Job Discussion Forums

[KwikSilva]

I will soon be interviewing with a representative of the English Time chain of schools. Does anyone have any experience with them? Are the schools in some cities better than others? Any information, positive or negative, would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

Future crude comments will result in permanent bans along with the iSPs.

[fishmb]

English Time in Istanbul is a hot topic. There has been a lot written about it on this forum so I think you should search the archive, read the good and the bad and try to decide for yourself.

In my personal opinion, I wouldn't apply to work there myself. But that's just my opinion. I haven't worked there - I've only heard second-hand information form people on this forum and one other teacher friend of mine.

I think that's a safe comment

[himynameise]

I think this forum needs some kind of English Time-related sticky...

[teacherdude]

KwikSilva use the search engine, you'll get more responses than you can handle.

As one who worked there and turned down an offer to be a Head Teacher.
It's a school severely lacking in standards.
No proper structure of instruction.
Head Teachers who have to put their head in the sand because they don't know how to deal with problems. Plus an atmosphere that will severely hinder your ability to progress professionally.

On the plus side, you can make good friends and go drinking with the teachers who love to socialize with teachers. They get on so well lot's of the teachers even allow their students to cheat in the exams.

Good place to make some quick money.

I think I avoided being crude

TD

[bulgogiboy]

What can I say about English Time?

It was the WORST company I've ever worked for.

I worked at the Ankara branch, and had to put up with the shocking behaviour of the Turkish manager and the incompetent management policies at HQ.

Also, the books they have created are absolute RUBBISH, you will be SO frustrated trying to use them in class.

The only good thing about English Time was the students, but then adult students who pay their own fees are generally nice everywhere. My second job in Turkey had lovely students too, but without all the drama and tears before bedtime

My sincere advice is AVOID English Time in general, and AVOID AT ALL COSTS Ankara English Time!

[eclectic]

1. WHat does ET's pay start at for a BA in English, 2 years teaching experience, and an online TEFL from i-to-i?

2. Does ET help sort out your work visa?

3. Does ET provide housing for a teacher and his non-teaching wife?

[doner]

1 15 lira an hour

2 no you will be working illegally and have the expense and hassle of doing a border run every 3 months.

3 no and you cannot support dependants on this pay.

[eclectic]

[bulgogiboy]

In my case:


1. 16 liras per hour, the range being 14-18 liras per hour when I was there. I did hear that the hourly rate jumped up a few months after that, to around 20-30 per hour or thereabouts, but that might have been in lieu of the housing allowance.

2. No, I worked illegally all the time I was there, as did all my other foreign co-workers (except those who were dual citizens with Turkey and Western countries as they didn't require any work permit). Constant promises of work permits were made but never came to fruition. I remember on at least one occasion having to run out the building with a bunch of other illegals because immigration were in snooping about...

3. They provide a housing allowance of 300 liras per month, which definitely wont be enough if you want a nice place for you and your family to live in in Istanbul.


To be honest, the money isnt the worst thing about working in ET, especially if you are prepared to work alot of hours(assuming those are available), and can supplement your income by getting privates(you can advertise on certain websites, just be discreet). Teaching TEFL in Turkey is never going to put you on Forbes' rich list, but you could do worse from a financial perspective if you really want to go to Turkey with a family in tow.

What I'm trying to tell you, and others thinking of working in Turkey, is that English Time as a company in general STINKS! Do you really enjoy teaching? Do you like to work with quality materials? English Time make their own 'books' which you will be obligated to use. Those books are good for nothing more than toilet paper, and will suck the fun right out of your classtime, the students hate the books and so will you. They are RIDDLED with mistakes(you have to read them to believe it), have some quite disturbing/bizarre content in places, and the grammar explanations will be so pedantic and lengthy that they will make YOU scratch your head, let alone the poor Turkish students who are just getting to grips with the language!

On top of this you will have to give lots of poor-quality quizzes and exams, and spend hours calculating and recording the results, only to be 'asked' by the office admin to pass the students regardless of the marks, as the school needs the money.

In addition to this, we had the bizarre situation where English Time had offered a guarantee to students who paid the right amount of fees upfront that if they failed a course they would be given a chance to re-sit the whole thing for free. This resulted in alot of students wanting to fail, so they could do a course twice, have another shot at making sense of the pathetic coursebooks and get twice as much time speaking English with a foreigner. Therefore you had students purposefully failing exams, and being disappointed when they passed. If you dont think this is farcical then you have something wrong with you. Some students in one of my classes appeared to have done this, and the headteacher rather vindictively(as was her style) doctored the results to pass them, leaving one woman coming into the office and SCREAMING blue murder at them!

Then you have other things like the occasional company 'events' which are compulsory. These will be on your days off and unpaid. We had to travel by bus from Ankara to Istanbul and back, all for the joy of 'a tour of the bosphorous' with English Time students. The boats stopped in the middle of the bosphorous for a long time, it seemed like hours. Me and my buddy were laughing about the 'benefits' we were getting from sitting in a boat chatting to each other (something we could have done back at the office in Ankara). That song springs to mind, "I'm on a boat!"... It was one of the most unenjoyable days of my entire year and a half in Turkey.
Ok, if you are in Istanbul the travel wont be such an issue, but it'll still feel like a total waste of time.

To call the management of ET incompetent baboons would be overly complimentary in my opinion. Enough said.

DONT work for English Time!

[doner]

Because of the huge glut of TEFLers, backpackers, dossers, world travellers, unemployed, those ripped off by other schools, drinkers, tourists, wade the vagabonds, those with Turkish boyfriends and girlfriends, those with no money to leave etc. English Time have reduced the hourly pay. With the army of would be TEFLers roaming the streets looking to work you will soon have a Grapes of Wrath like existence but with no John Casey or Tom Joad.

[teacherdude]

[bulgogiboy]

What pissed me off about them changing the marks, whether they asked or not(I'm sure in some cases they didnt), was the fact that it made all that unpaid office time which was taken up by the marking/calculations/recording grades a complete waste of time! Then certain people would grumble after a while that I wasnt filling in the evaluation part of the class folder correctly grrrrr


It's an awkward situation for sure. This is the problem when you try and mix education with a for-profit private business. If the guy at the top is raking it in, im sure the educational advancement of his 'customers' is way down the bottom of his list of priorities. When it comes to the standards of students, and allowing them into classes, you dont want to be a manager taking a stand on principle if it means your branch is throwing less liras in the pot for the owner of ET...I'm not saying its right, its just to be expected when you consider what places like ET are all about.

It's not just dodgy private language schools that sacrifice educational standards for pragmatic reasons however. This is becoming more and more commonplace in UK universities too. They are all desperate to recruit people from outside the UK/EU, because (as I'm sure you're aware) these people pay around 3 times the regular tuition fees. My friend is a tutor at a uni in the UK which has been leading the way in certain fields of science for well over a decade.

He was proof-reading an Arab lady's master's thesis for her, and could clearly see her English level was not up to scratch. He knew without his input the thesis would be lucky to scrape by, due to the shockingly poor level of English. The university passed her, and accepted her to do a PhD! My friend enquired to his superior as to why someone with barely passable English skills was being accepted for one of the most intellectually demanding academic courses available, and he was blatantly told that it was because it was 10,000 pounds a year for the university.
It's worrying, because that uni also has a medical school, I hope they enforce higher standards for their medical students...

Come to think of it, the 2nd place I worked at in Ankara had a very good reputation but incapable students were passed deliberately, I saw the manager cooking the books a bit there too, although not in such a blanket way as ET. In the 2nd place it was more a case of the student needed a 60 to pass but had gotten a 55, but was let through anyway. The 2nd place I worked at wasnt as unprincipled, but that might have been because they had so many contracts with government departments and didnt have to please individual students.

I think for-profit language schools on the whole are fatally flawed, I would say the best environments I've worked in have been direct-hire corporate ones. The problem in Turkey is that most of the corporate jobs are through language schools...

[Urban_Kitten]

To be fair to ET - and this is the only positive thing I'll say about them - they seem to be processing work visas for a select few of its teachers. At the branch I worked at, 3 teachers received work papers but, naturally, they were cancelled the second the teachers' contracts ended and those teacehrs (wisely) elected not to re-sign. The result being that when these teachers presented their residence books when leaving the country, the papers were deemed invalid and they (the teachers) were given the 3rd degree. Not much fun when you have a plane to catch.

My personal favourite though is ET's decision to cut salaries because of the 'economic crisis'. In spite of the fact that our school was packed to the gills, teachers who re-signed were offered a significantly lower hourly wage: some teachers went from 30 try to 22.50 try. Others weren't even told about it until their new contracts were shoved under their noses.

At one time it was said that the best thing about ET is that they paid on time. While I was there, that was true for about 50% of the time. As for the academics, much ink has already been spilled on this account and I have little to add to it except that, from a pedagogical perspective, this was the worst school I've ever taught at. I too had upper immediate students who couldn't conjugate the verb 'to be'. I had students continously promoted to higher levels whose only achievement was scoring the lowest possible marks I've ever seen - but never underestimate the power of an angry parent and a spineless branch manager.

*Sigh* ... so glad to be an ET survivor. There should be a support group out there for us.

[doner]

What makes me laugh about the students and parents is that they just do not see that the certificate is worthless and what level they are in is irrelevant.