The failure of three native English-speaking teachers from the same school has been met with shock Three native English teachers (NETs) from a private primary school in Kowloon Tong failed to reach the required level of language proficiency in this year's benchmark test, it was revealed this week. The three were shocked to learn their language skills were not considered good enough to teach English in Hong Kong's primary schools, said one of the teachers, an American in his first year of teaching. They all failed the paper on writing skills, one of five in the test. 'It's so ridiculous,' he said. 'How do native English-speakers who have English language teaching certificates and have graduated from American, Canadian, and British universities all fail part of an English exam in Hong Kong?' His colleague, a British woman with eight years' teaching experience, said: 'At first I thought I just fluffed it because I was tired or I misread the question. But when I found out two of my colleagues who are both native speakers had failed as well I thought something must be wrong with the test.' The teachers requested anonymity and declined to identify their school. All three had CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) qualifications, a preliminary teaching credential awarded by the University of Cambridge. Two of them were awarded B grades in that exam, putting them in the top 25 per cent of candidates taking the course worldwide, according to figures from the British Council. 'It's outrageous. I've never failed an exam in my life and I got straight As in English at school,' said the British teacher, who has a degree in psychology from the University of Nottingham. Richard McGeough, the officer responsible for the benchmark listening and speaking papers at the Centre for Professional and Business English (CPBE) at the Polytechnic University, one of the largest providers of training courses for teachers taking the benchmark tests, said he was surprised but not shocked that some NET teachers had failed. Simply being a native speaker of English did not guarantee the necessary skills to teach the language, he said. Teachers required in-depth knowledge of the language to explain grammatical errors, he added. It was worrying that teachers trained under CELTA had failed, he said. But he pointed out that this was only a four-week introductory course to teaching, and that identifying and explaining errors of grammar took several years' classroom experience. In the writing paper, candidates were asked to discuss different methods of assessment. The American teacher, who wrote to the South China Morning Post revealing the results, said he criticised education for being too exam-driven and claimed he may have been marked down for his argument, not language. The British teacher said: 'I think my ideas were too creative for the assessors.' Teachers on the government NET scheme are exempt from the test, but an Education and Manpower Bureau spokesman said it had advised principals to ask privately-hired NET teachers to be assessed if they did not have a first degree in English. The American teacher said he would retake the writing paper if necessary, but he remained sceptical of its worth. 'If the government wants better language teachers, it should focus on developing the ones it has instead of testing them out of the profession.' Winnie Chow Pui-man, a local English teacher at a government primary school in Pokfulam and who passed the test, was surprised the NETs had failed. 'It is not that hard to reach level three [out of five], provided the teacher has enough preparation,' she said. Vanishing language skills - Page 4