Thailand’s ESL Industry: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff and the Possible Cambodia Exodus

By Lee Robinson

It’s been a while since rumours started circulating around the ESL world that Thailand would tighten its grip with a whitening of the knuckles on its already stringent visa laws and now it seems to be doing just this with a vengeance. The ESL forums of the Land of Smiles are bombarded with talk of this very issue. However the hard facts aren?t easily available with so much hearsay and so here is a lowdown of the latest scandal and gossip to rock the ESL world which seems far from over.

Here is the scoop. All schools are going to have to under-go immigration raids, on the spot checks and will be thoroughly investigated by immigration officials who will force entry into schools and bodily cavity search all expatiate teachers for Khao San Road degrees. The Thai Ministry of Education has modified its “standard” of what it expects from an English teacher in a manner befitting the Gestapo as this list is so absurd it will have serious repercussions on the ESL industry of Thailand. And is the Thai MOE oblivious to this? Apparently so.

The Thai MOE has issued a declaration that in the future anyone applying for a teaching license must be a qualified teacher with a degree in education or have a four year degree with a post graduate certificate of education and have experience in their native countries. This is to be proven by way of references or a copy of a contract. Well not everyone did a degree in teaching as this is a career that most ESL teachers have chosen after doing other unrelated things for years. Lets say, for example, that someone who runs a school with twenty years experience, a degree (in an unrelated field mind you) plus a DELTA would no longer be considered eligible to work in Thailand. That?s pushing it a little too far isn?t it?

On another note, teachers who are applying for jobs have to take a Thai culture exam! What on Earth that entails is anybody’s guess. Which bars have the best happy hour down at Nana Plaza? What to do if you find out that your sweet Thai girlfriend was once a Mui-Thai kick boxing bloke? How to not overheat those rancid instant pizza-slices at the 7-eleven when you’ve had fifteen Chang Beers on Patpong road at three in the morning?

Thailand’s visa process has never been easy anyway. The poor teacher has to leg it over to Laos or Penang in Malaysia and wait twiddling their thumbs for days on end whilst some stone-faced Thai official takes care of your application. Or as most teachers do; make the good old Cambodia visa runs, which the Thai government is already stopping folks doing. I can vouch for this as it has already happened to a friend. So forget cheapskate Poipet visa runs as they’re becoming a thing of the past.

How will this affect people who are retired, have a private business, work for a company or, let us, say manage a bar or other legitimate business? In my humble opinion, they will be looking at major problems. And we’re talking about people who pay their taxes and contribute to the Thai economy and have done so for years. A friend of a friend I know who runs a fairly successful drinking establishment in LOS is pulling his hair out. Not only does he have an established business which is his only source of income but also a life – as in a wife and a home there etc. I think he has every right to be worried.

Let us now return to the subject of the downtrodden teachers. The old regulations, strict as they were, could be ‘gotten around’. If a school hired a teacher without a degree but was a proficient and a popular teacher; the rules could bent accordingly. Certain aspects of his / her credentials that were lacking would be overlooked and this, as we all know, has been the case for many years. Having a teaching degree does not make one necessarily a competent teacher. For me it?s more of a case of personality and the dedication to do the job while consistently striving to improve ones ability in the classroom. However in Thailand right now schools cannot hire unqualified TEFL/TESOL teachers – it’s out of the question as they can’t take the risk of a heavy fine and investigated by the immigration police.

Playing devils advocate here; on the other hand a friend of mine who’s been teaching in Thailand and is qualified is rubbing his hands in glee because he’s under the impression that schools in Thailand will now operate in the same sense as international schools in Taiwan, Korea and Japan with HUGE increases in salary and benefits. He may be right as schools won’t be able to pick and chose anymore; the qualified teachers will have no doubt have the upper hand as they will be in high demand.

To conclude, end this begs the question of what will the consequences of the Thai Ministry of Education latest antics on us teaching here in Cambodia? Possibly the Thai government will see the error of its ways and slacken the restrictions due to the inevitable shortage of ESL teachers. There is already a movement in progress to press-gang the Thai MOE into doing this. There are a lot of TEFL/TESOL qualified teachers here in Cambodia (myself included) and in Bangkok there is a veritable army of them. So what’s going to become of them? What’s the opinion of ECC (or the other big TEFL tutoring players) who have so successfully run the teaching courses and rely on a fresh of influx of people eager to teach and make their way as English teachers in Thailand.

Cambodia has the closest border and we don’t have the visa limitations. And what of the expatriates who have been teaching / working in Thailand with families. What are they to do? Will guys who?ve lived in Pattaya for decades storm across the Koh Kong border in their thousands? Will we see a colossal migration of TEFL Teachers fresh from Bangkok pouring en masse over the Poipet Border?

There are plenty of teaching jobs in Cambodia (and there will be more as the country’s middle class get richer and want their kids to have English language skills) but will there be enough to satisfy a mass exodus of teachers from Thailand and more to the point will Cambodia?s expat bars be able to cope?

Interesting times await us.

Lee Robinson