Job Discussion Forums

[gluzwick]

Has anyone had some experience(s) with this school?

[tlm204]

I have the same question!

[gluzwick]

I'm at a really good school now. I didn't end up choosing Bond. I heard that the administration polices you a lot over there, but Oxford Seminars (who tends to place a lot of their students there) said that so many people go there that one is bound to hear a lot of awful things from people who can't adjust to China so well.

My best advice is to get the emails of some current teachers working there. If the school refuses to give you the emails or acts like they don't understand what you are asking them, that's shady. The school I'm at now sent me all the emails of the current teachers, and the teacher's told me they really felt taken care of over here.

Good Luck!

[englishgibson]

They've been around for quite a long time as it seems. I ditched them sometimes on the beginning of 2002 and that due to their expectations of me to teach off their premises and travel around quite a bit. Also, their expectations of me to promote their school were a bit too much to accept...lots of advertising then. Well, that was then. They, however, offered me a pick up on the bus station and they were nice about a few other things when I was discussing some contractual issues with them. I chose EF at the end

Cheers and beers to our choices as well as what's offered to us

[doogs09]

I worked for Bond in Xiaolan for a while, and I found them an okay company, with some really nice staff. Be aware that when they talk about Zhongshan they may end up putting you in Xiaolan, which is a totally different place, even though it's a satellite town of Zhongshan. Xiaolan is a very industrial town with very few foreigners and very few Westerners hangouts. I loved it for that very reason, but it's certainly not as cosmopolitan as Zhongshan.

As to Bond, I had no real problems with them. I taught 16 classes a week in a middle school, Monday to Thursday and Sunday's at Bond's school in Xiaolan, plus an adults evening class. The apartments we were provided with are all okay, with the usual facilities on hand. Kathy, who is the Chinese girl who sorts stuff out for the foreigners is excellent. Some of the other FT's would moan if she didn't sort out their stuff ten seconds after they requested it, but to be honest I found her helpful and organised and friendly to deal with.

There were one or two niggles with Bond, and I would take everything you read and see on their website with a large pinch of salt. The Chinese classes and cookery and Kung Fu classes they promise only materialised after we asked repeatedly for them, and there were some issues with people being told they could come over on a tourist visa and get a Z visa on arrival which was a lie, and so a few of the FT's had to make repeated, expensive visits to HK to renew visas which Bond refused to reimburse for. Be aware also that John Zhang, who owns the school, and who you may have been dealing with by email does not even live in China but is in Canada, so you won't be meeting him in China any time soon. That said, his wife runs the show in China and the other staff at Bond are competent.

Like any other school in China you may have to hassle them a bit and wait for the slow, slow wheels of officialdom to turn to get stuff sorted out, but they have at least five FT's that I know of who have been with them for a couple of years or more, so they must be doing something right. Message me if you want more info.