Job Discussion Forums

[giraffe77]

hy!
got a job offer from ardmore. any experience to share?
pay seems good but i really don't know them that well...
heeellppp!

[brightlightcity]

I am going to be working for them over the summer, I don't know anything about them either. Did you find out any info?

[euro2010]

They are a big school (or collection of schools) and in the positive you can rely on them to pay you on time. I have heard other teachers talk positively about Ardmore but my only experience with them wasn't great (and it was at the end of my first year of teaching). I worked for them at their Peterfield centre. It was a cowboy operation and the DOS was fired at the end of the first week leaving some incompetent, inexperienced teachers to fill the role (for little extra pay). The resources were pitiful (no books for the first week, only half the number of classrooms - "do nature lessons", I was told in the pouring rain with my beginners class. I had to share a room with 2 activities leaders and the excursions were poorly organized (groups of 20 students in London, anyone?). It was supposed to be a 5 week contract but after week 3 (coincided with the bombings in London in 2005) they said that they wouldn't need most of us for the remaining 2 weeks but we could join them on their next trip to London so we could get a free trip to London. And of course there was no pay for those 2 unworked weeks either. Since then I've worked for a few other schools including ILES at Framlingham in Suffolk and when they didn't need staff for the last week or so they actually paid them (of course they weren't given accommodation or food though). Hopefully a few other people will offer opinions here but my experience with Ardmore is definitely not to be repeated.

[the_thinker]

I had a similarly negative experience, but it was years ago now to be fair (must have been 2000). Up till that point they had British Council accreditation, but lost it while I was there � my centre wasn't inspected, but it might well have been the same result if it had been. There was extremely poor organisation, hardly any resources, terrible syllabuses obviously written just to have something on paper rather than to be something actually usable by a teacher.

I also had the 'do nature lessons' experience � I was told in my interview that half the actual teaching hours weren't really teaching, because the afternoon sessions would be nature trails etc. etc. The problem was you basically had to organise this kind of thing yourself, and you just can't think of outdoor activities that are going to keep kids occupied, or at least not when you also have to plan for lessons and then maybe do evening activities too.

Basically it was a pretty terrible experience but I think that's summer school life for you! I haven't done summer schools for years now and I hope I never will again, but I suppose they were always useful learning experiences from lots of points of views. If you're at the beginning of your career, any summer school will be a good way of getting teaching hours under your belt, teaching different levels, dealing with problems, thinking on your feet etc.