The myth has made another appearance in relation to the Fukuoka Board of Education’s insane decision to suddenly fire 120 “Guest Teachers”, with people speculating that part of the Board of Education’s decision may have been influenced by operating costs.
However, thanks to some investigation by the Fukuoka General Union, we can once again illustrate just how deceitful this “myth of low cost dispatching” really is compared to the so-called “much more expensive” direct-hire option.
To find out just how much money the Fukuoka Board of Education decided to pay to dispatch companies in its 2018 “budgetary measures”, the Fukuoka General Union obtained copies of the contracts between the Board of Education and two dispatch companies (Link Interac and OWLs) via a “Freedom of Information” (FOI) request.
The Fukuoka General Union then divided the tender bid by the number of classes the companies are being contracted for to get a “per class” cost.
In the Fukuoka General Union’s own words, here’s how much a dispatch ALT lesson costs in comparison to a direct-hire “Guest Teacher” lesson:
This is how much ES classes are costing the Fukuoka Board Education after they fired 121 “Guest Teachers”, who recieved ¥3,800 yen per class, and replaced them with dispatch workers:
East Block: ¥6,575 per class
(72 schools; 13,930 classes; ¥91,584,000; successful tenderer: OWLS)
West Block: ¥6,542 per class
(72 schools; 14,000 classes; ¥91,582,920; successful tenderer: Interac)
As you can see, it’s safe to say that each dispatch ALT class costs the Fukuoka Board of Education (or, rather, the Fukuoka tax payer) around ¥2,700 more per-class than previous direct-hire “Guest Teacher” classes (¥6,500 – ¥3,800).
Another important consideration is that the ¥6,500 that the Fukuoka Board of Education is paying per hour/class isn’t going to an ALT – it’s going to a dispatch company.
Of that ¥6,500, only an estimated ¥1,950 will be paid to the dispatch company ALT (based upon a salary of ¥230,000 divided by 118 (29.5 x 4) working hours per month).
This represents a 70%/30% split between dispatch company and dispatch ALT.
Therefore, it could be said that ¥4,550 goes directly to the dispatch company for merely existing, compared to the ¥3,800 that the previous “Guest Teachers” recieved for doing work.
With that in mind, the ideas that money was an issue, or that dispatch is somehow cheaper than direct hire, can be set aside.
So, what’s really going on at the Fukuoka Board of Education?