Job Discussion Forums

[extradross]

See a lot of threads from newcomers and potential newcomers discussing the merits of language course schools vs the National +/International school option for 'full-time' work. Ok, let me offer this as an alternative to those already here/on their way..... you don't need to work full-time for anybody-best to find [if you can] a part-time sponsored [as in Kitas]morning gig that pays by the hour. [two mornings per week-10 mil/three mornings per week-15 mil]This would usually be within a 'regular' or national + school that cannot/doesn't want to pay for kitas....your commitment to your sponsor is to provide the hours/classes that they schedule for you at that school-nothing more. The rest of your[teaching] time should be divided up between corporate/private/overseas uni prep classes-paying no less than 250 thou per hour. Is this risky....well kind of, but it's far more lucrative [I'm talking about Jakarta here] than doing 40+ hours 'full-time' for 14-15 mil within a mid-range National + school.

[travelNteach]

lol,i love it when people give advice to others to go to a foreign country and break manpower and immigration laws. those jobs are few and far between, so how would they find them from overseas? sounds like u lucked into something but lets take a look.

who pays the $1200 worker tax that must be paid up front before a kitas is issued? the agent that charges 5-10 million? the return flight to singapore... cheap enough on air asia. and the 250-300 singapore dollar fee for the agent there?

the kitas belongs to the school and u are only allowed to work for that school. so any other work, even with their blessing, is illegal. additionally kitas are only for full time employment.

who pays the return ticket to the teachers home contract as required by indonesian law?

how will a new teacher be able to pay for housing, which usually requires 1/2 year advance payment? yes, they can stay in an executive kost or rent aptartments monthly, but these are very expensive.

surely the school wont pay you on national holidays, vacation periods, and cancelled classes.

who will pay the taxes? gotta have that npwp card and tax forms. depending on your tax bracket, income tax can be 30% of the money you make.

health insurance?

13th month bonus?

why would a school want to pay full time wages (15million/3 mornings), when they could hire a full time teacher for that.

also, 250,000 (30 dollars/hour) is a great wage, but even most international schools dont pay that much.

i am happy for u if u have stumbled on such an opportunity, but i am not sure you should be espousing it as a viable oppotunity for working legally at a language mill or national plus school. very few newbies would be picked up by a nationalplus school anyway. usually it takes a few years experience and networking. yes i know.... there are exceptions to every rule and u are living proof of that. hope everything continues to work out so well for u.

[malu]

If you really want to boost your earnings go home for a year and take a PGCE (or equivalent) teaching qualification then work for an international school.

[rayman]

Have to agree with malu on that one.

The often forgotten about drawback of extradross's method is, as mentioned by TravelNTeach the lack of holiday pay by your KITAS sponsor. As a part time employee of a national plus school you'll experience about 3 months of the year without pay. On the whole I don't think it's worth it.

In my opinion, the smarter options for earning coin are;

#1 Get a PGCE and work for an international/upper tier national plus school

Or

#2 Work full time for a middle/lower end National Plus school without a PGCE and use your holidays to teach a summer school course at JIS and/or some of your weeknights private tutoring the students from your school.


Each option will earn you a decent income. The first option however, has the value of building a career and hence, you should compound your earnings each year. The second option has a short term outlook and is suitable for those not interested in a teaching career.

Work smarter, not harder.

[extradross]

Ok, I'll address some of the questions/criticisms from 'travelNteach'....
the worker tax mentioned would be paid for by the sponsor-although this depends on the 'kind' of Kitas they have applied for. Are you aware of the fact that several Nat + schools here in Jakarta that are Christian foundations actually apply for and obtain a Kitas for their teachers that has the teacher here doing 'missionary/charitable work'? How do I know this? I spent a year on one myself, blissfully unaware of my 'working status' until somebody pointed it out to me..moving on to the 'fees' mentioned by TNT, I don't know where you are getting your figures from? 250-300 dollar agent fee in Singapore! That's way over the 170 that I paid. Similarly I find the 5-10 mill for the agent to be rather inflated. Who pays for the visa cost, and these associated charges to get anything done in Indonesia-well that's to be negotiated with the sponsor.
Completely wrong information about the nature of the Kitas-so it 'permits' full-time employment, who says that this is a mandatory requirement? Do you think that manpower/immigrasi actually go round checking that the employee is working 'full-time' as it were? Moving onto working legally/illegally- so you are only permitted to work for the sponsor of the Kitas, but this doesn't mean that you are only allowed to work in one location or for one company. As an example-EF sponsors a teacher who is contracted to work in a Nat + school part-time. Nothing illegal in this.

[bule_boy69]

[extradross]

Absolutely agree with bule boy-PGCE or equivalent that gives you a 'teaching license' is the way to go, and the fact that somebody who has this qualification is finding difficulty being hired by a 'serious' nat +/International school, as opposed to somewhere like 'Don Bosco' or PIGS by it's acronym, is testament to the increasingly competitive nature of the market here. On reflection, as pointed out by others-mine was an unrealistic option open to a 'newbie' as it were, but the reality is that more schools are opting to hire an expat teacher on a part-time basis, foregoing the whole recruitment/sponsorship process-and are paying a company handsomely for supplying a teacher 'part-time'. Going back to my original post-which do you prefer?-'full-time, legally sponsored, working directly for the school who are paying you 14-15 mil a month for 7-4 working hours 5 days a week, or working for a company who are contracted to supply you to various schools [yeah-it's legal!] getting the same money, and having plenty of time/hours to take on private, corporate work.....[the illegal part!]

[travelNteach]

Extradoss, i was not trying to critize you, but merely bringing up things for the newbie to think about, especially if they are overseas and know little to nothing about the inner workings of indonesia and the working/immigration laws here. I was asking who would be responsible for what fees and taxes.

1. what was the type of visa u were on before? social bud/religious/student? on all of these u are not allowed to work. there are actually 2 things u need to live and work in indonesia: 1. is a limited stay permit and the other is a WORK permit. i think the initials are IPK or something like that. it would interesting to know exactly what permits u had. from your "blissfully ignorant of my working status comment" it seems u now realize that u were working illegally. The worker tax of 1200 dollars is not negotiable, and have been in efffect since the early 90's. Before schools, including EF, were listed as Yayasan, which means a not for profit organization, and were exempted for this worker tax. in 2003/4 the indo finally realized that all these schools, including the christian nationalplus ones, were indeed making profits and stripped them of their non-profit status. since then, all schools have been required to pay taxes before WORK permits were issued. so u might have had a kitas but not a work permit.

2. go to okusi.net and ask the prices of securing your own kitas. his prices are slightly more than other agents, but he is a lot more reputable and doenst try to change extra money at the end before he gives back the blue book or charge addtional monies to register at the national police headquarters etc. 13 years ago the standard singapore agent charged 200 and in 2000 it was 225. i assumed that it would have continued to rise as inflation has done. could u pm me with the name and number of your agent there. i dont know what my school is presently paying, but i am sure we can save bucketfuls of money with your agent.

3. full time is full time. doesnt matter if immigrations comes to check. just means that u arent going to get caught. have a look at the paperwork they submitted to the 7 different agencies to get your work and living permits. it will show that u are a full time worker.

4. if i am a bricklayer and i work for ABC company, and harry homeowner contracts ABC to build him a house, who do i work for? who is giving me my paychecks? actually this is an excellent idea for nationalplus schools because they are not responsible for all the fees, sponosorship, taxes etc. also they are not stuck with a bad teacher for a year, which they would be if they hired their own full time teacher. if teacher one sucks, they can tell EF to send another teacher. if they find one they really like, they can easily hire them away from EF. so u are right, not is illegal because the school contracts with EF, but the teacher still works for EF, not the school. the same as going on site to teach business classes. therefore, i seriously doubt that EF would only make u work those hours contracted by the school. they milk their teachers for every rupiah they can get from them.

ukrida univerity or ipika or something like that is doing something similiar...... they hire teachers to go and work part time as different schools and also make their teachers teach extra language classes at some of the schools in the afternoon. some teachers like this as they are teacher at several different schools and a wider variety of experiences. others dont like it if the distance between the schools is far and they are constantly stuck in traffic. also harder to build relationships with co-workers and students. i think they paid 14/15 million plus taxi. there are threads about them here but i cant be bothered to look it up.

[travelNteach]

I think the PGCE is pretty cool. we dont have that in america. it is a masters or nothing. The landscape is changing in international and nationalplus schools. before being a native speaker was the predominate qualification in hiring teachers. now qualificatios and degress are playing a much bigger role. so they are looking for qualified subject teachers or grade teachers. schools are much more open to the idea of hiring non-native speakers with these qualifications, such as indians, singaporeans, fillipinos, malaysians, etc. another bonus, they can hire them for alot less. one filipino fried has been working at SIS for 5 years. the first 2 year contract she got 700 dollars/month. the second 2 year contract she got 800 dollars/month. on her current 2 year contract she gets about 950. She has a Bed. could you imagine how much they would have been paying a bule over the last 5 years?

if u are in education for the long haul, best to get a masters. many universities in UK, Australia, and a few in the USA offer these courses and will allow your DOS, principal or other qualified to do lesson observations. i have also had friends who did there teaching praticums at AIS in singapore and BIS. you have to decide if you want to be a subject teacher or grade teacher. the best is maths/science if u want to work junior/senior high schools students. a masters in ECE (early childhood education) is better if u want to teach in elementary school.

Next is PGCE. you lads know more about this than i do.

then Bachlors of Education.

Degree with DELta/CELTA,

no degree DELTA/CELTA

degree with some ESL qualification

esl qualificaton

nothing.

Bule boy: what is your PGCE equalivant? a friend of mine is thinking about TEP but i think it is usless. from your own admission that it would have been worth the extra money to do a real PGCE, it makes me think of the difference of a CELTA vs. an online esl cert, which look good to those that dont know, but are worthless to those that know.
u said u are a qualified teacher........ does this mean that u are licensed to teach in your home country's public/private education system? what subject or grade levels? if so, PM me and i will let u know next time my school has an opening.

[benbobaggins]

[quote]Going back to my original post-which do you prefer?-'full-time, legally sponsored, working directly for the school who are paying you 14-15 mil a month for 7-4 working hours 5 days a week, or working for a company who are contracted to supply you to various schools [yeah-it's legal!] getting the same money, and having plenty of time/hours to take on private, corporate work.....[the illegal part!][quote]

Well, firstly, i have to say that the idea of working illegally doesn't appeal to me. A new baby on the way and with the slightest chance of getting chucked out, then i'd rather not risk it.

Secondly, working full time for a school at 14-15 million a month - i'd rather work at TBI (17-18?) for that amount, and have less stress with the reduced non-contact duties required at a school.

Only my humble opinion though..

[bule_boy69]

benbo...

Stating what you don't wanna do and what you'd rather do.. makes me a bit confused about what you ACTUALLY do.

We'd all rather work legally for one school that pays a decent wage (ok, I know all relative) but sadly not always an option for some who wanna stay here.

For your info...TBI don't pay up to 17-18. Does anyone know any language schools here who pay that much? I'm sure you'll keep it to yourself if you do, and I'll bet people never leave!

TnT...

Thanks, I will PM you. When I said equivalent, I meant equivalent. PGCE is a British term and I didn't do my secondary training in the UK. I am qualified to teach in secondary schools where i trained yes.

Point i was making is that it's not always enough to split home for a year and bag a mega bucks job on your return. If you have a degree in subject you want to teach and it's a shortage subject then you should be in a good position. We all know people who get lucky, but the real international schools would like to see some experience back home AFTER that PGCE... so i would think.

PGCE courses are also a boring drag, (at first i feared teaching practicums,but they were actually the best part) so people have to weigh up how committed they are to teaching for the long haul.

They also have to think about WHAT they want to teach. Wanna teach ESL to adults? Do an MA.

Elementary/High school - PGCE.

Not trying to discourage anyone from doing a PGCE, certainly widens your options here and internationally. People obviously have to weigh up if its a good investment for them.

Personally, I would NEVER recommend to anyone doing a PGCE because they are worried what they are goin to do back home in the future. High school teaching in Western countries is not for the faint hearted and I have seen the inside of a few primary schools that were a bit sketchy too!

[malu]

[benbobaggins]

[Tudor]

There probably are people earning that at TBI, but the highest entry level salary starts at 14jt (Kuningan and possibly Surdiman and Fatmawati as well).

As an aside, I don't think TBI's schedules make it easy for their teachers to have a secoond job unless their clients are flexible and willing to be taught at different times each week.

[chezal]

Tudor is right there are people on that at TBI but you are usually looking senior teachers or DOS positions (happened to see my old DOS paysheet when it was being photocopied back in 2008 so maybe more now).

On the PGCE front I made the decision to go back to the UK. From friends in International schools in Indonesia I was told to get at least 2 addition years of teaching in the UK under my belt first. It's not all that bad while I'll rather be back in Indonesia now I just keep thinking about the extra earning power I'll have when I come back.

As others have said if you are looking for a career in Teaching and not just doing the Language school mill you have to make some sacrifices (ie a few years back home) if you want to have a comfortable live in Indonesia with a family. That's another thing to think about if you do stay here and have a family do you really want them going to a local Indonesian school cos there is noway you'll be able to afford to send them to a good International school.

I think the long term benefits far outweigh the sacrifice of going home for a few years. Well as long as you throw in a holiday to Indonesia once a year that is