Job Discussion Forums

Doctor T · Joined: 20 Apr 2010 Posts: 12

Hi everyone,

I like this new expression I have acquired through this forum relating to teaching: 'mill'.

I have heard bad things about EF, Aston, Kid Castle and several other 'mills'. As yet nothing on New Oriental particuarly disparaging, so please, anyone working for them now or with recent experience (except for Beijing New Oriental which I have seen blacklisted) could you share a little of your knowledge for a Newbie in China?

Ever so grateful for any input.

Halapo · Joined: 05 Sep 2009 Posts: 140 Location: Jiangsu, China

You might have answered your own question. I have been offered jobs with these guys a few times. Some local businessman tries to start one up, and sooner or later gives me a call.

I have never worked for New Oriental, but I have had 4 different offers in the last 10 months, and from different branch's/schools.
The good thing is there seams to be a lot of freedom for the people running it to do things the way they want to.
The bad thing is the people running have little or no guidance.

It is safe to say that each school/mill will be different from the last, there are few rules/regulations that are used by all of them. I had a look at two different Foreign Teacher Contracts in the space of 3 months from 2 different mills, and I was surprised that they were not identical. I expected that they would have some standard template. Also there was actually price differences in town for a few months, but now they are both offering the same deal. Oh, i mean that they were charging the students different rates... Their offers to me were also different, but that was to be expected. Undercutting each others price, when there are 2 other English Schools in town... that was odd. My Chinese Co-workers found it funny, expect the two working for one branch.

I see no reason to blacklist them, but I don't think this brand of English really has anything going for it to make it better the Kids Castle or EF.

sharpe88 · Joined: 21 Oct 2008 Posts: 226

I think Beijing New Oriental is the corporate name of the New Oriental franchise. From what I've heard, no better or worse than other mills. Except they focus on exam preparation, and have a good rep in China for that.

nickpellatt · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1522

All private language colleges are often bashed on the forums, but I dont always think thats fair. Too many sweeping generalisations about them. I work for a private language college, and only take two 90 min classes a day, both classes are adults...one is just 6 students, the other 4. I dont work weekends or evenings either.

They aint all bad...some are actually pretty good.