Job Discussion Forums

[rglam]

I'm new to the forum here and was wondering if anybody had any info on this organization eg. salary, working conditions, housing allowance, etc. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Serious_Fun]

[Smoog]

I have worked for them and so have a couple of people I know.
Overall I would rate them as one of the better of the tutorial centres out there (though tbh that's not saying much considering the state of most tutorial centres).

EfA was set up and is run by a pom whose been here for years. He has a centre here and in Shenzhen and has the franchise licence to run the Trinity TESL certificates - that alone says to me that it's a pretty professional set-up (Trinity being very choosy about who they want to run their courses).

As for working for them...well, it's good as a p/t job if you need the extra dosh. Relying on it as a f/t job would be very hard, practically impossible (I know someone who did and found it very stressful for reasons below).
They mostly run after-school and Saturday in-school programs for public schools around HK. These courses are usually set to a specific number of lessons, based around the Cambridge starters-movers-flyers units though they do other specific courses like drama, speech or debating. Pay for these is high for tutorial centre standards: $430 for one hour's work, dropping down to $300 for 4 or more hours (lowest they pay iirc is $270 /hr).

I did a Saturday morning course at a school over the course of a year and it was fine. Pretty easy teaching, with all course materials supplied. The extra money was extremely helpful to me at the time. I sometimes consider doing it again, but it basically was my whole Saturday gone (it was 4 hours teaching over 5.5 hours with lunch and breaks). I'd be up at 7.30am (it was an hours travel to the school), start at 9am, leave at 2.30pm and home by 4pm (6pm if I went to the gym) totally knacked. Sunday sleeping. Wasn't much of a life though I did save quite a bit of money and pay off some debts (but that was prob more through doing nothing at the weekend but working/sleeping rather than good saving habits).

They also set NETs into schools. These are basically NET positions but paid for by the schools and so not covered by the EDB contracts. They're usually p/t (eg. 9am - 12 every weekday) though occasionally they have f/t NET positions. As these aren't EDB PNET/SNET, you don't get any allowance and can expect to be paid at the bottom of the NET pay scale (usually ~$18k /month pro rata).

Probably the worst aspect of EfA is that they pay you at the end of the month following. So if you work for them in Ocotber, you'd get paid at the end of November. Possibly. A couple of times I got paid on the 5th or 6th of the month after that - December in the case above. After I left I heard from a couple of the teachers that they didn't get paid until the end of the 2nd month( )

afaik, they don't do work visas as that would mean guaranteeing a certain number of hours and pay p/month for a year, which in all honesty they can't do. Most of their school contracts, including the NET ones, are short term (ie <year, usually 10 months) and schools change their minds about things like these regularly, meaning you really might not know if or how many hours you're teaching next month.


Realistically, it's a good job for a spouse of someone working f/t and who just wants a bit of extra work/cash and the chance to get out of the house.