listen. ALTs in the classroom are an institution. They’re not going anywhere. For better or for worse, Japanese people are under the delusion that having an ALT in the classroom is somehow beneficial for their children despite no evidence supporting this belief and test scores which place Japan’s English proficiency levels below that of some of its poorer neighbors in Asia. The Japanese government could have abandoned the idea of ALTs long ago, but it didn’t. It dug in its heels and increased the amount hours that English needs to be taught in Japanese compulsory education.
My point is that the existence of ALTs is based on flawed logic, and assuming Japanese people are going to somehow come to their senses and stop paying for ALTs in the classroom is not something I see happening anytime soon. There’s been plenty of opportunity for that up until this point. The stubbornness of Japanese people is legendary, and trying to apply rationale to what is wholly irrational in nature is an exercise in futility.
Computers and the internet were around before the pandemic, yet classes never shifted to being completely online. Why is that? That learning style just doesn’t fit certain people. Furthermore, being behind a computer screen has its limitations, as I’m sure you’ve seen. BOEs are free to experiment, but there just isn’t any substitute for the real thing. Would you rather watch pornography on the internet, or have sex with a real person?
It’s the same kind of logic.
Online classes are a substitution, a poor facsimile of the real thing.
BOEs are always interested in saving money, but if you cut costs too much, then the ne’er-do-wells or people with thick accents start to appear.
I don’t understand why the BOEs get a pass on any of this.
The BOEs are passing the buck by subcontracting to black companies like Interac. The Japanese ministry of education needs to establish a proper system for teaching English to their k-12 students. Properly trained teachers, whether native or Japanese, who specialise in teaching English, with full benefits, and a livable salary.
This nonsense of having a Japanese teacher winging it, with some poor gaijin getting paid 2400 yen an hour with no benefits and no guaranteed salary and all the rest of the malarky you get working for exploitative profit-mills like Interac, to do the actual work, is unacceptable.
They need a proper syllabus, and they need to make sure the teachers received Oxbridge level training.
But my basic point is that the BOEs are passing the buck. Interac is a parasitic, harmful middleman, and needs to be subtracted from the equation.
Somehow “They can absolutely get people on that screen for 100-yen an hour. ” became “They’re definitely trying to get Indians on that screen. That’s their end game. I can feel it!”
EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE THE ONE DOING THE JOB RIGHT NOW. NOT INDIANS!
There’s a lot of exploitable labor in this world but somehow Interac is specifically targeting Indians.
Leap of faith logic.
If JET was created to foster cultural exchange
And outsourcing that to Interac, Borderlink etc. was a way to reduce costs
Then if the ALT joins online, they have given up on the cultural exchange. That’s BOE’s perogative, and I can understand why, especially in a world that experienced a pandemic.