Sorry to hear you’ve had a bad experience with the MOE and at least your school is nice. This seems to be the case often. A friend of mine recently got a job in a rural part of Taiwan at a public school and had to go through the MOE to get it. He said his school is fine but that the MOE definitely sucks.
As for your benefits being cut, that’s pretty standard, it’s not that they are really screwing you over though, it’s in proportion to what part of the school year you’ve missed. So if you’ve missed the first four months, you get two thirds of your holidays and bonus. What you can do is get your school to let you use your sick and personal days left over at the end of the year as vacation time, usually they’ll let you do that, but in Taiwan, nothing is really standard practice, so try, but don’t count on it. Nothing you can really do to increase your bonus. Just sign that contract again and you’ll get your August 1st start date.
Also regarding the 18% rule, once you get an APRC, you are subject to the 5% tax rate for the whole year.
I guess perhaps it hasn’t changed much. They did change it in 2012 because they used to not tax teachers, but then they started to do that, so salaries were raised to try to compensate for that. However, I still think it’s a little less money in the end. They really should change that pay scale as they are considering doing that for various other jobs in Taiwan.
in your definition, what constitutes being fired? being shit-canned immediately? what if someone was on a one year contract that didn’t get renewed? Would you consider that being fired?
Normally I would think it’s fair. However, the only reason I couldn’t come to start my contract on time was because the Moe and cecc refused to issue special entry permits even though they are the ones who drafted the contracts in the first place. If it had been for my own personal reasons, than yeah of course that’s definitely fair.
They eventually did issue the permit, but it took them months
I don’t notice more ads for foreign teachers, there was never a shortage of those. I have noticed less non native English speakers saying “PMed you”. Most posts have no comments.
Sorry, I still just don’t think that this situation is worth being bitter over. My first public school contract started in like mid October and went until the end of July. The contracts ALWAYS end on July 31. It’s not like in Korea where it’s one year from when you start, no matter when that is. So at my first school, I also had reduced holidays and bonus. It kinda sucks, but it’s pro-rated based on how much time of the contract you actually work. Ideally, they’d let you sign a year and a half contract, ending in July 2023, but they’re just too damn inflexible. Also them getting the work permit was mostly out of their control. I just don’t think it’s reasonable for you to think you should get all of that, and to be honest, it’ll just make you more bitter and resentful, which to be honest, there already is much to be bitter and resentful for when working at a public school here as a foreign teacher.
And I know a number of public school foreign teachers who have been chased down the street by desperate cram school owners begging them to come teach their classes (something I wouldn’t recommend, as it’s clearly stated in the MOE contract that no outside work, paid or not, can be undertaken without express permission from a bunch of people)
I know even Chinese teachers can’t open schools or teach extra classes in them, but I’m curious about foreign teachers with APRC. I don’t have a teaching license, but the local public schools keep asking me to teach. They must have some way around the requirements for APRC holders.
Nope. My contracts were quite clear that it was a public worker law and not a work permit law. I’m sure people do it (I myself took on private students with some degree of frequency, along with translation gigs), but it’s not really something you’d want to go around advertising. And if you’re working at the cram school next to your public school, you’re hardly hiding your second job’s existence.
Are you saying that cram school teachers can now enter Taiwan on special entry permits? Last I heard was that the government wouldn’t issue landing permits to cram school teachers
