Kang Chiao school (康橋雙語實驗高中) in Xindian

I don’t know about that. There is a limit to class size in any school, so unconditional sounds unlikely to me.

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I’ve just put in a fresh first-time application, coming from EU …let’s see

That is not the case anymore.

Yep gotta work for ten years. Total bullshit and no longer an incentive for teachers with families to stay longer. I know we will be leaving KC after a few years, hopefully to a school that actually values its faculty.

As Taiwanese schools across the board don’t raise salaries/stipends to fit the current cost of living and cut benefits like free tuition, there will be no reason for highly qualified foreign teachers to stick around.

What they’ll end up are people who either are unqualified to work in their home country or have other forms or income / wealth who are willing to work for nothing. (ala Fulbright’s ETA program in Taiwan)

At the end of the day, the schools probably won’t care, because they’ve developed a reputation for having white faces and parents who have the money to send their kids there will continue to do so.

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would be interesting to know the salaries of those renowned international schools.

you think a millionaire would just for fun teach high school? if so, good luck finding that guy.

if the school can provide higher than average access to world-class unis, then the parents are more than happy to pay. if not, let’s see how fast reputation goes down.

I have no idea how much the international schools pay. My adviser in college told me TAS paid NT$200,000/ month, but I also know three different women who have taught there at different times who said it was a living hell for women. I’ve also seen people post on Forumosa saying it’s more like NT$90,000/month at TAS, especially if you’re a local hire. So, from my very limited data, it would appear that salaries have plummeted at TAS while at the same it’s also become primarily local wealthy Taiwanese kids and not really an international school. (People who work there, feel free to dispute this, I’m going off of hearsay)

I have seen an international Montessori school offer US$40,000/ year + US$8,000 in housing, but it’s in Songshan (housing = $$$$) and you need a Montessori license (~US$13,000 + three summers of intensive classes to get)

I applied for a private “international” school once two years ago and they offered me NT$60,000/ month for the first 6 months and then said that I could “negotiate higher pay” after this 6 month “probation period” was over. I laughed in their faces.
Compare this to the MOE pays FETs starting at NT62,000/ month (and going up to 90,000, depending on years experience and highest degree earned plus NT5,000-10,000/ month housing plus NT80,000 x 2 for round trip airfare.
This is cushier than a cram school, but hardly worth it. US$26,000 is barely above poverty line in the US, and lots of states have implemented a $15 minimum wage, which is the official “living wage” in the US. This means that working a full time job that requires some experience and a license in TW pays less than a job that requires a pulse in the US. Cost of living in TW is lower than the US, but once you start looking for a comparable standard of living (quality of food and housing) you’re spending a similar amount).
You’re also out social security pay-ins in the US (if we assume that’ll be around) and will never get the “labor insurance” that you are paying into in Taiwan. So your retirement falls 100% on you, while any practical employer would at least help with 3-6% match.

I’m not saying millionaires teach high school for fun, but I’ve met a heck of a lot of Fulbright English Teaching Assistants, being paid NT$40,000/ month and required to live in crap housing with each other who genuinely believe that this is decent pay because it’s “higher than locals are paid”. After friending them on Facebook, I’ve learned most of them come from incredibly wealthy families who just hop around the globe and partying or doing whatever the heck they want just for fun. Because they’re just here for the one year, they’re willing to do all sorts of unpaid “volunteer” work, because they believe it’s “the right thing to do to help people”. This is things like teaching English to old people, tutoring university students in English writing, English camps for high students, and website translation. They are required to do volunteer work on top of the 20 or so hours of English classes they they teach alone in the public schools, it’s not optional. Not one of these is a job that any self-respecting foreigner would do for under NT$600/hr in pay, yet they these things for free. Thus, local governments are quickly learning that they can get free work out of these native English speakers and qualified teachers (and other native English speakers) who expect to be paid for their work are out a job.
(Speaking from experience on this one. A few FETs and I used to be paid NT$850/ hour cash to run a summer English camp for a local high school, and when Fulbright came in, the school didn’t want us to plan the camp anymore. I asked the Fulbrighters what they were being paid and they very confidently told me that they “couldn’t ask to be paid to do this work!” I went and spoke to the head of the English department at the high school, who I know pretty well, and I got a lot of “well, they wanted to do it” and “you guys have done a great job planning in the past but we wanted to change things up”. (that money? for sure straight to the pockets of the school)

Taiwanese parents will blame their kids first. It’ll take a while before the pictures of white people in the school isn’t enough to convince parents of the “quality” of the school.

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I’m told starting pay for TAS is around 150k, TES is slightly lower.

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26 posts were merged into an existing topic: Taipei American School (TAS)

Yes, and no.

Since the MOE actually started cracking down on public school teachers hiring certified teachers, a huge swath of talented, caring native speaking FETs were, essentially, kicked out. They potentially had side gigs, legal (English village bonus hours) or otherwise (off-permit tutoring, unless APRC holders) for extra cash, but a lot were here for the perceived security/status/consistency of public school teaching. But, sorry 8181!

To fill in the gap, recruiters became even MORE essential in filling these positions. Standards (i.e., English mother tongue, experienced teachers) slipped. A lot of “fresh out of school with a degree only/sub teaching license” teachers with NO EFL experience or training starting being thrown into CLIL, experimental, or remote schools. Some had accents that were amazingly difficult to understand (although they were passionate and experienced in their L1).

MOE makes bigger messes out of existing messes.

For sure a lot of FETs are being dumped into CLIL and remote schools with no experience (like my aforementioned Fulbright comment, btw virtually none of the ETAs them have any teaching qualifications or interest in teaching, just an undergrad degree in something and a passion for getting a checked box for “living abroad” on their resume), but MOE still has some degree of standards. At minimum, it’s limited to native speakers of English. If they’re hiring people who aren’t native speakers then that’s just wrong, not to mention illegal/against MOE’s own contract. I know EU people who have been deported for teaching English in cram schools here despite native level English proficiency cuz they’re German, etc, but Mexicans with less than great English who have taught in public schools with no legal issues. As for hiring people with sub licenses…yeah not just that but also people who got their degrees from bible colleges and not accredited universities. I know quite a few of those. I don’t understand the logic. There are so many strict standards about who can be hired for public schools and what they need, yet, like much of everything else in Taiwan, it becomes pick and choose.

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Very true. “Open one eye, close one eye.” However, in the end demand exceeds supply but, being public and not private, price is not adjusted accordingly. Lower pay → lower incentive for quality applicants :unamused:

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36 posts were split to a new topic: Fulbright program

I can help shed some light on the name issue. Once upon a time, they actually used ‘Cambridge’ on their letterhead. (I’ve seen old stuff in the school) The rumor from older teachers was that the real Cambridge caught wind of it, and since the school is not an affiliate, they were asked to not make it seem like they were, hence the name change. Of course, they already had that fancy bridge logo, so they just went with Kang Chiao.

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The old Darlie toothpaste trick. Crafty!

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I used to work in this place. I remember there was once a lady assigned a desk in our teacher’s office. She wasn’t a teacher, or office admin. When I asked her what her job was, she was more than happy to share. What she showed me amounted to “reputation control”. It was her job to surf the net, find negative reviews and fix them. I don’t know how. She was often frustrated with the things she came across and the pressure she was under, so she only stayed a few months. That was about 7-ish years ago. So, if you think there are spies on the forum, I believe you.

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It’s the Subway/Subber trick. The Darlie trick is when you’ve been accused of blatant racism and you tweak the name accordingly.

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I think she’d find it much harder to scrub reviews from the internet nowadays, with how much more power individuals have to get their opinion out there through social media, reddit, yelp and other sites.

A quick look on their FB page, not sure what campus it was, shows that they have bad PR. Some scandal about racist hiring practices. I can see why they’d need some to protect their image

I KNEW it! There’s too much distance between the negative reviews and the gushingly good ones. I’m sure some teachers are legit happy there. My schools is a good one, but I wouldn’t feel the need to do a digital fight about it if anyone criticized it online.