To start with the vast majority of Western expats working out here work in what is known as a buxiban 補習班 or extra privately owned schooling outside of school. The kids go to school from early in the morning until 1-2 ish. At which point they are transfered to the buxiban usually as an extra pick up service as a part of the schools fees. Although not for everybody these schools are extremely popular. In major city centres you can find several around the bigger elementary schools as well as quite a few in the busy down town areas.
So this means you will be working roughly from 1-9ish each day depending on your particular schedule with quite a few 4:30 starts and the average seems to be about 20-30 work hours every week not including prep and test marking time.
So why do the parents send their kids to these schools? As far as I can work out English at the elementary school level focusses mainly on grammar translation without much opportunity for speaking practice nor a lot of listening opportunities as the lesson is most likely conducted in Chinese. Also there seems to be a lot of bad pronunciation being taught at elementary schools. For instance my children will often say 'ello' instead of 'ell' for the letter 'l' or 'effoo' instead of 'f' many Taiwanese will insist my teacher told me to say it this way. Moreover being the Asian culture that it is here parents put quite a lot of weight into the educational and employment achievements of their child. Parents desperately want their children to succeed and get high paying jobs their prospects of which (business and engineering) are greatly assisted by having good English. Also university entrance here is extremely competitive. There are quite a few positions but fewer good universities and people care greatly about which university you went to.
So all of this comes together to mean that parents will do all they can to give their children a leg up. I also notice that quite a lot of parents work very long hours anyway and probably just need somewhere they can leave their kids in the gap between school finishing and them leaving work making buxibans somewhat of an educational day care centre.
Why so many foreigners? I've never actually met a local elementary teacher or been able to watch a local class. So I can't really say for sure what the standard of teaching is like. As to why the buxibans don't hire local teachers to teach the students I'm not sure. As apart of the process here many of us have TAs or teaching assistants. The vast majority are female and between the ages of 20-25. The part timers are usually university students, some English majors, some not. The there are a few fulltimers who are usually not much older than 25 as they usually do the job for a few years after university as a way to improve their English then move on to find better paying and more fullfilling work. Some of the ones who have been there for a long time definitely have the ability to do what we do. For the most part the teaching revolves around drilling sentence patterns and vocab with quite a lot of games thrown in. Apart from correct pronunciation and an ear for correcting it you don't need amazing English to do it. The most challenging part of teaching is finding ways to keep the kids entertained and make the drilling bareable. You don't need great grammar because you are just drilling a sentence pattern. It's already there as to the whys and wherefores of the grammar any explanation you have is likely to fall on deaf ears as the children don't understand the language you are using to explain it until they get to a higher level and have acquired enough to make explanations possible. Explaining grammar points in the mother language is much more efficient.
So anyway although there are a few problems with the English teaching of the locals some of the more experienced TA's could do our job but still get paid quite poorly for it. I think I'll save the rest for another post.
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