So the “Dwang has finally hit the fan”, and there is a shortage of qualified teachers in Thailand, so much so that some agencies have to hire people to look for unqualified teachers in Khao San Road. And I wonder why many government schools are not looking for full time foreign teachers anymore but prefer to pay them by the hour. Things are looking desperate hey! We turned away all our good teachers that were passionate about teaching, because 40,000 was too expensive. We turned away all the experienced teachers that were over 50 that were prepared to work for 30,000, because they were considered too old.
And what are we left with? Many under qualified teachers that are only here for the “beer money” that are turning “fun learning classes” into some of the best circuses in Asia.”Hooray”. What are our desperate parents to do? Send the kids to language centres, so they can at least get some decent education from qualified and passionate teachers who have had a gut full of agencies.

Apso

Hi, I am looking for places to purchase English teaching materials for all core subjects. I am also seeking other teaching materials such as bulletin board cut outs and other things. I have heard there are materials in Chinatown but I’m not sure where in Chinatown exactly.  Your help will be greatly appreciated. Also do they have any websites where teachers or farangs can get to know one another as friends for talking or meeting just for leisure time enjoyment. Maybe someone knows places where teachers like to hangout after work or on weekends.

Tom Benjamin

There is a new insipid species of teacher recruiter in action. In the Khao San Road area, a new band of ESL teaching agency touts are working the “just arrived in Thailand crowd “. It works like this: a friendly farang meets you in a bar or restaurant, and casually mentions that he has a friend looking for English teachers paying around 27,000 baht (or less) -  he offers to help you out and to hook you up with his friend   - but what he neglects to mention is that he is a paid recruiter and pockets a quick 4000 - 6000 baht if he delivers the naive newcomer to the recruiting agency he is working for. If he was really a friendly guy in a bar, he would just give the individual the telephone number or the street address of the agency - which happens all the time - this is called networking. These touts are working for agencies that are already underpaying teachers, usually in the 30,000 baht a month range, and usually offering a 10-month contract, pocketing the teacher’s holiday / vacation pay, which the school pays to them.

Often the recruiting touts are borderline English teachers themselves, as was the case when I declined an offered a 26,000 baht a month teaching job. It wasn’t until later that I found out “my friend” was a recruiter and had given up teaching because he was so successful at duping new arrivals into accepting “lower than low “paying teaching jobs .

Barry Brooks

I work in a government school in Issan which employs several teachers that do not possess degrees or fake degree certificates. They have work permits, one has been teaching at the school legally for several years and one has recently received their work permit and teaching license. I do not have a degree but the school still offered me employment and a non-imm B visa and are currently in the process of applying for my teachers license. Like many things in Thailand, it is often not a case of what you know but who you know, if the school have connections at the MOE and you are happy to live in the North East where the level of English is extremely low and there is a huge shortage of teachers it is possible to teach legally without a degree. I also know several other schools in this area that are legally employing teachers without degree certificates.

The salary I receive is low in comparison to what many private language institutes or international schools offer, but it is still three times what many Thai teachers are earning in the same school, and I can afford to have a good quality of life here (the cost of living in Issan is also very low).  I also have friends legally teaching in Chiang Mai without degrees or fake degrees but I believe it was harder for them to find employment

Raphaella

I’ve just been reading through the ajarn letters page for the first time, and it seems that the current topic is the ‘insulting’ wages offered on the site. This is my take on it… As many people have pointed out, we are all free to choose what jobs we apply for, and those of us lucky / well-organised enough to have a teaching degree or plenty of experience can choose to apply only for the better-paid jobs, confident that we’ll get offered at least one of them. But those of us who don’t yet have experience need to start somewhere, and work up the experience-and-salary ladder. Think about the following:

1) Some of these schools can’t afford to pay a lot. Some writers on this site seem to imply that they therefore are insulting foreign teachers. I would argue that we are insulting their school by dismissing their wage offers so callously.

2) There are plenty of foreign teachers who consider 15-20K a reasonable wage. Yes, most of them are not native speakers - so? They need jobs too, and if they are happy with these wages, then so be it. It seems to me to be an insult to them to call their wages ‘insulting’.

3) The wages foreigners are paid to teach are higher than most or all of the Thai teachers in the same institution, and yet these Thai teachers are more qualified than almost all of the foreigners, and spend more time at work than the foreigners, too!

4) To those who say they expect a good salary for the years of experience they have, I say well, only go for the higher-paid jobs then. Leave the lower salaries for those trying to get on the ladder. And don’t insult those with ‘only’ a TEFL certificate - for a start, they’re not responsible for the child’s entire education, just their English classes - if they’re not a super-teacher, it’s not really earth-shattering.

Secondly, there are a lot of fantastic teachers out there (and over here…) who have no teaching qualifications at all. In short, if you are lucky enough to have choices, make them, and don’t look down on those less fortunate.

Lucie