Job Discussion Forums

[sharter]

I first taught in Poland in 96. Back then and until the late 90s, you could have a comfortable life, you had rock star status (almost) and the place was well...er....Polish.

Nowadays, foreigners are ten a penny, EFL 'teachers'/backpackers are everywhere and the place is bloody expensive. Not only that...but there are a lot of excellent Polish teachers about competing with you and willing to work for less.

Staying in Poland is like slow financial suicide, (unless you got married and her family bought you a flat:-)). I think it's absolute madness to stay there for more than a year in the modern financial environment. What's more, it's only gonna get worse.

Is the dream over? The only reason for ever going there as a single male was the hedonistic lifestyle...ie cheap beer and cheaper chicks. Polish women have cottoned on the Jonnie Foreigner, EFL teachers seem rightly ridiculed and are paid accordingly and the booze is jolly expensive if you go off the beer. Eating out is just farcical......shite food, big tab!! Then there's the constant gold digging (it's normal for a man to pay) attitiude that does my nut. When you meet they drink beer through a straw...once you start dating, it's Baily's and whisky........And then, there's the hotels...overpriced Krap. Where's the 'new Poland'?

[sparks]

No offense but I think that you're still living in 96. Yeah, Poland used to be cheaper and "crazier" and great fun for us expats, and it still is. You can still make a good living in ESL. There are probably better countries to go and act like a degenerate in, however.

I've watched the changes for years now and think that the country may slowly be catching up to Western Europe, the growing pains made for some good times.

[TwinCentre]

Interesting...but the 'oh the old days...' rant is all a bit too predictable.

I only know the 'new Poland', I first arrived in 2005, so I don't really have anything to compare it with. But maybe you are right, I think the Poles have cottoned onto Jonnie Foreigner and now that the schools are mostly Polish run, they are indeed having a laugh offering 45 zl per 45 mins max.

Basically, work for the British Council, one of the international schools or set up your own school/teaching practice. Give the average EFL school a wide berth. This way you can still do very well.

In fact, I don't think there has ever been a better time to ditch employers altogether and go it alone full-time with privates, get a website, advertise on the numerous outlets on the web for Poland, get a good cancelation policy, stick to it whatever, and push your qualifications and experience like no-one else does. You will get results.

I get the feeling that more and more Poles are becoming suspicious of language schools, especially the chain ones, having a 'native private tutor' is the new in-thing!

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

A confrontational posting has been deleted. If they continue, there will be sanctions that can include banning along with the iSP.

[NilSatis82]

This won't exactly help matters!

http://www.polishforums.com/business-economy-14/proposal-make-education-subject-vat-40057/

More about it here (in Polish only).

http://pase.pl/content/view/241/

[dynow]

I came in January of 2007, long after the times you speak of sharter, but I gotta say, when i think of what gets to me about Poland, these things existed then just as they do now.

no matter what, being an ESL'er in 1996, 1999, 2002..........it still involves working horrible hours, walking your ass off all day long, completely inconvenient infrastructures, terrible or non-existent customer service, crap restaurant food, lesser products in the stores, a brutally difficult national language, nothing being cheap besides bread and eggs, terrible weather, atrocious train systems, the polish health care system........

aside from the "rock star status" you may have had more of in the 90's, Poland was, and is, still Poland.

this is why i often times say that if you were to double my income every month, it wouldn't change my life in Poland. this will not change the food in the restaurants, the health care system, the weather, customer service, on and on..........

[sharter]

Nilsatis, thanks for the VAT link...very interesting and only confirms my suspicions that it's gonna get worse not better in Poland for TEFLERs. I did the full house; married a Pole, got a Polish child etc etc. I last taught there in 2006 and earned about 8,000/month net in my last job tutoring 1 wealthy businessman....he also gave me a free 2 bedroom flat near Zamek and paid all my expenses. I struggled to live on that. Yep, I like going out, but once you've got kids, life gets really tough. My son's ski school ski trip is 2000 Zl this year and you don't want to know about the price of Lego. Added to that, property prices are just mad for what you get......how can a Tefl teacher afford anything other than a shoe box unless the family coughs up (apologies to those that bought 4 or 5 years ago and have 'done aawight my son')? 45 Zl/minute ain't much.

As for my OP? Well it wasn't an old timer rant as I've got an up-to-date perspective too. The old bars used to be so much cooler, more unique...all candle lit, dark and atmospheric instead of symmetrical, glitzy and airport loungish. People were genuinely happy to see a foreigner from the west and didn't regard them as a client/tourish/cash cow. The salaries were more or less the same, not including IH, who've always paid a survival wage. There comes a time anywhere when you ask yourself if you can stay somewhere and have a future......8 out of 10 teachers I know there say their cats don't get fed well enough because they're skint.

[simon_porter00]

I'd like to develop the discussion about VAT a little further according to the wife (a tax advisor) you'll have to pay VAT if your earnings go over 100k. When they do, you'll pay VAT on the whole amount, not just the bit over 100k. You'll hit this if you earn an average of 8330zl gross per month.

What do you think will happen? Logically speaking I can see this happening:
Schools will obviously hit the hardest, they'll have to
i - raise prices which will involve changing contracts signed in September
ii - reducing teacher's wages. This will be difficult to stomach given wages have been reduced due to company cost cutting through the crisis.
iii - do nothing and swallow the cost. I think that we can all agree the chances of this are approximately nil.

So, either the company takes the hit, which I think is unlikely, or the teacher takes a pay cut, more likely.

What effect will this have on ex-pats?
Either they'll swallow the pay cut and stay put.
They get fed up and leave the school working on privates.
They take the plunge, start up as a sole trader and then contract themselves out.
They go back to whee they come from.

Personally (and I look on the bright side of life) I'd take this as an opportunity to start up a company. Either way big companies won't like it will they? They either pay more money in which case a sole trader can undercut the price or they get Polish natives because a native really shouldn't work for peanuts.

I'd be interested to see what your thoughts are either as an old timer or a noob.

[hrvatski]

If language schools have to start paying VAT then it's going to be a bumpy ride. If bosses stipulate a wage cut then a lot of native and Polish teachers would drop out altogether, making way for fresh Polish graduates who want to get their foot in the door for peanuts while they continue to live with their parents until 30+.

It won't be pretty, but the Polish spirit of kombinowanie will reign supreme at the end of the day and we'll see some interesting solutions.

[NilSatis82]

Would schools be able to increase their prices in January for students who started in September? Surely if they've signed a contract for the whole year, then the school would have to honour it. The same would surely be true of teachers' salaries. If a teacher is on a contract until June, then surely the school can't go changing it halfway through the school year. Maybe I'm being a tad naive, but at least until the end of this school year I think that schools may have to bear the brunt of it. In terms of the effect on teachers and students, I think this will only really kick-in next school year.

More and more students will find private teachers instead and some schools will go out of business (which may not be such a bad thing). I also agree with Simon that this is a good time to go it alone and start your own business. However in general, Poland will become a lot less attractive to the average native speaker and of those already here that aren't settled more are likely to leave even quicker than they do already.

According to this article, there has already been a drop of about a quarter in people studying at language schools in the past year or so.

http://finanse.wp.pl/kat,47674,title,Language-barrier,wid,11675892,wiadomosc.html?ticaid=1932d

Just a final thought, I wonder how much of the extra revenue generated will go into improving the quality of English teaching in state schools?

[TwinCentre]

Is this just another 'proposal' or do you think it really is on the cards?

From a selfish point of view, making my living soley from Private teaching, it might be in my favour but as people have already mentioned, there will always be loop-holes that schools can jump through.

My eyes would be on the British Council. They have shown in the past that they don't hesitate to shut up shop overnight in countries where local conditions become unfavourable. They seemed to have done that in Greece, Russia, Germany, Slovenia and others. Once they are out, it really is a sign that it is the end of the 'big player' in Poland and EFL.

I think EFL in Poland has seen its glory days, as the orginal poster suggested, but that doesn't mean the smaller players can't benefit from that fact. As Mr Porter said; a great time to set up a smaller teaching operation!

[simon_porter00]

I was having a look at the draft bill of the proposed VAT implementation last night.
As regards the BC, cultural institutions are exempt from paying VAT so it's obvious they'll try to go down that road.
State education providers - normal schools, universities, gymnasium, lycium etc etc will be exempt for obvious reasons.

The thing that interests entrepreneurs is the term 'teacher'. Why? There's an exemption from the proposed VAT charges if you are a teacher practising by yourself. Now, it'll all goes down to how 'teacher' is defined, then how the act will be interpreted, but at the moment it reads that depending what 'teacher' means we MAY be exempt from VAT charges.

The other good news is, if you employ people (like I do) the income you get is treated separately from your 'teacher's' income.

This therefore could be great news for me & everybody else who has a entrepreneurship but doubly bad news for schools.

The Mrs also seems to think we won't say this being introduced until the 2nd quarter and probably it'll be after that.

As regards changing prices with companies and teachers - the schools will try to change the contract via adding an annex. They'll ask the company that they have to add an annex to change the details of the contract and the company will have to agree to this or not.
As regards teachers, the school will simply tell the teachers that there's an annex and if they want to keep their jobs they had better sign it.
There's always a way to change the contract

[maniak]

Im of the same opinion, although my stint as an English teacher has been short, Ive been in and out of Poland for over 20 years and everyday things for me are actually becoming worse and worse.

I dont know about the rest of you but Im looking towards opening my own business and see how that goes, maybe some pot of gold lies there.

[dynow]

[NilSatis82]

This article is from a couple of weeks ago.

http://www.wbj.pl/article-47818-tongue-tied.html

It seems that there will be an exemption for courses (rather than schools) if they are registered with the Ministry of Education, which will probably make for a bureaucratic nightmare, but I suppose in Poland these things are to be expected.

The new law will come in to force in Jan 2011 according to this article (in Polish).

http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,81048,7374817,Grabowski__szkoly_jezykowe_beda_mogly_byc_zwolnione.html