Job Discussion Forums

jtomstone · Joined: 12 Nov 2008 Posts: 14

Hello,

I got an offer from English First. This is for teaching at a SMART centre in Guangzhou. Can anybody share any experiences of working at this particular location or English First in general? I've been reading about English First on the web and there is a lot of people talking smack about it. I'll be getting 12,350 rmb for 40 hours a week. Eh, maybe I should just go back to Korea and teach adults there.

John

zactherat · Joined: 24 Aug 2011 Posts: 295

The Great Wall of Whiner · Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 4946 Location: Blabbing

If the bottom line is most important, I strongly suggest doing the latter.

40 hrs. a week is an incredible amount of work time. People complain at doing more than 30, let alone 40.

Don't forget prep. time, summer intensives, costs of living (not that much cheaper than your current place) moving... list is endless.

Good luck.

Songbird · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 10:37 am Post subject:

Good grief! No way would you catch me doing that....

I work at Wall Street English and get paid 16,000/ month for a TOTAL (including all prep time) of 37 hours a week! Accomodation not paid, but airfare is extra bonus plus other bonuses from time to time.

darkcity · Joined: 23 Dec 2008 Posts: 54

What they said. EF is not the 7th level of Hell, but if you care about money, I don't know why you'd come to China in the first place.

EF can be a good way into the country though, they take care of you when you arrive.

jtomstone · Joined: 12 Nov 2008 Posts: 14

Thanks for the advice. I get some of my flight paid for. I would have to pay for accommodation and I didn't factor in the tax rate. This job is not worth it for the amount of work I'm doing. Back to Korea for me!

krayola · Joined: 23 Jun 2009 Posts: 38

with the amount of mistruth spoken about EF China on here, I can't help but laugh

it seems most of 'the smack' spoken about them is from people who've never worked for them, or perhaps worked for one of the franchise schools in another country, typically Indonesia.

The 12,300 or whatever it was you mentioned is what you would have got after tax. The 40 hours would have included, depending on where you were in GZ, between 12 - 22 (although this is RARE) contact hours with the rest being for planning or whatever you wanted.

By about 6 months into my contract, with the trust of my employers, I was present in the office about 35 hours a week. Everyone that works there knows that there are too many hours in the contract and are lenient accordingly.

There are FAR worse schools in terms of management, organisation, and most definitely, pay. The biggest issue most teachers had wasn't with EF, it was with China.

MNguy · Joined: 01 Feb 2010 Posts: 129

So far, so good with EF Tianjin.

therock · Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 1266 Location: China

The Great Wall of Whiner · Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 4946 Location: Blabbing

Let me qualify something: I am not anti-EF. If EF paid better and offered packages with less working hours, I'd work for them. I enjoyed my time there, and have previously been offered a DoS position in the past in a major city which I turned down because the costs were not justifiable to make a job change.

Bottom line: Different EF's offer different experiences, according to how they are managed.

Babala · Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 1303 Location: Henan

One option for EF is to work in their corporate department. You only teach business, no kids at all. I believe only about a quarter of EF schools in China have a CLT department but you could find out from the headquarters which ones do. The hours are less (no office hours at all) and the pay is higher.