Job Discussion Forums

[joleen7]

WARNING to potential applicants !
There is a huge turnover at the moment at PNU due to punishing workloads, no private health insurance and general exhaustion due to pack-horse work conditions. Beware.

[nomad soul]

Are you referring to teachers hired by contracting companies or those who are direct hires? Or both?

[joleen7]

no longer private health insurance for direct hire but general stress and exhaustion for all, especially in LEAD Programme

[plumpy nut]

Anything less than Class A insurance is worthless. This is important because anybody who plans on coming here to the KSA seeking employment should realize the chances of getting into an auto accident is very high. I personally have been in one that totaled our car (though not by **** Saudi standards ). I have a friend who was knocked out in a bus accident. If I understand what he was telling me, it looked to him like one of the passengers was dead. I have acquaintances who were in accidents with people receiving broken arms, all on the way to work. It is very dangerous to travel here by either car or by walking.

[Swift Turtle]

I read earlier on this forum that it's an 8 hour work day there: 4 hours prep/marking and 4 hours teaching. Is this no longer the case?

[myohmy]

In the PYP, there is mandatory overtime, but it rotates so you may do it for a week or two and then get a break. One can get out of it without repercussion of you whinge to the right person. In the new and improved LEAD program, teachers teach 18-21 hours but classrooms are all over campus and you teach 6-7 classes for just 3 hours per week. Many of these classes have 50+ students and there are too many assessments that teachers have to administer, grade and record not to mention a cumbersome attendance recording policy. Very little teaching occurs, teachers are burned out and even program leaders are resigning. Absenteeism of teachers is at absurd levels and the remaining stalwart ones have to cover for them. It's all hanging by a thread and could implode any second now.

[nomad soul]

What's the LEAD program's function?

[babur]

[veiledsentiments]

[plumpy nut]

[scot47]

Decent health care is important. Misers at KFUP in my time there relied on treatment available at the University Teaching Hospital. Not wise. Make sure that you have good reliable health cover for you AND DEPENDANTS.

[MixtecaMike]

[zaazia]

I am one of the teachers who has left PNU. I taught there for a couple of years. Things started to go downhill when the PYP was moved to the new campus early last year. Things were bad last year, but they are a million times worse now.

This semester teachers were forced to teach overtime and cover. Teachers had no say in the matter. There was no time to plan and prepare lessons.

The class I was given at the beginning of the semester for the first two weeks was abruptly taken away and I was given a class with two sections(classes) merged together, so I was teaching classes of forty students. This happened to many teachers. We were effectively teaching two classes in one. We had to maintain separate registers and records for the two sections(classes) within the one class. PNU also decided that having a register was not enough. They required us to carry an extremely heavy and cumbersome attendance book which students had to sign at the beginning of class. PNU has a 10 minute lateness rule which means that any student who is more than 10 minutes late is marked absent. This meant that I had to spend the first 10 minutes of classes waiting for students to trickle in. After 10 minutes we had to draw a red line under the students' names. Anyone who came after 10 minutes wrote their name under the line and was considered absent. As you can imagine I could not start teaching until students had all written their names. This was in addition to taking the register.

At the beginning of the semester we are not given a register with the students' names. We have to collect student names and check their schedules to see if they are in the right class - guess what the schedules are in Arabic! You can imagine how much time this wastes. When we do finally get the electronic attendance it also has the students' names in Arabic, not English!

Paperwork at PNU has also increased considerably.

We were told that if we needed to go to the loo during class, we had to call our Lead Teacher.

There is also a lack of resources. PNU uses a coursebook that requires teachers to play videos - many classrooms have epodiums that do not work. A considerable amount of the exercises required students to view the video. Why management decided to choose such a textbook when they are fully aware that equipment and technology are a problem at PNU I don't know.

I was also fed up of teaching lazy, unmotivated students. There are no consequences for students’ bad behaviour, so students persist in disrupting the class and disrespecting teachers. Even with the problems and the lack of resources PNU take advantage of the teachers' commitment to teaching and the students.

Cheating and plagiarism is rampant. PNU turn a blind eye to it. They only take cheating seriously during the exam season.

Three teachers are put into offices designed for only one teacher. PNU also had the nerve to ask teachers to pay 40 riyals to make copies of the original office key and hand back the original to them.

There are also no printing or photocopying facilities for teachers. Teachers make their own copies at home at their expense.

Teachers are made to attend useless, patronising so-called ‘professional development’ sessions in which something new is rarely learned.

At PNU the focus is not on teaching, but on the paperwork. You soon come to realise that the admin, not the teaching, is the most important thing.

I am just glad to be out of that toxic, unproductive environment.

[caliph]

Zaazia:

You are pretty much describing all ESL in the Gulf, at least in my lengthy experience.

[jaffa]

Gulf Arab logic in action!