Saw this today on a news site….............

20,000 new jobs for English teachers
English will be placed near the top of Spain’s educational agenda by Prime Minister Zapatero if his party wins the March 9th election, thanks to a programme that will create around 20,000 new jobs for native English teachers. Zapatero claims that 15% of all school activity will take place in English by the end of his next legislation so that pupils leave school with a sound grasp of the language. Other initiatives include an expanded exchange programme, whereby 200,000 Spanish students would visit the UK each year.

Wow! That’s amazing! I wonder if there’s a visa for English teachers in the works…

Well he did win the election so vamos a ver!

So this promise was made months ago now, anyone see any evidence of it actually happening? As far as I know, over the summer Zapatero made things worse for teachers here in Spain by giving out thousands of grants for Spaniards to go and study in the U.K! Leaving us here in Spain with less students than normal. I wonder if International House in the U.K is one of his biggest lobbyists?

The Valencian region has made teaching English compulsory for all schools in the region - this has met with a very mixed reaction!

But as with everything Spanish…What does “compulsory” actually mean? Does this mean that the poor kids will have to sit through X amount more hours with some nutter yelling at them, “Theeees eeees a pen”, or does that mean that the system will actually open up and hire professional teachers?

In Valencia they are also ducking teaching the new civics course by “teaching” it in English while having it simultaneously translated into Spanish. This still hasn’t translated into jobs as of yet.

The situation for teachers hoping to make their living here is still up in the air really. As it stands, few are offered more than 9 month contracts.