The world of certifications...will most probably not help to spell the end of discrimination against Non Native English Speaking Teachers ! As you know, Qualiopi is now a must-have certification for training organisations that want to use the CPF. Does this certification help to avoid discriminations of any kind ? No... So you may be a Qualiopi certified school and continue to discriminate against NNESTs, no one is going to tell you off...well, no one but me, of course ! Because in such situation I will consider you are no longer a quality school. To me, a quality school treats their teachers as quality ones...but Qualiopi doesn't take this dimension into account...not at all. Nothing about offering teachers minimum decent rates, nothing about payment terms either...and so on... Yesterday I had a phone interview with a person from LDS (Languages Development Society). As often, I was told over the phone that my application couldn't suit the school's need because I am a NNES...
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Hi readers ! You are more and more numerous and this is a good news ! But I'm well-aware that there's still a long way to go... some people contact me because as NNESTs like me, some language schools have discriminated against them... But when I ask them to post something on my blog, even anonymously, they don't take the plunge...probably because they are afraid of the possible consequences. A lady told me : don't give up, do continue your fight ! But the thing is it's not only my fight, it's every teacher's fight to ensure no more discrimination is perpetrated in the world on ELT. I do understand that some teachers don't have the financial or time resources, that some of them are simply not prepared to fight on a legal level. Personnaly, I am still very much committed to taking this to wherever it needs in order for those bad practices to cease. So why this new post ? Because I have some good news ! I have talked with a lawyer and I am now officially t...
Below is an interesting and promising extract (in French) from a decision made in 2007 by the former HALDE French authority (known as the Défenseur des Droits since 2011). This decision, made after a woman of Malagasy origin had seen her application as a French language instructor rejected by a private language school explicitely because she wasn’t a native speaker of French, states, inter alia, that the « mother tongue » criterion relates to the country of origin and that this constitutes a prohibited discriminatory practice. It also states that such terms as "mother tongue" shouldn't be seen anymore in job ads and should be replaced by unambiguous requirements about the language proficiency. Avant sa fusion en 2011 dans le Défenseur des Droits, la Haute autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l'égalité (HALDE) était l'institution compétente en France en matière de défense de la non-discrimination. Voici un extrait intéressant et prometteur de ce...
H ello ! I have issued (with the precious help of my partner Manwei) a survey questionnaire to gather more information on this subject. This document will be sent out by email to my personal and professional networks and published on my LinkedIn and Facebook pages. The results will be analysed when I get a reply from the Défenseur des Droits and I will publish them here and on my social networks’ pages. On top of making this subject more visible, I want to get a better understanding of people’s views on this and the underlying reasons. This survey could potentially help me and other NNESTs in the future. The more participants, the better ! So I’ll do my best to promote it well and I will be grateful to everyone who helps ! Key acronyms referred to in the survey: NESTs : Native English Speaking Teachers NNESTs : Non-Native English Speaking Teachers NESs : Native English Speakers NNESs : Non-Native English Speakers Target pop...
Welcome to SONDANNESTs (Supporters Of Non-Discrimination Against Non-Native English Speaking Teachers) ! What is this blog ? This blog is dedicated to all teachers of English and any other people who want to support non-discrimination against non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs). Who am I and h ow was this blog born ? After several years of working as a freelance English teacher in France, I have been discriminated against by training organisations because of my French origins… Research has clearly shown that native English teachers are not the only ones able to deliver good English lessons and that there can be real advantage to being taught by NNESTs. In this blog I will also talk about the people who have carried out such reasearch works. Surprisingly enough, after months of research on the internet and until recently, I still couldn’t find any case of a teacher who had taken legal action against an organisation which had discriminated against them . If this pr...