A new school year dawns and for many of my native English teacher friends, summer was spent seeking employment for the coming academic term. What sets apart a successful and unsuccessful candidate is not limited to experience or qualifications as one may expect. When the role is teaching English, a person's outward appearance, name, and country of origin are also determining factors, at least insofar as some English language tutorial centers are concerned.

I caught up with a former colleague last week. Since April she had sent out forty job applications. Before coming to Hong Kong, she worked as a part time lecturer for three years, and has a PhD in English Literature. With her qualifications, finding a job teaching English should be easy. But four months later, she still has yet to receive a single call offering an interview. Over dinner, she expressed her concern that it could be due to the fact she is Sri Lankan and studied in India instead of the West - sentiments I share, especially with regards to teaching English at a tertiary level.

Many tertiary level English language educators earn their degrees in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia or Canada. Yet more countries than these use English as their medium of instruction, and even as the universities in these countries attempt to attract talented people to their English programs it is common practice for them to hire, almost exclusively, those who studied in one of the four main English centers of the Western world. This irrational practice is worrying. It creates a pool of overqualified candidates trapped in limbo simply because they read for their English degree in the "wrong" country.

An applicant for an English teaching position should be assessed, initially, purely on his or her academic qualifications and teaching experience, followed by an interview to determine whether the applicant is a suitable match for the hiring institution.

A commentary last month examined how the best spoken English may not be "native" - where "native" suggests a teacher of Anglo-Saxon appearance. Even then, most native English teachers across all levels of education continue to fit that stereotype. I am not addressing the Native English Teacher Scheme here; I am rather addressing those who work as "native" English teachers outside the scheme.

With the right appearance, finding a job teaching English is easy. But it would be unfair to place the blame squarely on learning centers and schools. The English proficiency possessed by my non-Anglo-Saxon colleagues is obviously on a par with "native" English teachers, as they are teaching the language at a university level. Yet when some of them have taught English at secondary schools, they are still considered sub-par when compared to "native" English speakers - because since their nationality dictates otherwise, they cannot be considered "native" English teachers.

A native English teacher's major does not matter, nor should it, as long as the candidate meets the required proficiency of English needed for the job. Similarly, one's nationality should not matter either. After all, the role of these native English teachers is to help students become more confident and comfortable in speaking English. Who better to help students than those who have been through the same education system?

There is an increasing call for "Band 3" schools to begin teaching their students "workplace English" instead of the standard curriculum. "Workplace English" is about teaching students the conversational skills required for small talk. Opening this position to local teachers would allow them to translate problematic terms and phrases into Cantonese to facilitate understanding, as opposed to having to engage in a guessing game of charades. Furthermore, with a shared language, students would be more likely to ask questions and communicate.

The expectation that a native English teacher will "look" a certain way suggests a more deep rooted bias going beyond language competency. As the situation stands, it implies that English competency is tied to nationality and skin color. In today's world, where English is generally accepted as the lingua franca of business, there is no place for such a mentality.

The author has taught at a secondary school in Singapore under a summer internship. She also taught at Nanyang Technological University of Singapore as part of her Master's program scholarship. She is now teaching as a Visiting Fellow at City University.

(HK Edition 09/23/2014 page7)