Job Discussion Forums

[LarssonCrew]

The travel to the other cities may be 3 or 4 hours away. Have you considered that? 2 days a week in another city basically means that they consider you to be able to teach some science so they spread you thinly between two of their centers or programs.

Unfortunately Chinese are famous for bait and switch and cheating. They could say you'll definitely be in Nanjing but what can you do after spending thousands on the visa things and getting there and being told 'oh you'll actually be 2 days in Nanjing, 1 in another and 2 in another city.' Turn around and leave?

No paid summer holiday is terrible. For summer you either want to travel [and think about this, if you're on $2500 a month and you spend $5000 in the 2 months of summer to travel around Australia or SEA, it's essentially cost you nothing.] Alternatively paid summer means you can do a ton of private classes for one month and get your base salary + another salary on top. Essentially you could pull in 30000 a month.

[jimpellow]

[LarssonCrew]

The wya I see it Jim it's heading in two directions.

Both up and down.

Let me explain a bit but before that I would say that it's becoming more and more common for no summer paid holidays. Almost all schools seem to be cheaping out on everything, no insurance, housing allowance in large cities instead of housing so you can basically get nothing, no summer holidays, some even only pay you 1/2 a month for spring festival. The annoying thing for me is that whilst our fringe benefits are going down - for instance the above mentioned PLUS the fact that it's no fair more expensive to get everything, medical in UK, visa is now $300, flights upfront, housing upfront, get notarized degrees - we see nothing of it. They'll pay for your RP in China [800 RMB] and medical [400 RMB], but I've staked up 3000 or so dollars for flights, visa, notarization, medical check etc.

Most Chinese employees take a job FOR the fringe benefits. For instance, great health cover, 13 months pay [get double pay at Spring Festival] and paid summer holidays for teachers, ability to milk the students into forced classes etc.

What I mean by the splitting up and down is it seems more study abroad programs are springing up, needed verified licensed teachers, and the pay CAN be good [say 20+ plus a good housing allowance of 7-8000 in a good city], whereas at the other end if you're not teaching such GCSE/A level/PYP/AP specific stuff, the jobs really do seem to have gone down the pan. Universities are still paying 5000 a month, the same they were paying 15 years ago. The local teachers may only make 3 or 4000 from their salary in the university but the benefits they receive on top can be massive, additional pay, 'training' which equates to a nice week long trip to Beijing in a five star hotels, reinbursement of all fees, private classes etc.

As for training schools, one offered me a decent 25+ a month in Beijing, but offered, wait for it, 3 days holiday. That's no summer and a week for spring festival, plus 3 days at national day off. I couldn't believe it.

[vnam]

Thanks guys. The summer is paid but you would work normally, with the contract finishing at the end of August. There are 6 weeks paid holiday which is all the national days plus 4 weeks for winter break. I'm still unsure as after speaking to a lot of potential employers this one still seems a better deal, especially as i prefer teaching older age groups and not just ESL.

I've been told that most teachers don't work more than 16hrs a week, and spend around half a day at most in the college. I have all this in writing too. I think that i've got quite a bit of evidence in writing, so if i did take it and things dramatically changed or were terrible then i may have some recourse. Although it is China and probably similar to Vietnam (this is Vietnam attitude..if you don't like it go home) Don't want to be too negative though.

In regards to Vietnam ask me anything. I've lived in Da Nang & HCM and know both places well. The visa situation is getting more difficult and the traffic is terrible. On the plus side it's still very cheap and you can live well on less than $1000 per month. In fact when i compared the prices to China i was very surprised at how costly China has become. Lots of entrepreneurs here and digital nomads.