Is TEFL

Recruitment
Racist?
Ross Thorburn

Introduction
Sixty years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her
seat. Fifty-five years since Martin Luther King’s “I have a
dream”. And, four decades after George Wallace said “I
was wrong.” You might think, by now, we’d have racism
under control. We don’t. In fact, the prevalence of racism
in recruitment has not improved in the US since 1989
(Quilliana, Pagerc, Hexela & Midtbøenf, 2017). Figure 1: Percentages of responses to job applications

Is TEFL racist? We know that our industry discriminates

against “non-native English teachers”, but what about
good old, garden-variety racism?

Research Methods
Previous studies into the effect of race on recruitment
used similar CVs with ethnically distinct name to apply
for identical jobs (Ojha & Syal, 2009; Adesina &
Marocico, 2017; Nunley, Pugh, Romero & Seals, 2014).
As distinctive names may be too subtle for many ESL
employers (especially in Asia), I used photos in addition
to names to investigate the effect of race on recruitment.

I created CVs for two teachers with similar qualifications.

Both CVs listed a 120 hour online TEFL qualification and
2:1 bachelor’s degrees from a UK university (Edinburgh
and Leeds). The primary difference between the
applicants was their skin color; one was black, the other Figure 2: Additional responses to white applicant (as a
white. percentage)

I submitted the CVs for 250 job advertisements, from Discussion

Dave’s ESL Cafe’s job boards; 100 in China, 100 in
Korea and 50 in Europe. Both the ‘black’ and the ‘white’
CV were submitted for each job advertisement. For
fairness, the photos and names were swapped on 50%
of the CV’s (in case some TEFL schools prefer teachers
who graduated from Edinburgh over Leeds).
Results
The results show a strong preference for white teachers.
The white candidate received 61% more positive
responses from schools in China and 43% more in
Korea. The difference in Europe was 11%, small in
comparison. Figure 1 shows the responses for the
candidates by country. Figure 2 quantifies the additional
responses received by the white candidate.
These results are similar to a 2009 UK study which
found that white applicants were 78% more likely to
receive a positive response to an application (Ojha &
Syal 2009). Though we might assume that recruiters’
racial prejudices are to blame, an American study found
recruiter bias was not the prime culprit. That 2014
investigation found black applicants faced more
discrimination when applying for customer facing jobs,
but almost no discrimination in applying for jobs that
were not client facing (Nunley, Pugh, Romero & Seals,
2014). The same phenomenon could explain our results;
few professions interact more with customers than
teachers.
Although many schools in Asia may be concerned that
black teachers are bad for business, the American
Sociological Association found that racial diversity is a
strong predictor of a company's success. The more
diverse the organization, the better their competitive
positioning relative to other firms in the same industry
(Herring, 2009). It remains to be seen whether this
phenomenon is also true in TEFL.

Racism in TEFL is more complicated than “parents don’t

like black teachers.” As my former boss in Beijing puts it,
“If it’s a good teacher, it doesn’t matter what they look
like. But if it’s a bad teacher, parents complain more if
the teacher is black.”

Implications
If you are a black teacher reading this, removing your
photo from your CV is unlikely to increase your chances
of employment. If you are interviewing at a
discriminatory school, the worst thing you can do is
waste your time with a recruiter who will reject you the
second they see your face. If you are an employer,
taking the positive step of removing “personal data”
(name, age, photo, etc.) from CVs are failing to address
the real issue – discriminatory behavior and processes
(Recruiting for Diversity, 2016). There is no quick fix for
racism in recruitment.

Though most TEFL employers don’t state preferences

for race on job boards in the same way they state
preferences for “native English teachers”, the TEFL
industry continues to harbor attitudes and processes
which contribute to racial discrimination. This is the
submerged part of the iceberg that needs to be raised
before it can be solved.

References
Nunley, J., Pugh, A., Romero, N., and Seals, A., R. Jr.
(2014). An Examination of Racial Discrimination in the
Labor Market for Recent College Graduates: Estimates
from the Field. Auburn University Department of
Economics Working Paper Series

Herring, C. Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender, and the

Business Case for Diversity. American Sociological
Review, April 2009

Recruiting for Diversity, September 5 2016. Human

Resource Management Guide. Retrieved from
http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/diversity/diversity_rhetoric.ht
m

Ojha, S., Syal, R. (2009) Undercover job hunters reveal

huge race bias in Britain's workplaces. In The Observer.
Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/18/racism
-discrimination-employment-undercover

Quilliana, L., Pagerc, D., Hexela, O., Midtbøenf, A.

(2017) Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no
change in racial discrimination in hiring over time.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America
PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences Retrieved from
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10870