Saturday, September 02, 2006

Fun with Statistics - Maybe They Should Get Math Teachers

An article in the Korea Times describes a effort by the city of Seoul to hire more native speaking englsih teachers. To make my point, let me reorder the paragraphs of the orginal story:

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SOME) said yesterday it will gradually place a native English speaker in every elementary and middle school in Seoul.

Currently, there are 562 elementary schools and 367 middle schools in Seoul and only some schools have foreign teachers supported by the Seoul Metropolitan Government or funded by the school budget. 

Seoul will recruit 929 English native teachers by Sept. 2008 to cover all elementary and middle schools in the city. 

As part of its four-year plan to facilitate English education, the local office has already positioned foreign teachers in 100 elementary and middle schools. 

“To give the opportunity to all students to learn from foreign teachers, we will recruit 600 foreign teachers,” said Choe Chun-ok, an education supervision who is in charge of recruiting English native teachers


OK lets do the math. 100 current plus 600 planned hires does not equal 929, or one teacher for every school as the city promises. Second the current year, 2006, with a four year plan means completion in 2010, not the stated goal of 2008.

Finally, if we were to be charitable assume the project ends in 2008 with a start date of 2004, that means that the city some how finds a way to hire 50 teachers a year (100 current teachers over two years). This makes the date all schools will have a native speaking english teacher is 2023. They better get hiring, I hear there is this guy in Colorado...

posted by Dram Man @ 8:12 AM

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