November 2005

 

 

Two-thirds of local teachers at an Auckland primary school failed a mock international English proficiency exam used by the Teachers' Council to register foreign teachers. The Principal asked her staff to sit the test to illustrate how hard it was, after months of frustration at being unable to get a foreign teacher registered. The Spanish-trained teacher, a specialist with 10 years' experience in teaching autistic children and who worked as an English-to-Spanish European Union translator, had sat the International English Language Test System (IELTS) four times, falling just short each time.