The Chongqing People’s Court of the Yuzhong district recently held a trial regarding the case of a foreign teacher working for a non-joint venture school.
An intermediary agency “packages” foreign employees who do not meet the qualifications for employment in China and sends them to teach in primary/secondary schools and kindergartens.
Four suspects have been charged for their illegal arrangements to have foreign workers cross the border and sell exit and entry documents.
Entering China on a tourist visa
Most of those workers only have a high school or junior high school education.
Last year, an education consulting company was found guilty after illegally arranging foreign nationals to illegally cross the border and obtain work permits to teach classes in kindergartens, primary and secondary schools in Chongqing and Chengdu, according to a Chongqing police investigation.
China’s relevant agencies have strict regulations on educational qualifications of migrant workers.
To apply for a work visa as an English teacher, one must hold a bachelor’s degree or above, have more than two years of relevant work experience and no criminal record.
But most of the 18 foreign teachers involved in this case are from non-English speaking countries such as various countries in Africa, Brazil, Mexico, and France. Most of them only have high school or junior high school degrees, and some of them are international students without any work experience.
According to the agency, they manage to find these people through online advertisements and recommendations by other foreign teachers. After conducting their own rounds of interviews, they’ll arrange for them to apply for a tourist visa.
This case also exposed the poor management of some educational institutions as well as lack of integrity.
“The interview was quite informal and ended with a few quick questions and answers,” said a 26-year-old teacher from South Africa who admitted only having a junior high school education. He said that he worked as an English teacher at five different kindergartens and that none of them had demanded to see his academic credentials.
In the agency’s computers, the police found a large number of fake certificates that showed blank criminal records, templates of academic credentials and even a forged seal of the South African police department.
Zeng Yi, deputy director of the Chongqing Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, said that the foreign expert departments would conduct online pre-examinations and on-site verifications of documents submitted by foreigners.
However, due to the lack of corresponding technical means, unless the material has obvious flaws or doubts, it is difficult to verify the authenticity of these materials.
Alice, a young girl from South Africa, said she had “never been a teacher” before being sent to a kindergarten after just one hour of training at the agency.
Chongqing public security authorities found that two of the 18 foreign teachers involved in the case had a criminal record, yet were still allowed to teach, thereby posing a hidden danger to campus security.
“The number of foreigners coming to Chongqing has been soaring at an average annual rate of 40%. At the same time, cases of illegal educational work on tourist visas have increased as well.”
There were more than 400,000 foreigners working in the education sector in China in 2017, but according to the latest policy standards, only one-third of them were teaching legally.
“Such cases are particularly common in training institutions, whose standard of employment is said to be as low as “only needing to show faces of foreigners in their centers.”
Lai Hansong, the person handling the foreign cases for the Chongqing public security bureau exit-entry administration, stressed the urgent need to join forces in order to eradicate the hidden dangers of foreign teachers not conforming to the joint venture quality of education in China.
The Chongqing Yuzhong district procuratorate suggested that the relevant departments should strengthen communication and cooperation and improve the management of intermediary agencies and foreign teachers related provisions.
While there is a pressing need to increase auditing, employers must be required to only hire legal foreign teachers in order to contribute to the high quality of education in China.
Cities across the country are increasingly tightening their policies while investigating the legal status of foreign teachers in various institutions.