Educationists warn the Government may face recruitment problems in its plan to extend the Native English-Speaking Teachers (NET) scheme to all primary schools. About $400 million will be injected into the scheme in the next two to three years to allow a native-speaking teacher to be placed in more than 800 primary schools. However, some professionals said it would be difficult to find enough qualified overseas-language teachers because they were in high demand around the world. 'It will be very difficult to find that many qualified English teachers,' said Dr Peter Storey, head of the Hong Kong Institute of Education's centre for language and education. 'There's an international shortage of such teachers. The UK has recently advertised in Hong Kong to look for English teachers, and the same applies to Canada.' Michael Tien Puk-sun, chairman of the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research, a government advisory body, said: 'There is fierce competition between Hong Kong and places such as the mainland and Japan for NETs. Many parents have put lots of pressure on schools to take part in the scheme. But I don't think that schools which are not yet ready to join should be forced to take on [a NET teacher].' The scheme was launched in 1998 in all secondary schools. But the secretary of the Native English-Speaking Teachers' Association, Simon Ross, said it should have started with primary schools. 'It's the right age to teach students correct pronunciation, intonation and speech patterns,' he said. 'It's more difficult at secondary schools, where students have poor knowledge [about the language] and are reluctant to speak and can't read.'