English in Elementary School

August 31, 2007 on 11:20 am | In Elementary school | No Comments

Potentially very big news for ALTs, the front page of the Asahi and Mainichi today were concerned with the announcement of new courses of study for Elementary Schools.

In a nutshell, the following changes will be implemented in Spring 2011:

  • the period of integrated study (sougouteki na gakushu) will be reduced by 1/3
  • more time will be used for the five core subjects
  • 5th and 6th graders will have an hour of English per week

Given the fact that very few homeroom teachers in ES are ready to teach English by themselves right now, this could easily result in a huge increase in the number of ES ALTs.

Personally I think that ALTs are most influential in elementary schools, so this is great news for ALTs. Hopefully not just the number of jobs, but also the range of jobs will also increase, with better pay and stability for experienced teachers…

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