Job Discussion Forums

[klute]

Does anyone know how much the Board of Education pays dispatch companies like Interac and ECC for sending an ALT to BoE schools?

Any info greatly appreciated.

[lajzar]

I was once doing administrative work in an accounts department in the UK. I was in the odd position of authorising the payment to my temping agency for services rendered (ie me). Apparently, the agency was being paid exactly twice what I was per hour. From what I've heard on the grapevine, that standard seem to hold true in Japan too.

[Celeste]

I have heard quotes as high as 3 times the salary of the ALT. The centre that I work for needed a few temporary instructors over the summer, and we were quoted around 700 000yen for 2 weeks work. I know they weren't paying this much to the instructors themselves. (Fortunately my boss did not go for this deal and instead we hired some local teachers directly.)

[PAULH]

There was an article in todays Japan Times on the 'McDonalidisation' of language schools and eikaiwas and it was quoted that public schools pay about 23,000 yen per day per teacher and the teacher gets 10,000 yen for a dispatch ALT. No school names were mentioned but my guess is that private schools dispatching teachers are competing fiercely with each other for the public yen.

[einsenundnullen]

Do any of you know if the Boards of Education know how much is being skimmed off? I'd assume they can guess, but maybe they think 70% or 80% is coming through as opposed to <=50%.

It truly amazes me that the BOEs could pay out 300k a month (much less then they're paying the recruiters) and probably get some pretty good applicants, but instead they pay 550k or so, half or less of which actually gets paid to the ALT, and wind up getting stuck with whoever the recruiters could sucker into taking the jobs. But, that's the way things are, it seems.

Chris

[PAULH]

One thing you are forgetting is that the Board of education, is a publicly run government bureaucracy and ultimately, it is the taxpayer that pays for the teachers salary/commission to ECC etc, not a private organisation. The B Of E has a budget, and is not really accountable to anyone and in many ways have to spend the money on salaries etc whether they need it or not. In my experience of working for a national university its a case of 'use it or lose it'.

Moreover having the dispatch company send the teachers instead of the B of E hiring directly means they dont have to worry about recruitment, interviewing teachers, taxation, paying insurance etc, as that is all handled by the employer. Takes a lot of messy personnel management issues, dealing with difficult and hard to please foreigners out of the (B of E's) hands.

[homersimpson]

Paul makes some interesting, and accurate, points about BOEs. Not only do the BOEs not want to be burdened with the recruiting process, but if anyone has spent any time in a BOE, you know the level of English speaking can be quite low, if not non-existent. It's pretty difficult to conduct interviews with potential applicants if this is the case -- unless of course the applicant is fluent in Japanese. My guess is any foreigner in Japan who is fluent in Japanese is not looking for ALT work, as the pay would not attract them. Another reason BOEs use dispatch companies, is insurance (not medical). In other words, if the teacher bails for whatever reason, the BOE simply calls the company and has them send out a replacement. Lastly, the BOE doesn't want to deal with the day-to-day management of another foreign teacher (like a JET). If you are working for a dispatch company, you are being paid, and ultimately, supervised by said company.

[einsenundnullen]

I have read before the points that Paul and Homer make. Nevertheless, it's a problem for workers as I can think of only one recruiting company that has made a good reputation for itself. I've been unable to find information on others, and of course one of the larger(est?) companies... well, we all know where that stands. As far as I know, they have a vast number of the contracts in the Kanto area. Then, there's a company with three or four different names, and I believe that they have a large percentage of the BOE contracts in the Kinki region. Oh well, just a thought. The General Union site says they've had negotiations with both, I believe. No actual court cases (yet?).

Chris

[G Cthulhu]

Why do you write as if the BOEs are automatically getting a bad deal or the despatch companies are ripping BOEs off?

Some may well do, but they're not doing it as anything other than a business. They need to make a profit and that obviously means they'll charge the BOE more than they pay the despatch teacher.

As others have said, the BOEs are paying to save themselves a lot of trouble. The despatch companies have to find, recruit, train (you hope!) and organise the despatch teachers. They do all this and have to make a profit too. Do you resent their making a profit at all? You think they should maybe do all that on less than 10,000 yen per teacher per motnh or something?! 100% markup is not at all unusual in business anywhere in the world. Why be surprised if it happens in Japan too?

[Celeste]

The reason I am opposed to the low pay that the dispatch companies give their employees as opposed to the high fees that they charge the boards of education is that they are likely to get inexperienced ALTs that they are sending in to work with the Japanese teachers. This is a problem because the Japanese teachers are not necessarily experienced in team teaching, and certainly not teacher trainers themselves. I have spoken to executives on my local board of education, and they were under the assumption that local dispatch companies only sent out trained teachers. (Like with CELTAs or DELTAs or K-12 teaching certificates) I explained that those people wouldn't work for such low pay (often under 250 000yen per month) and the board executives were shocked. They were under the assumption that dispatch companies and eikaiwas were really clas operations and that most foreign teachers would prefer to work for them than for the board directly. (Weird, huh?)