# Foreign language teachers in public schools



## The Guru

Hello everybody!

I don't know whether my question is off-topic, but I am curious about how foreign language teachers are hired in public schools in your country.

Are they selected just by their merits or is there any sort of public 'contest' with a particular exam to get the position?

I would find this information very helpful in order to compare them with the Spanish process, which I consider outdated and somewhat responsible of the low level of English proficiency in Spain.

Thank you!!!


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## raptor

Two Spanish teachers I know have lived in Spanish-speaking countries, and I'm pretty sure they have to go through a specific schooling process.  Teaching degree first, then specializing in a subject (here Spanish).  The more extensive their training, and more fluent their speech, the more seniority they have, and the better their chance of getting hired.

I also know that some teachers lack a decent fluency in the language they teach, which limits how well they can teach it to their students.  I'm not sure if it's a lack of teachers, or lousy standards, but they do end up teaching kids.

raptor


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## ayupshiplad

Could you please clarify what you mean by public school? In Scotland that means a free school, but in England and Wales it means fee-paying!


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## Outsider

Public means government-run. You may pay for them or not. In Portugal, secondary education is free, but in public universities you must pay tuition.


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## cuchuflete

In the U.S., hiring of public (government run, funded by taxpayers) schools is
done at a very local level.  Typically there is no test required; candidates must have
a degree in 'education' and some level of supposed competence in the material to
be taught, whether that is science, language, art or any other field.  In addition to academic transcripts and employment records, teachers are interviewed by department heads, other faculty members, and perhaps school administrators.  The process has both objective and subjective elements.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was a public school student, much foreign language teaching was not effective.  Then I went to a college with superb foreign language instruction.  The primary difference?  The college teachers did not have a degree in "education"!


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## The Guru

Sorry ayupshiplad, I should have thought about misunderstandings with denomination, as it can vary from country to country.

By public schools I mean non-private, that is, state-owned free schools. The majority of schools in Spain are like that. I made the distinction in the assumption that private schools would hire teachers exclusively by their merits or curriculum vitae.

Thank you raptor for your interesting comments. That teaching degree you said... is valid for any level?. Teaching degree in Spain is only for primary school, whereas secondary teachers have no special teaching training (apart from a brief pedagogical course) before starting working. Actually any Spanish graduate can become a teacher just by passing the selection process. In case of English teachers, for example, most of them are philologists and translators/interpreters.

Please more opinions, I am very interested!!


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## ayupshiplad

Well, this is quite different but I hope still interesting!

My school is a private school and all the teachers speak at least two foreign languages, and I think that is a requirement. I wonder if it's similar anywhere else?


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## The Guru

Thanks for your comments cuchuflete, I'm a long-time admirer of your wisdom!

So are schools in the US (even the public ones) autonomous for hiring according to their needs? Do teachers get a temporary or a long-term job?

Spanish system is quite different. Public schools in Spain are a government-run network where vacants are covered by the administration. Every few years they call for a massive process where thousands of applicants compete for a number of positions. If their marks are high enough they get a job for life (as a civil servant), otherwise they get a temporary job and are continually relocated. Finally, those who passed with lower marks wait for their turn in a sort of waiting lists. Merits are valued but exams are decisive.

I wonder if there is a similar system anywhere else or Spain is a _unique_ in this aspect.

Any help?


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## jess oh seven

^ Weirdly, I know how it works in Spain, but not in the UK (where I am from). So I'm curious to know what teachers have to do to get a job there too! I doubt they have to take anything like "oposiciones" in the UK though... they sound so intense!! And every 2 years! It's nuts. Sometimes I wonder how some of the language (English) teachers pass when they're level is quite low.


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## Etcetera

The Guru said:


> Are they selected just by their merits or is there any sort of public 'contest' with a particular exam to get the position?


I don't know much about hiring in state-owned schools; but in language schools and courses, candidates usually have an interview with the director, and sometimes there can be a written test in the language the candidate is going to teach.

As for degrees, teachers in language schools and courses usually have a degree in "English/French/German/... language teaching". But in some cases, teachers can have no degree in 'education', but merely be advanced enough in teaching and have some experience. 

I remember that one of my German teachers at school was a Chemist; nevertheless, she was one of the best German teachers I've ever known.


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## barkley04

I am a teacher of english in tunisia. I was hired after having taken a national exam called C.A.P.E.S (concours d'aptitude de professorat de l'enseignement secondaire) in tunisia. Eventhough it is an efficient idea, many problems have emerged since many people claim it is not based on merit but on luck and sometimes it opens the doors for corruption. Besides, it is not transparent enough since the candidates are not allowed to know their marks wich is a bit confusing.


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## Kajjo

German teachers at public schools (run by government) require a degree in education from university, no matter which subject, but with several examinations relevant to the subjects they want to teach. They are hired by their formal merits which include both theoretical as well as practical examinations (teaching a real class). There are some subjects like chemistry or physics which might be taught by studied chemists or physicists with only a small add-on pedagogical training. In my experience these teachers are tremendously better.

In Germany, teachers are usually civil servants for their life-time and will keep their fixed set of subjects. Unfortunately, this system produces very many foreign-language teachers that have not much real-life experience in the language they teach. It is rare to have a teacher that speaks the foreign language almost native-like.

Kajjo


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## fenixpollo

The Guru said:


> So are schools in the US (even the public ones) autonomous for hiring according to their needs? Do teachers get a temporary or a long-term job?
> 
> Spanish system is quite different. Public schools in Spain are a government-run network where vacants are covered by the administration. Every few years they call for a massive process where thousands of applicants compete for a number of positions. If their marks are high enough they get a job for life (as a civil servant), otherwise they get a temporary job and are continually relocated. Finally, those who passed with lower marks wait for their turn in a sort of waiting lists. Merits are valued but exams are decisive.
> 
> I wonder if there is a similar system anywhere else or Spain is a _unique_ in this aspect.


 In the US, there used to exist the concept of "tenure", which could be defined as job security for senior teachers. It was often granted after 3 years at a school. Essentially, tenure no longer exists for pre-university teachers. There's no such thing as a "job for life" in the U.S.... except perhaps in the Postal Service, but that's a de facto reality, not a de jure mandate.

Each individual school is responsible for hiring its own teachers, but must follow the standards set by the district and the state.  For example, when I taught in Texas, all Spanish teachers in the state had to pass an oral proficiency exam in Spanish.  Most states require a certain number of university courses in Spanish or the subject being taught, plus a teacher certification.  Depending on the state, a teacher certification can be acquired by passing a certification exam, or by attending university courses in education, or by graduating from a teacher-education program at a university.


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## Aureliano Buendía

In Argentina, you need at least a pre-degree in your specific teaching area (in this case, the foreign language you have chosen) in order to apply for a job in a public school (government education here is free in all levels, even at university). Once you have reached your pre-degree or your degree (the type of title depends on which educational institution you have studied), you are added in an official merit's list, which is like a ranking. Every single part of your Curriculum has a mark (for example, your degree means 10 points, your presence in an international Congress 1 point, and especial course another point... -i'm inventing the numbers), and depending on the mark you have reached, the school you can work in.

That's how it works in public schools. To get a job in (most of the) private schools, you just need to be a Principal's close friend. This is one of the reasons why, even though its level has decreased considerably in the last 20 years, I still prefer public schools.


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## shoobydoowap

In Kentucky, there is an enormous demand for Spanish teachers and a small number of new teachers with Spanish-teaching certification. Consequently, if you are certified to teach Spanish, you have a job. Schools simply can't afford to turn you away because your Spanish might not be so good. 

I know this because I recently graduated from college with a Spanish-teaching degree and schools have been contacting me left and right. So much so that I decided to move to Spain and spend a year, but that's another story ;-)


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## DearPrudence

That's a very simplified summary of how to become a foreign language teacher here:

In *France*, you need to pass a competitive exam (concours) called "le CAPES", after your degree (in languages, that's better )
It's divided into two parts:
First, "les écrits": written exams on
- civilization
- literature
- translation

(the "programme" for English for this year, if you're interested)

(let's note that you can teach only one subject in France except in vocational schools where you can teach 2 if you have passed an exam...)

If you pass them, you have an oral exam, still at a national level on
- didactics (in languages, speaking about 30 minutes on a collection of extracts from textbooks to say very interesting things on it such as "is it in accordance to the "instructions officielles", issued by le ministère de l'éducation?)
- synthesis. 3 documents & for 20 minutes you present your synthesis.
+ kind of listening test: you listened to a 2-minute document in English twice & you have to sum it up in French.

So, no, never at any time you see what a pupil looks like, how to deal with them, what the job looks like,... From this year on, it's compulsory to have spent some time abroad but it was not the case before.
So some time ago, accent of foreign language teachers could be quite appalling (well, I guess that sometimes, it still is ).

So, no interview or anything. Once you pass this exam, you start being a trainee teacher, giving only few classes, guided by a tutor.

To be a teacher in private schools, you are prepared the same way & take the same exam basically but you need higher marks.
But I think you can also try to be a teacher without having that exam...

OK, I think now you can all go to bed  Sweet dreams


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## raptor

> Thank you raptor for your interesting comments. That teaching degree you said... is valid for any level?. Teaching degree in Spain is only for primary school, whereas secondary teachers have no special teaching training (apart from a brief pedagogical course) before starting working. Actually any Spanish graduate can become a teacher just by passing the selection process. In case of English teachers, for example, most of them are philologists and translators/interpreters.


 
Afar as I know, the degrees are different for different levels of education. So a graduate cannot teach high school subjects when he/she has been taught how to teach kindergardners! Of course, one would have to take a specific course in whatever subject you want to teach.  There is only a 'pre-degree' that is more generic than specialized, I think.

Most teachers (or is it all?) go through an 'initiation' proccess, as it were. What I've seen is that at first, they observe a class in session for a few weeks, then the teacher and the student teach the class (about evenly), then the teacher sits on the sidelines, and the student teaches.

I don't think foreign language speekers are required to have jobs in that language previously, but it certainly helps to have a very good understanding of it!

raptor


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## argentina84

I have one question: And what about if I want to work as a teacher of Spanish in a foreign country? If I am a graduate English teacher, what kind of qualifications do I need? 

I see that the process of becoming a teacher is harder in France and Germany. Does it have better results? I mean, better professionals?
This thread is very interesting!


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## Kajjo

argentina84 said:


> I see that the process of becoming a teacher is harder in France and Germany. Does it have better results? I mean, better professionals?


Yes, in Germany "teacher" is a university education. Are the professionals better? Well, I believe we have much less bad teachers because  the worst qualified are still relatively good. However, I am afraid we have only very few excellent teachers, because our system favors the average, standardized kind of teachers. Further, because they are always life-time employed, there is no encouragement to keep up to standard and continue getting better.

In my personal experience, the few teachers that were really chemist, mathematician and physicist (rather than being teacher allowed to teach those subjects) have been much better in highschool.

Still I prefer our system to systems in which personal relationships and lobbyism plays an important part. Whatever the teacher's education might be in a country, the selection and employment process should be fair and based on qualification rather than persons. 

Kajjo


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## Porteño

Aureliano Buendía said:


> In Argentina, you need at least a pre-degree in your specific teaching area (in this case, the foreign language you have chosen) in order to apply for a job in a public school (government education here is free in all levels, even at university). Once you have reached your pre-degree or your degree (the type of title depends on which educational institution you have studied), you are added in an official merit's list, which is like a ranking. Every single part of your Curriculum has a mark (for example, your degree means 10 points, your presence in an international Congress 1 point, and especial course another point... -i'm inventing the numbers), and depending on the mark you have reached, the school you can work in.
> 
> That's how it works in public schools. To get a job in (most of the) private schools, you just need to be a Principal's close friend. This is one of the reasons why, even though its level has decreased considerably in the last 20 years, I still prefer public schools.


 
In actual fact, being a close friend of the Principal or some other 'authority' is frequently the best way to get a job in a public (state) school. Also, judging from what I have seen from test papers, etc. shown to me by my students, the qualification levels are often questionable.

I have had students at Elementary level who, when I asked them what they did for a living, proudly answered: "I'm an English teacher!" Many 'English academies' only require that prospective teachers are native speakers but not whether they can actually teach it.

OK, I have to confess that I have no teacher's qualifications, but I have been teaching English now for some 25 years. Having begun, I soon realised that I hadn't a clue about English grammar, since I had never been taught it in the UK. Therefore, I had to set about reading a good grammar book and with the help of my wife, who does have a teaching degree in English, in order to do my job properly.


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## KateNicole

I think this thread is very interesting and near and dear to my heart.  I could say so much about the topic...

First and foremost, I do not want what I am about to say to offend any k-12 foreign language teachers, because I know that my experience is certainly not indicative of all foreign language teachers.  

I know several people from several different American universities that graduated with a degree in foreign language, despite having *extremely *questionable oral fluency.  Said people can usually spell very well and have an acceptable vocabulary, but make _many _syntactical when writing and when speaking.  I know many graduates that do not even obey basic spelling/grammar patterns like maintaining gender agreement among nouns and their articles ("Los escuelas" and the like).  I suppose this could be due to lack of a proper and "long enough" immersion experience (not six weeks of living with English-speaking classmates in a foreign country and occasionally trying out the target language when you come across a waiter that doesn't speak English . . . )

These people often go on to teach.  I think that semi-fluent foreign language teachers can be effective in lower level classes if they at least master the content they are teaching at their respective level and also have sound pedagogical training, in addition to enthusiasm.  However, I don't think it's fair for a student to go through his or her k-12 foreign language schooling being taught solely by semi-fluent teachers (as was my case.)  I lived and attended school in Mexico during my teenage years, and when I returned to my American high school, there was almost nothing that my semi-fluent teachers could teach me or challenge me with. I'm sure that there were also many students with a strong interest in foreign language that "caught up" to the semi-fluent teachers around the fifth year, without ever having lived abroad.

I think that "sufficiently bilingual," highly-trained teachers are hard to come by at the K-12 level and that monolingual administrators often times don't realize how broad the spectrum is when it comes to bilingualism, which is why, at times, some very mediocre people have a very easy time getting a job teaching foreign language.  I've also found that in districts that do not begin foreign language instruction until seventh grade, principals view the class as "fluff" and are much more concerned with finding quality educators for "core" academics like English, math, science, etc.  In fact, I know people who are admittedly not even semi-conversational in the target language that have landed foreign language teaching jobs.  

I am not implying that highly-qualified, highly dedicated foreign language teachers do not exist.  I'm also not implying that a person who is "fully bilingual" is automatically a good teacher, nor am I implying that native-speakers are better teachers than non-native speakers.  I'm only stating that in some of the school districts that I have observed, it would seem that just about anyone with a degree could get hired to teach foreign language.  And I think it's unfortunate because even though Americans are infamous for expecting everyone else around us to know English, I think that there are truly a lot of young kids that have a genuine interest in becoming fluent in a foreign language . . . and I think having a teacher that would be panic-stricken upon encountering a native speaker or who cannot readily express him/herself in the target language (even if with a few errors) sort of stamps out that interest.


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## Chaska Ñawi

I'll start in general terms, then move on to languages.

In Canada, to be a member of the College of Teachers and hired for a public school, you must have an honours degree plus a one-year teaching degree, although these may be combined into a four-year program.  Private schools can hire anybody they want, regardless of qualifications.  Secondary teachers must have a major or minor in the subject which they teach.

In Ontario, elementary French teachers are expected to have either studied at a francophone university or to have five university credits.  They then have to complete a three-part course in teaching the language.  Secondary teachers must have done their third year in a francophone university, in addition to having those five other credits; they too must take extra courses in the pedagogy of teaching French.  At the elementary level, the boards sometimes hire teachers who do not have the French qualifications.  Ontario is officially a bilingual province, so it has more stringent requirements than the other provinces, except for New Brunswick (which is also bilingual).

When it comes to other languages, no linguistic qualifications of any kind are demanded at the elementary or secondary level.  Basically, if you can convince the principal that you can teach Spanish or German or Italian (and if there is a demand for that subject) and have a teaching degree, you are hired.  You can't get full time work just teaching those languages, however; you must have another teachable, preferably a core subject like numeracy or literacy.


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## Nanon

*DearPrudence *already described the process of recruitment of teachers in public secondary schools in France. It is pretty close to the Spanish system of _oposiciones _depicted by *The Guru*.
I sometimes wonder about the pertinence of such contests, and about how teachers are prepared to do their job, too. At least in France where the preparation of future secondary (not primary) school teachers is mostly theory and has little to do with applied skills.

Recently I heard about a candidate who took the exam (CAPES) to become a Spanish teacher. She failed because of a question she did not answer well in the oral part - she did not know or remember that Queen Sofía of Spain was born Sophia of Greece. Important as it may be, how essential is this to those who are going to teach Spanish to teenagers??? And if the candidate was proficient enough, could the examiners have considered that she could find that particular information afterwards and give her a second chance???
And (although this is out of topic) for fairness' sake, should not candidates also learn the names of all Latin American first ladies... except for Chile and now Argentina...  ???


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## Lugubert

I haven't been into these things for quite some years, but I'l try to give some basics on Sweden.

To get a permanent (i.e. not subsitute or temporary) position in for example high school English, you'll have to have successfully completed a 4.5 to 5.5 year university programme. Nowadays, teaching and language skills are interwoven; previously, you studied your languages to at least a B.A., and then enrolled for one year? two? of learning teaching, including supervised class sessions.

Present requirements have it that you have to have at least two teaching subjects. This means, that if you want to teach phys ed, even if you have a history of being a successful coach in an event or more, you'll have to supplement your sports, health, orienteering, skiing etc. training, from acquiring the skills to learning how to impose them on today's kids, with another subject, like Swedish or English or biology. I laugh, many students don't.

This setup requires a fairly good command of the Swedish language, in the first place to be admitted at all, besides a proven level in the language taught. After all, you'll have to interact with Swedish kids. I can only guess, but I suspect that in some districts, a teacher with a teaching degree for English and having a major immigrant language for mother tongue would have no problem in finding a position.

For temporary substitutes, requirements still are, I think, mainly that you're available. I hope, though, that some teaching experience and university credits in relevant subjects help.


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