Scholarships for English teachers in New Zealand

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- Four scholarships are on offer to Thais teaching English for a further postgraduate diploma in teaching English as a second language in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Asean Scholars Awards (NZAS) project is offering the scholarships with support from the New Zealand Embassy in Thailand and the Education Ministry.

The project will help develop educational personnel in Thailand and aims to prepare them for the Asean Economic Community that comes into effect in 2015, said Gewalin Lertrasameewong, country manager of Thailand for Education New Zealand.

Selected teachers will begin their studies in January or February next year at any one of five institutions: Victoria University of Wellington, Massey University, Auckland University of Technology, University of Auckland and the University of Waikato.

Scholarships include financial support for tuition, living costs while in New Zealand, an establishment allowance on arrival in New Zealand, and return airfares.

All applicants must hold a graduate bachelor's degree in relevant fields and be younger than 40 years old. They should check the IELTS (International English Language Testing System, academic stream) or TOEFL (Testing of English as a Foreign Language) score required for admission to their selected New Zealand educational institution. As a guide, most New Zealand education institutions require a minimum IELTS score of 6.5, with no band less than 6.0, for postgraduate level study.

Candidates must provide the original copy of their IELTS or TOEFL exam results as a pre-condition of placement. Results must be no older than 24 months at the time of the scholarship start date.

Application can be made to the Office of the Permanent Secretary's Bureau of International Cooperation at the ministry until mid-August and names of selected applicants will be announced in mid-October.

For more information, visit www.aid.govt.nz or email to [email protected].

-- The Nation 2012-06-18

An IELTS of 6.5 will be tough for most Thai english teachers. Good luck with that! I would have thought anyone with that kind of score would not need extra training to be a teacher, or would already be working in other professions.

Perfect.

NZ gets the big generous face, but only puts resources into teachers that are

• intelligent, or at least wrt language learning ability
  
• ambitious and hard-working
  
• poor
  
• already have high-level academic English skills
  

This ensures that the money being spent will at least accomplish something.

The graduates from this program will be 100x more capable than even the top 10% of Thai nationals currently teaching English here.

A drop in the ocean, but I guess every drop helps. . .