Job Discussion Forums

PaulE · Joined: 23 Apr 2008 Posts: 5

Just a heads up after chatting to a few teachers who've been around for a while. The scam goes like this:
You accept a contract job (full-time or part-time) for a regular monthly salary. It happens that the students you have are frequently on business trips or in meetings and cancel a lot of lessons. No fault of yours, these are just the classes you've been given. The school, of course, knew that they were not regular classes or mainly individual students.

The school looks at the number of hours you've been teaching and says you're a bad teacher because the students don't come to your class. They then change your contract to an hourly paid which means that you don't get paid for any of these cancelled lessons but are kept on permanent stand-by in case they do want to turn up. Of course you end up well short of money and the schools gets a cheap teacher to do these awkward classes.

Be careful with these small, company teaching places that may promise a decent rate but don't have many solid reliable groups.

maruss · Joined: 18 Mar 2003 Posts: 1145 Location: Cyprus

This is one of the disadvantages of working on an hourly basis that you just have to accept if you want to avoid being employed on a low monthly salary:if students cancel their lessons,you don't get paid,especially if your firm has a contract with a firm for in-company lessons which is very lucrative for them!
It's also another reason why I realised how right the advice was that with private students you MUST always ask them to pay for their next lesson in advance..if they cancel at the last minute,then it's their loss and not yours!

SunnyLee · Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 9

I think PaulE's comment is more about people who started off as full-timers and who wanted all the security that that offers, but then find their employers change the rules. The contract gets canceled, all the frills are too. The excuse seems to be that the students are canceling too often, so the school is not obliged to honor its contract with a bad teacher. This can mess around with people's visas and accommodations, but if you are new to Russian and have spent a ton just getting here, then you are not in a good position at all - and the school knows this very well.

Reminds me of a few horror stories from IPT. They pulled this stunt with one of my buddies last year. No observations, no reports from the students, just a downgrading of contract and salary!

A trend that I think started in In Lingua, perhaps, but maybe other people will know more. Anyway, good post PaulE! This is a danger for us all to be on guard for

BELS · Joined: 24 Mar 2005 Posts: 402 Location: Moscow

Kootvela · Joined: 22 Oct 2007 Posts: 513 Location: Lithuania

Even with an hourly-paid contract there should be a cancellation policy where a teacher does get paid for the lessons students skipped. Surely, that's got to be negotiated carefully. I've worked on both types of contracts and did have the cancellation policy talked about. Surely, it' not a work contract and the school can treat it as they like but then telling you'd call labour inspection usually helps.