<strong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

More and more English teachers have abandoned public schools for more lucrative work in private enterprise at exactly the period in history when Costa Rica is suffering from a labor shortage of English-speakers. So reports <em>La Nacion</em>, Costa Rica’s leading Spanish language newspaper today, adding that even more are expected to leave the classroom as soon as their contracts expire.

This exodus leaves the Public Education Ministry in a difficult position at a time when private companies are demanding English fluency in new employees and find that most high school graduates cannot fill the bill. Deputy Minister Alejandrina Mata admitted to the newspaper that a good English teacher can earn twice the public school salary by going to a transnational firm.

Mayra Solis, who directs the University of Costa Rica English program, confirms that private companies are beating desperately on her doors to hire graduates for such demanding work as call centers. (This reporter has worked with graduates of the UCR program at the English-language newspaper, <em>The Tico Times</em>, and can attest to the ease with which the former students converse in their second language.)

At one time the National Autonomous University at Heredia (UNA) was a normal school and nearly all their graduates in English went into teaching. Now, says UNA language school director Jorge Alfaro. a great many recent graduates pf their English program never see the inside of a classroom again.

Worse is the difficulty the Ministry has in finding competence even in those who want to be English teachers. Last year, 60% of would-be English teachers failed the Ministry test for fluency in the language. This is the main reason that the government has been unable to fully implement the English-in-primary school initiative of the Jose Figueres administration. Only a handful of grade schools have the program due to lack of competent teachers, says Alfaro.

Arturo Barboza, spokeman for the private firm Sykes told the paper that Sykes had hired experienced English teachers for its own in-house classes to improve the English of their employees. Western Union has also raided the classrooms for teachers. CINDE, the government agency that has done such a fine job through the years in attracting multinationals to settle here, says that if more Costa Ricans had been fluently bilingual, they could have filled 6,000 vacant posts in companies.