Assistant Language Teachers have been in Japan since the 1970s. What began as a handful of participants on government exchange programs has become a system that employs almost 20,000 teachers in positions from kindergartens through senior high schools. These teachers serve under a dizzying variety of job titles, contract types, employers, and work conditions all over Japan. Private companies compete to win the lowest bid driving down salaries and standards. ALTs are left with low pay and often, no insurance. Changes in labor law have disadvantaged directly hired ALTs forcing them into unstable yearly contracts that must be re-interviewed for each year. JET Programme participants are forced out when their arbitrary contract limits expire, despite the fact that labour law changes forbid contract renewal limits.
- Private companies compete to win the lowest bid driving down salaries and standards. ALTs are left with low pay and often, no insurance.
- Changes in labor law have disadvantaged directly hired ALTs forcing them into unstable yearly contracts that must be re-interviewed for each year.
- JET Programme participants are forced out when their arbitrary contract limits expire, despite the fact that labour law changes forbid contract renewal limits.
Lack of oversight and standardization has turned the ALT field into an unorganized race to bottom as salaries remain stagnant and positions increasingly unstable. Seemingly paradoxically, this has been concurrent with rising standards in curriculum leading to increased workload and importance of language teachers. The ALTs deserve decent work and the Japanese teachers and students deserve decent ALTs who deliver quality education. At the end of the day, this will benefit the people we care about the most…our students. A teacher with less worries out of the classroom is one that can focus in the classroom. One of the best ways this can happen is with boards of education hiring ALTs directly, so they can cultivate dedicated groups of teachers. With support like this, ALTs can further themselves professionally. For example, ALTs can get the qualifications to be better teachers, to the benefit of their students.
The first step in making a change is collecting data. Take the ALT Survey
Read more. Visit the Campaign Website
Why is this campaign so important? This video shows how an ALT working full time at a public school in Kitakyushu could barely earn enough to buy food.