SHANGHAI: A note posted on an Internet bulletin board last month has been the focal point of debate among English teachers in Shanghai.

The note, which was written by the Shanghai Canilx Education Consulting Co, said the company is going through "a difficult time" and "management is working actively for the solutions."

Last month, two of the institute's branches in Pudong and downtown Shanghai closed suddenly. Students and teachers were sent to the main centre about 15 minutes' walk away.

Before last week, the closures had not made big waves beyond the relatively small circle of teachers and students, but have since touched a well-known school with a reasonably good reputation, and shone the spotlight on the rather large and sometimes murky world of language institutes.

Demand for business English training is rising among individuals and corporations in Shanghai and the rest of China. More multinationals and the increasing openness of the country mean the need to communicate in English is even greater, and so is the competition among various institutes and training centres.

"There is very, very, very fierce competition. It is like a lot of other sectors in Shanghai," said Ken Carroll, one of three co-owners of KaiEn, a 10-year-old institute and one of almost 200 across the city. "There is, in fact, a degree of oversupply."

Business English and corporate training are growing particularly fast.

"That's a big market. A very profitable market," said Carroll. "It is more accessible to smaller players. If you have campuses, schools... you have to run them.

"But there's also the pressure, you've got to keep the students coming in. So they tend to be bigger organizations who can maintain a level of scale through advertising and so on."

The voracious demand for language training has led to an explosion in the number of new schools in recent years. Reliable institutes with useful programmes have grown with demand.

Web International was launched three years ago and has spread across the country.

"We do a lot of promotion and we have built a good reputation," said education supervisor Catherine Wang.

Her school is on the 22nd floor of a downtown skyscraper. It is a modern looking space with well-lit classrooms and a room full of computers where students can work through the curriculum.

The school has a computer-based programme and experienced teachers who are native speakers. In the last three years the company has grown to include 17 centres, either branches or franchises.

"We are growing very fast. Business English is very popular in Shanghai because of work pressures. Most students who come here, their purpose is to learn some business English.

"There are a lot of foreign businesses. A lot of students have teleconferences every week with their companies in America," she said.

As teachers, Wang said the company hires native speakers with a recognized certificate for teaching English as a second language.

Those requirements are standard in most teaching jobs advertised but that is where the similarities between many of the schools come to an end.

Beyond the private institutes with good reputations and track records to match, there are dozens of fly-by-night outfits that can make finding a school difficult at best.

Language institutes are different from formal schools. Although they have to be registered with district governments, they do not have to undergo the extensive screening procedures schools do.

"Most of these (schools) are pretty much unregulated," said Phil Stephens, who has been teaching in China for four years and is now the Suzhou manager of Boston Training Technologies.

"There is a lot of weird stuff out there."

"We (teachers) assume all of them (schools) are dodgy in one way or another," he said, even if "there are a few gems out there."

Stephens is something of a clearing house of information about teachers and schools.

He started an Internet meeting point for English teachers that has grown rapidly. Raoul's China Expat Saloon (www.chinateachers.proboards17.com) is a nod to Raoul Duke, the Doonesbury character that pays homage to deceased writer Hunter S. Thomson.

Throughout the pages of the saloon, which include more than 10,000 postings, there are myriad examples of schools that did not live up to their promises and teachers that just were not up to scratch.

Another bulletin board, Dave's ESL cafe (www.eslcafe.com) is probably the most famous for English teachers in Asia. There are hundreds of stories there about fly-by-night schools, students who signed up for programmes that just never delivered what they promised and teachers left stranded without a penny to show for their efforts.

"It's fairly common to get to the end of the contract and they just don't know you any more," said Stephens, who has personally seen the good, the bad and the ugly.

In his first year he was housed in a Beijing apartment with cockroaches even inside the refrigerator, he said. On another occasion, the school did not take care of his visa and he had to go to Hong Kong to secure re-entry into the country at the last minute.

"There are a lot of dodgy schools in China," he said. "I think those problems are a disgrace."

But those problems are not keeping potential teachers away and there are plenty of schools out there that make the idea of teaching for a living or to subsidize travelling appealing.

Salaries and benefits for teachers cover a wide spectrum, from about 4,500 yuan (US$544) per month with housing to more than 20,000 yuan (US$2,418).

The ability and dedication of the teachers are as varied as the packages available, from the ultra-qualified to the charlatans.

"The competition here is how can you get the really good trainers, and how can you get them at a reasonable price," said Carroll.

Particularly among corporate trainers, there is a shortage of qualified teachers. At the same time, the "freelance" nature of the job tends to attract everything from the very qualified to "space cadets... who probably can't hold their jobs."

Although many are well educated and like the job - even if they are not passionate about it - others are a different story.

"There are a lot of teachers without credentials and a lot of the credentials are not worth very much," said Stephens, who regularly recruits teachers.

Ultimately, it is the students who have to figure out where to put their money, be it the parents of school-aged children who want to give their kids a leg up or adults looking to polish up their English in search of better career opportunities.

"The students are getting it from all sides. Obviously, they have no idea of the solvency and stability of the schools," said Stephens.

Official regulations for these types of training institutions are far less than those that apply to more formal schools.

Qiu Zhijun, an official for the supervision division of the Shanghai Education Commission, said they fall under the jurisdiction of each district.

"All the problems must be solved by district level regulators," Qiu said.

There is a set of national guidelines for them but they are not laws. Each district manages the schools within its borders in compliance with the national guidelines.

Like any other business enterprise, even reputable language institutes can sometimes get into hot water.

A local Shanghai newspaper reported on Friday that students had tried to break down the doors at one of Canilx's branches looking for computers. The report also said the school was due to meet new investors.

Canilx is not a new school and has a reasonable reputation among teachers, which is why the events of last month caught many by surprise.

The schools use a computer teaching method pioneered by the internationally-known Wall Street institutes - probably the most reputable and stable outfit around.

Although phone calls to the school went unanswered yesterday, a spokeswoman for Canilx passed on an interview about their English programmes two weeks ago, saying "these days it is really not convenient."

"Will you still be around next week?" "Hopefully," she replied.

(China Daily 07/20/2005 page5)