Really though? Maybe in Taipei, but I can’t imagine people in other parts of Taiwan caring much, if at all.
How do you find the difference in teaching at public vs. private schools?
Do you prefer one over the other in terms of hours, pay, benefits, etc?
You’d have to look into each opportunity. Public schools have a very clear pay chart. A BA with no teaching experience starts at around 62,000/mo and goes up about 1500/month for each subsequent year. There’s also 5000/mo for housing and round trip airfare for you and a lineal family member or spouse.
Private schools are all over the map. I’ve seen Christian schools in Taipei that pay 53,000/mo. Taipei American School supposedly pays up to 160,000/mo, but I have never met someone who works at TAS who will actually say how much they are paid, so I have no way to confirm that number. Kangchiao claims “most teachers are paid 100,000/mo” on their job postings. I know people with BAs at Kangchaio making 90k/mo.
The number of hours you are expected to be at work and the number of hours that you are expected to teach will depend on the school. The public schools are strictly 18 class/wk for junior and senior high, 23/wk for elementary (elementary classes are 5 min shorter). Generally you need to be there from 8 am - 5 pm w/an hour+ for lunch break (including nap time for many). The private schools can get tricky. Some leave out the number of classes you’re expected to teach and just expect you to teach 40 hours/week if you don’t clearly negotiate that in your contract. Make sure you have a clear list of expectations for both number of classes taught and any outside work (like clubs) clearly listed in your contract. Never assume anything when negotiating a contract with a school. The school I teach at now clearly said in the contract that “prep time is an expected part of your job and doing prep work outside of your contract hours will not result in overtime pay”. What they didn’t tell me was that we had to supervise all extra classes like PE and the club time, which meant there was NO prep time in the 40 hours we’re expected to be in the school. Private schools, even those that charge a lot for tuition, tend to operate on very thin margins and will gaslight their staff rather than address huge flaws in their management practices. Just make sure your contract explicitly lists everything that you are expected to do and be prepared to shove the contract in their face if they ask you to do additional work that wasn’t listed. If you don’t negotiate your contact well, you’re going to get pushed around, even if you’re paid more.
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Taiwanese people and foreigners who don’t have TESOL experience don’t care. People with teaching experience in TESOL who care about the field and the direction it goes do.
And a lot of FETs who are licensed teachers are just angry that they suddenly changed the application requirements with no warning. In the past, if you were teaching at a school already, they just got you a new contract for the next year. Now there’s a lot of confusion and schools are telling FETs that have been in the school for years that they need to apply through the new program or be kicked out.
At the same time, rumor has it the government is trying to pass laws to make it easier to bring less qualified foreigners into the public schools…
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gaslighting staff seems to be a very common management practice in Taiwan. Supposedly if you can’t handle gaslighting then you’re not fit for Taiwan’s job market.
Never had a job in Taiwan working for a Taiwanese where I didn’t get gaslighted.
That and operating on a very thin margin seems to be the rule in all Taiwanese businesses, not the exception. They say this to justify the low wage they pay you.
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Without significantly increasing salaries the government has no other choice, IMO.
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I don’t know. It is still in MOE’s manual on teacher’s work permit. The manual on the web is dated 107., so the revised latest one may say differently.
As for your three teaches aren’t the two had open work permits or work right? If they were with work permit issued via schools, the school’s should be experimental schools, or in remote area special regulations could be applied to foreign teacher’s work permit?
Lowering requirements seems to be happening, not just a rumour. Other financial incentives here are faster path to APRC (I’m now looking at a 3-year wait, or less since I have a masters, but just got the ARC so not worried about details now) and to the NHI (which I had thought was immediate with ARC, since my application has already been filled out by my employer, so not sure what the deal is here). My salary isn’t nearly high enough to benefit from the tax break here, though, and I don’t imagine many teachers in Taiwan will find that incentive useful…
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I believe they all had visas through their wives.
Angry? Try PISSED/ 
It’s a whole mountain of confusion right now, and likely to get worse in the next couple of months. I’m really starting to wonder if they have the wherewithal to say goodbye to all those teachers. Doesn’t that just make the MOE look worse? They hired the teachers in the first place?
Not to justify any shady hiring practices though. That has gone on and will probably continue to go on. I just think it sucks for guys who were honest from the beginning, who were told everything was ok, and who now find themselves “threatened.”
Easier to bring less qualified teachers in! Sure, but what about the pay? It’s not awesome. A lot of potential ETAs could probably make more at private schools.
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then, I don’t think it indicates sub licence will become invalid. The schools maybe used some loopholes to hire none licensed people as teachers, and now they are applying the current rules strictly.
I can understand the MOE wants to “funnel” everyone under one program since that is how government funding works.
There has been a lot of uncertainties in my application to the program so far. But I am used to it living in Asia for years now. Nothing is ever clear.
Are they being kicked out due to the fact they are not licensed?
This would be a positive development if it actually happens. It shows that they are serious about retaining talent by giving them a streamlined process to a PR.
Hopefully they will amend their pay scales to reflect a higher COL too in the near future.
Anyone who was teaching at a public school was an FET up until this year. Some counties had different recruiting methods/companies, but everyone who was legally teaching in a public school was an FET.
For the majority of the FETs I know, they are licensed in their home country but now have to get police background checks and other impossible to obtain documents, in person from their home countries, while in Taiwan. I do know a few people who had licenses that they couldn’t renew because their state required an MA, so MOE said a sub license would be fine because they were licensed when they started.
MOE is really just efing everyone over. I don’t think anyone thought anything through before changing the policy.
That will never happen. As it is, every Taiwanese person in this country is an absolute jerk to FETs “because you make an enormous amount of money”. They don’t care that FETs who didn’t marry a Taiwanese person are excluded from pensions and only get paid 11 months of the year. I had one principal who would call me into a meeting in her office every few weeks and proceed to remind me how much more money I was making than everyone else. In a rude and “you should be on your knees thanking me” sort of way. I told her that in the US, I’d qualify for food stamps on my current salary.
It makes no sense to get a background check from your home country if you have been living in Taiwan for a year plus before.
I can see this for new applicants, but not for those renewing contracts.
What other docs do they require besides the background check?
Some of the FETs who needed background checks from their home country were married to Taiwanese spouses and had already gotten their permanent residency, which required a police check from their home country.
You’d have to check the site, I know they want a teaching demo video and some other things that previously weren’t needed: http://fetmoe.eng.ntnu.edu.tw/
I am sorry to hear this. But its beginning to be commonplace in Asia now. All due to the entitlement attitude.
They should realize, like many other countries in need of qualified talent, that many foreign employees are there by choice. Not because we have to be.
That is crazy. Especially with being married and a PR.
I know this MOE site. I have applied already on their site. I have not heard anything back from them yet, but have gone through the entire process with recruiters already.
That said, I did not expect the government to be fast.
The teaching demo is standard now from what I see, even with the recruiters. They will send this to schools in the area(s) you want to work in so they can see how you teach/appear.
I am sure schools don’t have the time to interview multiple candidates, so they choose this as a part of the process instead.
Most, if not all international schools, require the same as a part of the application packet.