Job Discussion Forums

[worth]

Are all the language institutes like McDonalds, or are some of them more reputable? I don't have the qualifications to teach for the NET scheme, and anyway, I had my fill teaching children in Taiwan. What I would like to do is teach business English ( I have an MBA and a TESL Cert. + 4 years exp.). Are there some schools that pay well, have good reputations etc, or is it impossible to make decent money outside of the NET scheme?
Thanks

[Freddie_Unbelievable]

Some schools do pay well. Expect to make HK$20,000....as a NET expect HK$50,000. These are not exact figures!

An institute worker will make about the same as in Taiwan, Japan or Korea.

[Marcoregano]

Er, we know you like your money Fred but you are exaggerating a little. after recent cuts an incoming NET with say, a few years of teaching experience (and of course a PGCE or equiv.) will start on a salary of little over 20K plus a housing allowance of 10K. In total probably around 32/33K pm on average. A little less if you're a PNET. Plus, you get a bonus (10% of net salary?) at the end of every 2 yr contract

You can make decent money outside NET in a number of ways. There are adult -teaching programmes which pay well (I work on one!) run by the universities. These usually take the form of evening classes. How much you make depends on how many classes you do (duh!), but you may not be given a large number of classes until you've proven yourself. I know people who do 7x3hr classes, at a pay rate of 460-500HK an hour. They're on about 35K a month. Similar money can be made if you teach businessmen privately, but making the contacts will take time. Also, some big companies pay good rates for business-English teaching. eg. HSBC. F/t uni jobs also pay quite well but are few in number and require a Masters minimum plus exp.

[Freddie_Unbelievable]

You make a good argument. Hmmm, $52K per month is MY salary.

New NET's should expect $35K. The gratuity is 25% of your salary less housing. Basically, it pays for the taxes.

I will renew next year. Hopefully, the scheme will be around to 2007. I do not see ANT MORE cuts to this program until then.

But, by then I would have done 8 years here and it will be time to move on. I might even take a few years off to be a full-time troll on message boards!

I like to instigate.

[worth]

Thanks for your comments. I must admit, after reading through previous posts, I spent my evening preparing my scathing reply to what I assumed would be the sarcastic responses to my innocent question. Alas, it was not to be. THANK YOU!!! I'm both relieved and a little disappointed. Truthfully, I'm not really disappointed as I'm far too friendly to actually post the things I was planning to write, and anyway, most of it would have been censored!! Please accept the manner and tone in which this is written (humourous?) and don't start attacking now.

One more question, what are the ethics of PMing people? Should I wait to be invited to PM someone, or do I just do it and hope for the best? I guess what I'm asking is, would it be OK to PM you Freddie and Marcoregano to ask a few more questions off the board? Thanks in advance
Peace

[Freddie_Unbelievable]

I go on holidays soon. But, by all means PM me. Please do not confuse PM with SM. OK!

Seriously though, I can help you get things going in Hong Kong. I'm sure marco can too.

Cheers

(I will post again in Mid-April)