Relaxed Focus: April 18, 2010

As GEOS, another eikaiwa company goes bankrupt, the teaching of English in Japan once again, briefly, gets a slight bit of attention. And while I'm on the last 3 1/2 months of my 5 year odyssey in Japan, it still interests me, the directions in which things are moving. Honestly, I've avoided much of the "big picture" thinking of it all, because honestly I'm just a traveler passing through - even a 5 year traveler - and have preferred to focus on my own little world here in Fukutsu, doing what I can where I can and forging bits and pieces of connections and relationships with my students, teachers and community. I'm fairly well pleased with what I've done there. But still, the broader implications are interesting, trend wise.

Since I've been on the JET Programme in Japan, lo these 4 years 8 months, folks have been postulating on the death of JET as numbers are cut back and there is an increased move towards private companies to provide ALTs for schools in Japan. To some degree, it's certainly true. When I first got here there were three municipal JET Programme ALTs who worked for my Board of Education. Now, there's just me. And when I leave this summer, I'm getting subbed by another private company ALT. I can certainly see why in the world of ever decreasing budgets the straight up cost/benefit analysis doesn't lend itself to JET. Of the six JET Programme ALTs who've come through Fukutsu while I've been here, I've stayed 5 years, another for 4, another for 3, but the remaining three only stayed a year each. Factoring in transport, setup and the time/effort required to acclimatize a new gaijin to the land of the rising sun, you're hard pressed when looking at the numbers.

Plus, where I think JET is superior to company hired guns are all intangibles that don't really lend themselves to the straight up and down spreadsheet analysis of the bean counters. [Things like community participation, fostering authentic relationships and, yes, even the dreaded buzz word of 'internationalization.']

So outsourcing to the private companies looks like a tempting and cheaper alternative while at the same time eliminating the responsibility the BOE has for direct hires or JETs.

But things are slowly bubbling up that due to the complexity of regulations of employment and education in Japan a number of these outsourcing style contracts may be all kinds of illegal.

Let's Japan.org sums up what they call the 'terrible triangle' pretty effectively:

"It's all slowly coming to a head. Nothing illustrates the situation better than this 2005 letter from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) acknowledging that gyomu itaku (outsourcing contracts) are illegal.

This notice was sent to all prefectural BOEs, and advises that they give preference to JETs, direct hires, and legal dispatch jobs over gyomu itaku with private dispatch companies. It also recommends that skilled ALTs be made permanent employees （正社員）

...This letter is the kind of thing that should lay the foundation for ALT positions to be decent jobs, but instead, what we have is a terrible triangle.

BOEs: Lazy and cheap. They want ALTs in classrooms but don't want any of the hassles that come with having to manage foreigners. They know that dispatch companies can be unscrupulous but use them anyway. They like the steady supply of cheap instructors but aren't smart enough to figure out why the teacher turnover is so high.

MEXT: The letter shows that they are aware of illegal hiring practices, but they aren't doing anything beyond issuing guidance. This particular letter was written in 2005, and clearly nothing has been done in the past 4 years...

ALTs: For some unknown reason, despite the information one can find on the internet about dispatch companies and teaching in Japan, teachers still insist on being taken advantage of by their employers. They work for low pay and no benefits because they'd rather not give up on their dream/fantasy/plan of living in Japan."

And with some ALTs complaining loudly enough, labor boards are getting involved now as well - Labour Bureau Rules On Kashiwa ALT Contracts - fuckedgaijin:

"The Mainichi has an interesting report on how the "ALT scam" is causing new problems for boards of education. Most foreigners are probably aware that one way schools reduced the cost of employing foreign assistant language teachers was to employ them from a staffing agency. This gave them a good deal of contract flexibility but greatly reduced the terms and conditions for the teachers by comparison with direct employment contracts. Increasingly, the Japanese media covered the negative impact this arrangement was having on the teachers and pupils. Unions pointed out that, in some cases, the contracts with teachers broke existing labour laws.

...it seems that in Kashiwa City, Chiba. The Education Board has run into trouble. In short, if you employ someone as a temporary dispatch worker, not on a sub-contract basis, for more than three years, you have an obligation to make that position permanent. You can cancel the contract in time but you are not allowed to fill that position with another temporary employee for at least three months. The term has now started at 61 junior and middle schools and they will have no ALTs until July. The local labour bureau has ruled that the contracts were in fact dispatch arrangements and fall under that provision. Since the Board wants to avoid offering permanent jobs, they have no choice but to delay employing the teachers until they are in the clear. The Mainichi suggests that Kashiwa is unlikely to be alone in facing this issue"

So the cynic in me thinks that the bureaucracies are going to continue their short sighted cutbacks of JET and direct hires in order to save money in the short term. And then, like it apparently has in Chiba, it'll bite them in the ass and the folks who end up paying for it will be the kids who find their education interrupted and the ALTs who suddenly find themselves without work. I can only anticipate this'll get worse in the coming years as the English requirements for elementary schools increase [officially in 2011, though they've slowly been upping the tempo at my schools since last year] and while pretty much all the elementary school teachers I deal with are, without exception, awesomely nice folks and good people, they're kind of woefully unprepared for the new regs and requirements.

I don't know, there's all sorts of arguments to be made about English education in Japan, the usefulness of ALTs in general, and, well, the overall thrust of the test-centric Japanese mode of education - but I have a hard time seeing how any of this ends well without some serious changes in approach, on a systemic level.