Job Discussion Forums

[barmadu]

It's September and the teaching year here in Spain is just starting to warm up once again. If you've been lucky and somehow found some work over the summer you may not be sweating the financial bullets that the rest of us are doing. That or you debased yourself once again and did the magical now-I'm-a-teacher, now-I'm-a-babysitter routine at the summer camps to keep the hounds at the door.

There's no need to go over the thousands of reasons why we live and work in Spain...lovely weather, good food, talkative and informed students etc. But my question is the following: Why do we keep on coming back, year after year for what seems like less and less money when you take into account the enormous rise in the cost of living?

True I'm teaching in a very small city here in Spain, but when I look back at my records, I realize that I am making about as much as I did more than 7 years ago when I taught in Guadalajara!

We train, improve our teaching skills and are still looked upon as backpackers. Why don't we get together and establish some sort of union? I have heard that the CCOO will take us in, but can they help? Are their interests our interests? Are we so desperate that we are willing to accept peanuts per hour, simply because some pricks on a gap year are willing to walk in hungover for beer money???

If we all walked out on strike and suddenly the backpackers were the only ones left to teach, people would soon realize that we are professionals and change their attitude and perhaps we could begin to live somewhat decently and not dread the long hot and poor summers.
http://troyshouse.blogspot.com/

[Bradfrd12]

I once thought the same thing about getting together and forming a union to make the academies stick to the law but now things have changed.

For one, I have my own academy and now understand that if the laws were strictly applied then all centers, or at least all except the multi nationals would be put out of business. They wouldn't be able to afford it.

I think the best way is to put the bad academies on a black list with some sort of explanation and then people will start avoiding them. Conversely, I think that the good academies should also be put on a list in order to help professional expat teachers to find reliable work.

Please see my post at http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=63842 for more of my opinion.

My 2 cents. Don't sink all academies just to get rid of the bad ones.

[barmadu]

Agreed Bradford, I am not in favour of taking down the good academies and as you point out they do exist, but there has to be some observance of law. We all know that Spanish laws are somewhat though haphazardly pliable and that few are followed to the letter, but that doesn't mean that English Teachers have to constantly be taken for rides.

Again, I know that there are good academies out there, but if all were somehow forced to follow the rules, then all would be in the same boat, wouldn't they? If ALL the academies followed the rules, then ALL academies would be forced to charge their students fees that would cover social security payments and level the playing field. This of course would take stricter enforcement. Couldn't a base salary for qualified teachers be established? In order to make the 9-month contracts a little more livable, couldn't ALL respectable academies insist on their students signing up for an academic year, say10 months??

It is shameful, but I earn less teaching here in Spain than I did teaching in Laos, the poorest country in South East Asia. I am forced to teach more than 30 hours simply to make ends meet. I don't need to tell professional teachers where the standards of your classes go once you go over 25 hours. Of these hours you can surely guess how many are reported to Social Security.

Utopian perhaps, but in the end if we are to make our lives here and live as respectable, tax paying citizens, such changes need to be made.

P.S. I do like your idea of a blacklist of sorts, as I do the goodlist. However in my experience it seems that the only ones apt to write are those with grudges and often grudges that aren't 100% true.

[hughesie]

[travellingscot]

I am not exactly sure who is being accused/attacked here and why-Bradford is American but must surely be totally legal and taxpaying etc or he wouldn't be so upfront with his details, whilst barmadu doesn't sound like the hypocrite he would have to be if illegal.
I didn't initially post here as I seem to remember a similar thing about 3 years ago just before I first worked in Spain and I imagine nothing will change in the near future. A couple of things however caught my eye- would the black list be for schools employing illegal/untrained teachers whilst advertising the opposite to parents etc ? Secondly how would you stop those on the good list from bending the rules to employ "unsuitable " teachers in order to reduce costs, given that the existence of the good list would probably lead to them being swamped by applications ? From the lack of postings outside of the bigger cities, I would doubt that many teachers with a good employer would want to advertise that fact in case they were helping to make themselves redundant.
I would also be interested to know the true numbers of native speaker teachers working legally in Spain, as there must be some kind of shortage if schools have to keep advertising mustn't there ?

[barmadu]

Hello from Barmadu here

First off...no, not American and yes, totally legal...married with a Spanish partner and ever increasing mortgage to boot. I am also posting from about as far as you can get from the "big" cities, that being Caceres out in Extremadura.

I am curious, do you really think that it is the illegals (in that I suppose you mean Americans/Australians/Canadians/S.Africans etc) that are pushing down our wages? I think that it is the backpackers in general who are simply happy to have a little beer money while they are here in Spain. If you read through articles and posts on Spanish teaching sites (check my webpage for links) it seems to me that this might be the case.

I don't see why a walk out would be a bad thing, as only qualified and experienced teachers would do so, thus leaving the market open to the hacks that are out there. I really think that it would be an awareness raising moment where people would actually realize that there IS a difference between a "teacher" and simply a "native speaker". Hopefully this would give us a bit of the respect (and thus salary) that we deserve.

I do like the blacklist idea, and if it were directed at parents, it is obvious that it would have to be bilingual. It would restore my faith in parents whom I see every week dropping their kids off at schools that are simply not equipped for children (staff nor actual area). Plus, the very fact that you would be made redundant simply because an academy was awash with applications would make it a candidate for a black list anyways, in my opinion.

Lastly, the reason that there is no shortage of schools advertising is simply a result of the negative circle that we live in. Bad pay and poor support means that teachers move on, unless they somehow become attached to Spain (partner etc)

I'm meeting with some people with CCOO next week and will comment later on what happens.

http:/troyshouse.blogspot.com

[Phil_b]

[Bradfrd12]

The illegal teachers are not the reason that wages are kept low at all. The gap year and backpacker certainly plays a more direct role in it but more than that is the Spanish economy as a whole.

Wages haven't gone up in Spain in any significant way (in all sectors) for a very long time and yet there is still inflation and the like. [[Another thing to remember is that the average full time (40 hours/week) wage in Spain is around 1300 �/month. That's 8.125� / hour. English teachers don't work 160 hours a month but they do earn 50% more than the hourly wage. So if you look at it like that you can certainly draw a different conclusion.]]

That out of the way, we've got companies and individuals which are trying to cut out expenses. One way to cut expenses is to either cut English altogether or find a cheaper option. Depending on how important English is to that client they make their choice. If they choose to find a cheaper option then the existing provider is forced to choose between standing by their service and be removed or lower the prices and thus take a hit on the margins. But no business can take such hits on their margin if they want to grow, like all businesses do, so they in turn cut their expenses....and wages are by far any academies largest expense. So there you go....lower wages.

It's not easy being an academy. We are in the middle of it all. Teachers want higher wages (rightfully) and clients want lower priced classes. So it's a balancing act.

Educating the public seems to be the best solution. Explaining to the public what they should expect from a language center and questions they should ask before doing business with them. For example, if native speakers are used, what are the standards of the school, are the teachers qualified, do they have experience, do the kids prepare for an exam or certificate, etc.... I am sure there are more and better things clients can ask of the centers and maybe we could drum up a list and get it put out to both companies and families. I know I would be willing to put it up in my school and neighborhood.

[travellingscot]

As I am living in Bulgaria right now, some of our friends were curious about the huge salary I was going to earn by working in Spain, as salaries here can be around 150 euro per month for a shop assistant and around 300 euro per month for a teacher depending on whether state school, language school or whatever. When I said my salary in Spain could be around 1000 euro per month in my hand, some were shocked at how low it was as a lorry driver might earn 1800 euro.
Another point about walking out temporarily is that unless it was a large school with several foreign teachers, I could be the only one doing it and would feel that I was letting down my boss and my students. In a smaller town where I worked previously many of the parents were almost friends as we saw them every day when in cafes or just walking around, and I wouldn't feel comfortable going on strike. In some way a bit like nurses in the UK who soldiered on through a sense of duty even though most of the UK population seemed to think they were vastly underpaid.
When people hear that we often "Only work for 20 hours a week" then it's hard to get sympathy for being underpaid, especially when they throw up the stuff about all the school holidays when we don't have to work ! Bradford has a good point about educating the public I think.

[barmadu]

Wait a minute gentlemen...Sorry, but I really have to object to this "only 20 hours a week." This fallacy leads exactly to what I am talking about. I am a teacher with 10 years experience and possibly spend more time planning my classes than I did when I first started, simply to keep me interested. Most weeks I have around 30 contact hours a week and am still in the 1200 euro range. Of these classes, very few IF ANY repeat. Added to that, I am expected to teach to learners ranging from 3 yrs old to proficiency adult classes. The strain on a professional teacher is intense.

Educating the public is indeed necessary, but it seems that we should give ourselves some credit. Ask any University teacher here in Spain how many "contact hours" they have. If you get an answer above 18, they will be on strike. These are people who teach the same course, same class, year in and year out and their only extra duty is marking. Of which (marking) any English teacher worth their salt should be doing anyways.

Why is it that if you look on TEFL.com, Spain has the most desperate vacancies?
It has to be the conditions offered.

[spiral78]

I don't think Spain is so different than other European countries.

Actually, I think that teaching conditions in Spain (talking private language schools) are quite equivalent to those in the Czech Republic, where I know the scene pretty well.

There are some interesting differences, though - primarily that non-EU teachers have in the past been able to get legal working papers there, thus eliminating the 'illegals drive wages down' line of thought.

I think that market pressures are the real factor, as Bradford points out.
The salary that I earned teaching in a private language school in Prague in 1998 was only very slightly lower than what teachers earn there today. Costs have risen all over.

I think it's the clients who need to be educated about what good language teaching is - but the bottom line will always be costs, in the private school sector of the market.

I think to get better wages, one has to move out of the private language school scene, or at least up the ladder within it.

[Moore]

I think you have to look at teaching in Spain as really good money hour for hour compared to other employment, but not make the mistake of relying on it all year round. But it is still pretty well paid and, at least in my experience, very enjoyable compared to the grim-arse desk jobs that most of my friends do. Also, it is actually a genuinely useful job which really does improve peoples lives and job-prospects. Possibly the type of class you teach is also a factor: I teach business English, but I have no idea how academy teachers with a bunch of bored attention-defecit-disorder teenagers cope.

I have been offered several other full-time jobs here in Spain, ranging from IT helplines, through DOS positions to to full-time in house translator jobs, but even though those jobs pay more reliably, have better (well, some) prospects for promotion, and would be a change from English teaching which after 12 years TEFL-ing is really starting to get a bit old, I have still stuck with teaching because it's still a better job than the soul-destroying office environment of long hours, pointless projects and endless meetings.

The trick is to have another string to your bow: in my case a bit of freelance translation tops up the kitty nicely (though I hate doing it: difficult, boring, lonely): I find that when teaching ceases to become your only source of income, it becomes a bit more appealing and you start to see the positive side of it.



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[barmadu]

Good money hour for hour? Well it really does matter where you are in Spain. The 20 and 30 Euros the hour quoted by some are pipedreams for those of us teaching outside of Madrid and Barcelona. Think of what other professionals charge per hour, electricians, plumbers and telephone repairmen earn much more than that. Are they better qualified?

Outside of the bigger cities, business English classes are far and few between. A teacher may get a few of these a week, but it is unlikely that the academy that they are working for is going to pass on the extra money. The cash cow out here is in fact the soul-destroying classroom full of ADT teens and crying tots, where Bozo the English Teaching Clown keeps them happy enough to continue coming.

The fact that English Teachers here in Spain need to find alternative sources of income is exactly my point. I don't see why it "has to be so." In so many countries around the world, English teachers make decent livings where they are employed year round. I have heard the excuses, but am looking for, in fact hoping for solutions.

If not we are doomed to a hand to mouth existence if we want to stay here and Spanish learners are doomed to be subjected to backpacking novices who think the word "collocation" is a new boy band.
http://troyshouse.blogspot.com