A Hokkaido businessman is offering school boards a money-saving way to attract foreign teaching assistants: outsourcing.

Tatsuya Sekito says the Japan English Conversation School Council, a venture he set up last summer with 11 other private schools, plans to bring in English-speaking assistant language teachers (ALTs) to municipalities in Hokkaido next year for many elementary, junior and senior high schools.

Sekito, who runs an English school in Takikawa in central Hokkaido, says the council can recruit ALTs more cheaply than the central government's widespread Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program.

That program has provided native speakers of English to assist Japanese teachers in the classroom since 1987.

Sekito's joint venture includes operators of 12 English language schools in eight cities, including Sapporo, Asahikawa and Otaru. The company is wooing regional municipal boards of education, offering to recruit ALTs from around the English-speaking world.

The company can do the job for less than the 6 million yen per teacher it costs to maintain an ALT for a year through the central government's program.

The JET total cost covers a salary of about 300,000 yen per month, travel fees to and from Japan, social insurance premiums and commuting to and from work.

Sekito got the idea after a friend who works for a local government told him the city couldn't afford to place ALTs at schools. Sekito's company can bring in an ALT for 4.5 million yen to 4.8 million yen per year. It does it by paying the assistant 50,000 yen less per month and finding cheap round-trip flights, he said. More than 10 municipalities have shown interest in the service.

``We aim to provide capable people at a lower cost through our recruiting and training skills,'' Sekito said.

In fiscal 2004, about 5,500 native English-speaking ALTs came to Japan through the JET program, which started in 1987.

This year, eight municipalities in Hokkaido opted to drop out of the JET program, while 123 cities, towns and villages, or 60 percent of Hokkaido's municipalities, continued using it.

Six of the eight municipalities that dropped out of JET are using substitutes-Japanese employees of local governments who studied English abroad, or foreigners who live in the neighborhood.

The other two towns chose not to hire any ALTs at all.

It is difficult to find good help, however.

Atsushi Fujimoto, employed by the board of education in Makkari, Hokkaido, is a substitute ALT at Makkari Junior High School. He once studied in the United States.

``I can't imitate native-speakers' English and I don't have the special teaching skills that Japanese teachers have. I sometimes feel awkward in the classroom,'' Fujimoto said.

One Makkari village official said: ``Foreigners rarely come to live in our village. And we have no connection to anyone who can recruit them from abroad.''

Meanwhile, in Ibaraki Prefecture, 94 ALTs were hired through the JET program to work at local schools last fiscal year. This year, 12 municipalities, or about 15 percent, dropped contracts with 15 ALTs.

Three ALTs in the city of Yuki in the prefecture lost their jobs to people recruited by private entities. One official in the city's board of education said the cost was just two-thirds that of the JET program.

Another problem is quality. Many people have questioned the skills of the ALTs dispatched through the JET program. A few foreigners, it seems, weren't too keen to interact with the students.

``This happened because the JET program has grown too large. We don't need teachers who come to Japan to be tourists,'' the official said.

In Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, the government also reduced the number of JET-recruited ALTs from seven to five for this fiscal year, the first such cut since introducing them in 1987.

In Fukuoka, the number of JET ALTs fell from 17 to 12 this fiscal year. But the city government hired seven people through private companies.

In September, the internal affairs ministry and education ministry, which run the JET program, urged municipalities to add more ALTs to school classrooms.

``Some might say the personnel expenses are high. But the JET program has enabled us to continue to send ALTs not only to big cities, but also to rural areas,'' said one official.(IHT/Asahi: December 24,2004)