Since the story is completely in Japanese this post will provide an English summary. The news story does a good job of explaining how things currently are and it also talks about the dirtier practices of ALT dispatach companies experienced by English teachers in Japan.
The video is a must see for anybody thinking of becoming an ALT.
The news story starts off talking about a teacher who is a direct hire in the Muasashiyoshi Tokyo area. You get the impression of someone doing all right for themselves.
The story moves on to a 37 year old ALT who just got fired last November and hasn’t found another job yet. Even though he had 5 months left on his contract he suddenly got chopped with no explanation from the dispatch company. He’s being doing this type of work for 7 years. You get the impression of someone who has been screwed over after 7 years of loyal service.
The story moves on to explain the 3 typical ways ALTs are hired to work at a school
1) One way to get hired is as a direct hire for a specific Board of Education. You get the impression this method seems to offer better working conditions and contract terms.
2) The second way is to be hired as a JET which is a government run program where you are dispatched as an ALT to a school. For the teacher the contract terms are quite good and you are enrolled in insurance. The salary is quite good also. Seems its a pain to hire ALTs this way for a Board of Education and this option is not popular according to the news story.
3) The third way ALTs get work is they are dispatched by third party companies such as Interac. According to the news story this method offers the worst conditions, the worst salary, and potentially no insurance.
One Interviewee in the news story explained how if a Board of Education doesn’t like how one teacher is doing they will demand from the dispatch company a replacement and the teacher is subsequently replaced and cut. He goes on to say out of the various english teaching options in Japan being a dispatched ALT appears to be the worst.
Next the news story goes on to interview 3 sets of parents with children being taught by an ALT. Theyare asked if their ALTs have been replaced during the school year. One child stated he has had 7 to 8 new ALTs in the span of one year. Another child said they had 4 new teachers in one year.
The story moves on to discuss how ALT teachers were reluctant to do anything outside of teaching hours and the explanation why was that ALTs are not paid for anything outside of teaching hours.
Once the teachers were hired as direct hires though, high turnover and refusal to participate outside of teaching hours stopped being a problem.
The news story moved on exposing some problems faced by ALTs
1) During breaks in the school year you could be looking at a salary that is half what you normally get. For some months of the year a 34 year old ALT working in Osaka Matsubarashi showed how he only received roughly $1100 in December and $1500 month in January. For the months he had work for the whole month he did receive around $2500. Salaries advertised on job sites like Gaijinpot are almost always around 250,000 yen per month or roughly $2500 this number is misleading if not downright deceptive.
2) Although he had worked for 3 years the teacher that was being talked about only received contracts that were in short 6 months installments.
3) The teacher also talked about how he was not enrolled in unemployment insurance or the pension system. He was told since he only works 6 hours in a day he couldn’t be enrolled according to the law. A common complaint you see is even though you are expected to work from 8:30 to 16:30 you may not be properly credited for total time spent
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