Osaka City Government Cutting Budget: Foreign English Teachers Losing Their Jobs?
Some of the most experienced foreign English teachers at Osaka public schools may soon lose their jobs:
Nearly three dozen native English teachers called Monday on Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto not to cancel an education program that places native speakers of English in the prefecture’s schools and expressed concern that the teachers have only been offered four-month contracts.
The Osaka Fu Special English Teachers Union (OFSET), which represents the 34 native English speakers working at prefectural-run high schools and special education schools, hand-delivered a letter to representatives in the governor’s office in the afternoon and requested a meeting as soon as possible.
“The Osaka Prefectural NET (Native English Teachers) Program is currently under threat of cancellation due to budget concerns. NETs, working closely with Japanese teachers of English, have spent years developing sophisticated English programs at schools throughout Osaka Prefecture. Without NET teachers, these programs would become unsustainable and simply vanish,” the letter says.
After taking office in February, Hashimoto announced that the prefecture would enact a four-month emergency budget to run from April to July.
By then, two special project teams, appointed by the governor to review all prefectural spending, are expected to have their final recommendations on what should be cut. Osaka Prefecture has nearly ¥5 trillion in outstanding debts and is nearly bankrupt.
Many NET teachers are very unhappy about their four-month contracts, fearing that it may be a sign that their jobs will cease to exist under the new city budget:
At a press conference attended by about 15 union members, Steven Thompson, general secretary of the union said: “A four-month contract [for teaching work that requires long-term planning] is just crazy. It’s a terrible problem.”
For more details on the situation, check out the OFSET Union’s homepage.
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If anybody would like to help secure our jobs to improve English education in Osaka, and would just like to talk, I’ll but the coffee/beer. Contact me through OfsetUnion.org
steven
Scary! Guess I’m lucky to be directly employed by my local school board of education rather than the prefectural board. Still, it’s always upsetting to see less resources available for English education.
I do applaud Osaka-fu for taking you girls and guys on in the first place. I also hope you get to keep your jobs.
However, I don’t think it will change the situation overly much if they do not drastically change the TOEIC tests.
it seems to me that the Osaka government is in really really really bad shape. first all the stories about hospitals now English teachers. maybe they should check where all their tax revenue is going.