…which I really need to remember as a writer now that I have found an untypically decent school:
“The idea that I could improve the lives of the Rwandan people sounded ambitious, considering I had no experience as an educationalist. I had only recently put my own student days behind me.
But this was not a concern for the organisers; apparently after a one-day “Teaching English as a Foreign Language” (TEFL) course, anyone can teach – even to teachers.
The Rwandan government announced last year that it was switching the language of education from French to English. I was in charge of a class of 45 teachers who were struggling to grasp even the rudiments of the language, but were already expected to teach their classes solely in English.”
From A Mission to Rwanda with True Disciples of Cameron in The Independent
Or to put it another way:
“the vast majority of schools in Thailand… are not striving for academic excellence, but are more or less working towards academic survival”
From Who Took the Thai Out of Thailand TESOL? in the Bangkok Post
Both well worth reading, even for those not teaching in Rwanda!
TEFLtastic 
Sadly, that is the reality in some places. Last week, I was down in one of Mexico’s poorer states placing teachers for the Trinity GESE exam. My recommendation for one teacher was GESE 1 (A1 CEFR) – apparently she’d been teaching for some 15 years. Meanwhile, another teacher, who I recommended take GESE 3 (A2 CEFR), explained to me how he had got in teaching a couple of years back. His father, a secondary school biology teacher, had retired from teaching but, as a union member, he had the right to pass on his post to whoever he wanted. He chose his son. Unfortunately, they didn’t need biology teachers, rather they needed English teachers and so the son, who , incidentally, studied engineering, is now an English teacher.
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