About 24 years ago, as a former primary teacher and with a new Certificate in Teaching English Language under my belt, I began in-home after school tutoring, working with new immigrants, largely South Korean and Taiwanese high school students.
A couple of years later, I got my first job in an English Language School, where for the first time, I met and worked with young adults from the People’s Republic of China. This school was owned and run by people from the PRC, and more than 90% of its students were Chinese.
It was an interesting, challenging and eye-opening experience. The young people in this particular Chinese school had, unfortunately, experienced a high turnover of teaching staff in a short space of time, at all class levels, and the group I began working with were a mix of bright-eyed, curious, ambitious, driven but also disillusioned, sullen and frequently absent students.
Many of them seemed to spend most of their breaks in the office, talking to the owner in unhappy tones, before coming back to the classroom, muttering about home-stays, their hosts and also their tuition fees. I spent a lot of time trying to build rapport and understanding with them, as did my other more dedicated colleagues. We did what we could in a school that was poorly resourced, had very limited teaching materials and paid its teachers a low hourly rate compared with other schools in the region.
It soon became apparent to me that sadly, these students had valid complaints. Their tuition fees contracted for at least 12 months but more commonly 2 years in this school, were somehow being misused so that they were not receiving what they were promised when being recruited in China to come here and study. The homestays were generally of a low standard, with hosts mainly “in it for the money” rather than providing a warm and hospitable NZ home experience for young overseas students far away from their families. It also transpired that somehow, the school had been able to set up in such a way that it was not required to be monitored by NZQA, or any other authority.
Working with a group of around 8 -12 students for around 6 hours every day, meant that there were plenty of opportunities to get to know them as young people, and for them to introduce me to their backgrounds, their culture and beliefs, and their reasons for studying the English language abroad. Quite a few aspired to “becoming millionaires”, which seemed incongruous for people from a supposedly Communist country.
How little did I know at that time!
In my naivety back then, I believed that all language schools existed for the best interests of their high-paying students, but I later came to realise that business and educational goals tend to come into conflict with one another. However the better schools stood out, and I gravitated towards them as I moved around in the industry. By better, I mean that educational and management standards, the quality and on-going training of teaching staff, pastoral care, the quality of homestays etc, genuinely worked for the students’ benefit, and were rigorously and regularly checked and inspected by NZQA and other authorities. I enjoyed 15 years in this kind of environment before the Christchurch earthquakes eventually drove large numbers of foreign students elsewhere.
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