In November 2010, the Education Minister delivered a lecture to members of the Thai senate in relation to "Thailand's Educational Preparation for the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015". He admitted that in the past, Thailand had no clear plan relating to the development of the country's education system. In addition, Thai students had been studying subjects that did not match the demands of the labor market. He also conceded that if Thailand is to be competitive after 2015, it seems that the rising demand for foreign teachers is affecting them. While speaking to an American teacher, he told me that once Thailand joins ASEAN, Thailand will recruit all English teachers internally, but on the other hand they have their plan to improve Thai teachers as well.
All teachers in Singapore receive training on the Singapore curriculum at the country’s National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University, either in a diploma or a degree course depending on their level of education at entry. There is a close working relationship between the institute and schools, where master teachers mentor every new teacher for several years. Each year, the Ministry of Education examines a range of occupational starting salaries, and may adjust the salaries for beginning teachers to ensure that teaching is seen as equally attractive with other occupations for new graduates. Teacher salaries do not increase over time as much as some other professions but there are many opportunities for teachers to assume other roles, as described.
The Malaysian government has set ambitious targets to develop the pedagogical skills and English language capacity of their teachers in order to improve the teaching and learning of English and has asked the British Council to use its significant experience in this sector to help meet these targets by setting unique English Language Teacher Development Project (ELTDP) for experienced primary sector and ESL teachers with significant young learner teaching and for highly experienced EFL teachers or state school teachers with a TEFL qualification, with five or more years teaching/training experience, we can offer the opportunity to join the Malaysia-wide Professional Development of English Language Teachers (Pro-ELT) project.. These projects have been running since 2011 to 2014 and beyond.
They have training courses for English-medium subject teachers in content and language integrated learning pedagogy and practice in order to ensure that all students and teachers have the tools they need to work effectively. The Brunei Ministry of Education also works closely with the ministry's curriculum development department to produce resources and provide teacher training that empowers teachers in the field.
The Indonesian government, steaming to improve their teachers, is actively recruiting Americans to teach English in schools since there just aren’t enough Indonesians who are qualified to teach. The country hopes that this will change, but for the moment the country really doesn’t have any choice but to look elsewhere for teachers. The other reason that there are currently so many opportunities to teach in Indonesia is because the country wants their youth to be able to speak fluent English; however, they also don’t want their kids to forget their own language, so in 2012 they had the policy to ban English teaching in primary school level. They hope after these resolutions, they will be able to create a stronger and better country than the one that they grew up in.
The Philippines is unique among ASEAN countries because of the absence of government censorship of the media. They also have the most number of English newspapers in the region. So people can study English through the media and many more ways. While the government is trying to find a way to improve the English teaching, teachers in Philippines have moved to other countries to teach English as the world's 'low-cost English language teacher', as the wages of the average Pilipino teachers are cheaper compared to English native speakers. In the competitive market for language students, it means the Philippines is attracting people from countries such as Iran, Libya, Brazil and Russia to learn English in the Philippines.
The Laotian Ministry of Education has pledged to raise the quality of the education system and promote the teaching profession in Laos, according to a national assembly member, as they lack a basic infrastructure of education, particularly classrooms, textbooks, demonstration equipment and education materials. The Ministry of Education will attempt to develop more teachers countrywide to compensate for the lack of teachers in rural and remote areas. The teacher training system will be renewed, including the allowance policy for teachers. The government has approved an intensive policy for teachers, but it has been ineffectively implemented. There were around 5,000 teachers nationwide in the last academic year, but the number of teachers will double in the coming academic year.
Teaching children English has been identified as an objective for the Cambodian government’s Ministry of Education. Formally introducing English language learning into the national curriculum was a new step for the country, and presented a challenge to teachers who often lack tertiary or even secondary education. In 2012, the Ministry of Education decided to adopt a new curriculum and implement it in seven out of 24 provinces. Teachers will be trained in how to teach using the new curriculum.
The ministry of Education in Vietnam has a long term plan that by 2020 most Vietnamese students graduating from secondary, vocational schools, colleges and universities will be able to use a foreign language confidently in their daily communication, their study and work in an integrated, multi-cultural and multi-lingual environment, making foreign languages a comparative advantage of development for Vietnamese people. So retrained teachers are required to pass tests measured by the Common European Framework of Reference, and expected to be able to deliver a new English-focused curriculum in 70 percent of third grade classes by 2015.
While the decades of isolation had a major negative impact on the English language competency of young people, a strong cohort of English language teachers remains in Myanmar. Moreover, Myanmar today has well-trained qualified teachers, though very little resources and aging materials. Many universities have been built and scattered throughout cities to prevent student participation in potential unrest. For teaching English, Myanmar teachers and learners have some difficulties in pronouncing words which do not exist in Myanmar language such as ch, th, wh. That is the main problem here.