Job Discussion Forums

[Okami]

Welcome to how Chinese do business:

Here is how it works. First they gov't offers great benefits for foreign teachers. The pay seems high and the work easy. Instead of keeping it centralized, they have each school use the agent who best takes care of the people in charge with hong bao's, special KTV's, and business clubs(these are neat and if you haven't been to one you should definitely try to.) So the foreign teacher who thought he would be making $70,000-86,000NT a month for teaching 30 hours with 20 hours of prep and useless meetings in reality only gets $45,000-55,000NT. The rest of the money goes to MOE officials, principals and superintendents. In Taipei, it may be somewhat honest, but it changes dramatically once you leave that city.

So it's a win-lose situation and in 2-3 years when it has the same lousy reputation as Korea's EPIK, the average Taiwanese will scratch their head and wonder why the foreigners won't take a job that pays twice what a Chinese teacher makes. They'll declre it a failure and get back to charging Taiwanese English teachers money for their jobs.

CYA
Okami

[Aristotle]

What needs to be understood is that in Taiwan price is considered a direct reflection of quality. In this case it means that paying the qualified foreign teachers a high wage and offering them what sounds like good benefits, will result in higher quality English teaching.
It doesn't work out that way. The Taipei MRT is an excellent example. When it was built it was the most expensive Mass Transit System in the world. Final cost estimates were just over 2 billion US$. The train was designed to be a high speed safe alternative to driving. What Taipei got was a very pretty, slow train with a questionable level of safety.
That was in Taipei were there is in fact an emerging level of competence and accountability. This English teacher program was intended for island wide allocation.
My best advice to anyone wanting to teach in public schools is to avoid teaching in any public school outside of Taipei. Keep very accurate records and make a formal written complaint to any an all departments if you observe any impropriety. Do so in a public manner or send it to me and I will do so.
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