Consider TOEFL for assessing teachers’ English proficiency

I refer to the letters “Hong Kong assessing English teachers with IELTS shouldn’t be controversial” (April 11) and “Rethink lower qualifications for teaching English in Hong Kong” (April 16), discussing the Education Bureau’s decision to replace the Language Proficiency Assessment (LPA) with the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). While your correspondent on April 16 is right about LPA being able to more accurately assess a candidate’s ability to teach in the city, I agree with your correspondent on April 11 that IELTS could serve as an adequate substitute for LPA, as other pedagogical skills will be tested elsewhere.

On the other hand, I wish to remind the Education Bureau that the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is an internationally recognised language proficiency test, which is about the same length as

IELTS but slightly less costly. With its speaking and writing sections assessed collaboratively by human and AI, TOEFL in terms of test result validity might be superior to IELTS which is solely graded by humans.

I urge the bureau to consider allowing TOEFL scores as evidence for teachers’ English language proficiency. Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong