The bad news: your salary was decided before you even applied.
Not by your qualifications. Not by your teaching experience. Not by how good your demo lesson was. It was decided in a municipal government office, by a procurement committee, during a bidding process you were never told existed.
The good news: there’s still a way to change it. But only if you understand the game you’re actually playing.
The Bidding System Nobody Told You About
Here’s how ALT placement actually works in most of Japan.
When a city or town wants ALTs in its schools, it doesn’t hire teachers directly. It puts the contract out to tender — a competitive bidding process where派遣 (dispatch) companies compete for the contract. The company that wins is almost always the one that quoted the lowest price. Which means the company that wins is the one that figured out how to deliver ALTs for the least amount of money.
You are the variable they adjusted to make the numbers work.
The schools, for their part, are often fine with this. Their budget is fixed. Their expectations are modest — in many cases, an ALT’s primary function is to stand at the front of the room and model native pronunciation. A warm body with a native English accent technically fulfils the brief. Quality beyond that is, from a procurement standpoint, unnecessary.
This isn’t cynicism. This is the structural reality of the industry.
Your salary isn’t low because you’re not good enough. It’s low because the system was designed that way.
Once you understand that, you can stop being angry at the wrong things — and start working the only angle that actually moves the needle.
The Two Types of ALT (Honest Version)
Walk into any dispatch company’s roster and you’ll find two kinds of people, whether they’d admit it or not.
Type A: The Replaceable ALT
Hired because they’re a native English speaker and available. Shows up, does the lessons, goes home. Polite enough. Forgettable enough. The school likes them fine, the way you like a vending machine — useful, interchangeable, not something you’d miss specifically.
For the dispatch company, Type A is a filled slot. When their contract ends, the company posts the job again, someone new shows up, and the school barely notices the difference.
Negotiating leverage: essentially zero. You’re a commodity in a buyer’s market.
Type B: The Indispensable ALT
The school asks for them by name. The head teacher mentions them in staff meetings. The JTE they work with has quietly made clear to the school administration that losing this particular person would be disruptive.
For the dispatch company, Type B is a retention problem waiting to happen. If this person walks, the school relationship gets complicated. The next bidding cycle gets riskier. The cost of replacement — recruiting, onboarding, rebuilding trust with the school — quietly exceeds whatever a small raise would cost.
That’s your leverage. That’s the only leverage that exists in this industry.
Nobody starts as Type B. But nobody has to stay Type A either.
How to Become Indispensable (The Actual Strategy)
This is not about working harder in a general sense. It’s about working specifically in ways that make you difficult to replace. There’s a difference.
Stop Being Just the Voice Box
The minimum viable ALT shows up, reads from the textbook, models pronunciation, and leaves. Plenty of people do exactly this for years. They wonder why their salary never moves.
Here’s why: the school doesn’t need you for that. They need an ALT. Any ALT.
The moment you become useful beyond the script — helping a nervous JTE plan a lesson they actually feel confident about, staying five minutes after class to answer a student’s question in broken Japanese and broken English, being visibly present at a sports day without being asked — you start accumulating something the dispatch company cannot easily replace: institutional trust.
That trust is your negotiating currency. Build it deliberately.
Own the Relationship With Your JTE
Your Japanese Teacher of English is the most important person in your professional ecosystem, and most ALTs treat the relationship as purely functional. Show up, co-teach, leave. That’s Type A.
Type B invests in this relationship. Not in a performative way — in a practical one. Ask what they find difficult about the curriculum. Offer to prep materials for a lesson they’re stressed about. When they push back on one of your ideas, don’t sulk — engage. A JTE who genuinely values working with you will say so, unprompted, to the people who matter. That feedback reaches the dispatch company whether you’re in the room or not.
Create a Record, Not Just a Memory
This is the step almost nobody takes, and it’s the one that separates a negotiation from a conversation.
Start keeping a simple running document — nothing elaborate — of things you’ve done that went beyond the baseline. Lessons you designed from scratch. Events you supported. Positive feedback you received from teachers or parents. Test scores from a class that improved. Anything that constitutes evidence.
When you sit down to negotiate, most ALTs say some version of “I’ve been here a while and I think I’m doing a good job.” The company hears this constantly. It moves nobody.
When you say “Here are six specific things I did this year that your replacement would need time to rebuild” — that’s a different conversation.
Time Your Move Correctly
Contracts in this industry run on cycles tied to the school year and, beneath that, to the bidding calendar. Raising the salary question at the wrong point in that cycle is like asking for a refund after the shop has already closed the till.
The window is 2 to 3 months before your contract renewal date. Not one month — that’s too late for the company to factor it into their planning. Not six months — that’s too early to feel urgent. Two to three months gives the company time to go back to the school, make a case, and return to you with something.
Outside that window, the honest answer from most companies isn’t “no” — it’s “there’s genuinely nothing we can do right now.” Learn the cycle. Work with it.
The Conversation Itself — What to Say (And What Not to)
Let’s talk numbers first, because expectations matter.
A派遣ALT earning ¥250,000 per month is looking at a realistic negotiated increase of 2–3%. That’s ¥5,000 to ¥7,500 per month. On an annualised basis, roughly ¥60,000–¥90,000.
If that sounds small, consider what it actually represents. Dispatch companies operate on margins that the bidding system has been compressing for years. A 2–3% raise for one ALT means the company either absorbs the cost from a margin that isn’t generous to begin with, or goes back to the school and makes a case for higher ALT quality being worth the difference. They will only do either of those things for someone they genuinely cannot afford to lose.
Getting 2–3% as a派遣ALT is not a consolation prize. It’s evidence that you’ve become Type B. It’s a victory the majority of your colleagues will never achieve.
Go in asking for a specific number. “I’m looking for an increase of around ¥7,000 per month to commit to another year” is a negotiation. “I was hoping for something a bit more” is a wish.
What not to say — and why it fails:
| What you say | Why it doesn’t work | What works instead |
|---|---|---|
| “I’ve been here two years, so I deserve a raise.” | Years on the job are not the company’s problem to solve. Duration is not value. | “The school has requested me by name for a third year. That continuity reduces your risk at the next bidding cycle.” |
| “Other companies pay more.” | This reads as a threat. It damages the relationship and rarely produces results. | “I’d like to make this work here long-term. Can we talk about what’s possible for the renewal?” |
| “I just want a little more.” | Vague requests get vague responses, which are almost always no. | “I’m looking for an increase of ¥7,000 per month. That’s my number for committing to another full year.” |
| “I work really hard.” | Everyone says this. It proves nothing. | “Here’s what I’ve built at this school over two years. Here’s what a replacement would need time to reconstruct.” |
One more thing: have this conversation in writing first. Not because you’re building a legal case — because it gives the company time to think, and it signals that you’re serious without being emotional. A short, professional email requesting a meeting to discuss contract renewal before the deadline is the right opening move. The conversation happens in person. The ask is specific. The tone is calm.
If the Answer Is No — Your Actual Options
Sometimes the answer genuinely is no. Not as a tactic. Not because they don’t value you. But because the contract with the municipality is fixed, the margin doesn’t exist, and there is no number to move.
When that happens, you have three real options:
Option 1: Stay and build for next year. If your leverage is strong but the timing was wrong, another year of reinforcing your position isn’t wasted time. The ask goes back on the table at the next renewal, with more evidence behind it.
Option 2: Move laterally within the industry. Private schools, direct-hire positions, and eikaiwa (English conversation schools) operate outside the municipal bidding system. The pay structures are different, sometimes better, and the negotiating dynamic is more conventional. These positions are harder to find but they exist — and a strong track record from a dispatch role is useful currency.
Option 3: Reframe your Japan career entirely. Some people reach the ceiling of what the ALT industry can offer and decide to retrain — Japanese language skills, a TESOL qualification, corporate English training. The ALT years weren’t wasted. They were the foundation.
Knowing when to walk away is part of the strategy, not a failure of it.
For context: JET Programme ALTs operate under a nationally standardised pay scale. Negotiation is not on the table. If you’re JET, this article is useful background, but your path to higher earnings runs through re-entry into the private sector after your JET contract ends. Direct-hire positions at private schools offer the most negotiating room of any ALT-adjacent role — but that’s a topic with enough complexity to deserve its own piece.
One Last Thing
The bidding system isn’t going away. School budgets aren’t getting bigger. The industry will keep producing a steady supply of people willing to come to Japan for the experience alone, and dispatch companies will keep pricing accordingly.
None of that is in your control.
What is in your control is which type of ALT you become — and whether, when the renewal conversation finally happens, you’re the person the school quietly told the company they’d rather not lose, armed with a specific number and the evidence to back it up.
Most ALTs never get there. That’s precisely why it works for the ones who do.
Related reading: How to Read Your Japanese Payslip — because understanding what’s being taken out is the first step to negotiating more coming in.
Thinking about what comes after the ALT role? [How to Extend Your Visa as an English Teacher] — your options for staying in Japan if you decide to make the move.
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