Teacher shortage and training gaps hinder bilingual education in Guatemala

Guatemala's efforts to improve English language education are being hampered by a critical shortage of qualified teachers and deficiencies in their training. Despite English being a mandatory subject in secondary schools and its expansion into primary education, the system struggles to meet demand.

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Many times these individuals do not have the didactic or evaluative tools to adequately support student learning.

A 2024 study by the Inter-American Dialogue and Guatemala No Se Detiene revealed that the Ministry of Education employs about 1,000 English teachers for public secondary schools. This translates to a challenging student-to-teacher ratio of 387:1, with some teachers potentially responsible for up to 700 students. Compounding this issue, approximately 90% of these educators reportedly have only a basic level of English proficiency, limiting their effectiveness in the classroom.

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We need a large number of teachers to cover and prepare our entire society for this globalized and bilingual world.

Karin Rossbach, director of the English Language Teaching Department at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), identified the lack of specialized teachers as a major obstacle to broader bilingual education. "We need a large number of teachers to cover and prepare our entire society for this globalized and bilingual world," she stated.

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All teachers who teach in the secondary level must have a specialization in the subject they teach.

While teacher training was moved exclusively to universities in 2013, entry requirements vary significantly. Some institutions demand intermediate English proficiency, while others do not. Rossbach stressed the importance of strengthening both initial and ongoing teacher training to enhance educational quality. She noted that UVG is participating in a Ministry of Education program since 2022 to bolster the skills of public school teachers, aiming to address the dual challenge of teacher scarcity and insufficient qualifications.

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There are few teachers, and of those few, not all have the necessary qualities regarding academic degree, language proficiency level, methodologies, and other fundamental aspects for teaching.