I COULDN'T AGREE WITH YOU MORE!!!

It's dumbfounding and mystifying, yes?

When foreign teachers, especially those from the "7 native English-speaking countries" as you say, accept these monthly wages and terms, it makes it bad for everyone, especially those who cannot claim similar/equal status.

Case in point: There has been lots of discussion on the website recently (in this forum and the School Reviews page) about the particular plight and discrimination faced by Filipino teachers in China. And teachers from African nations have it even worse! They are frequent targets for exploitation (not only in wages but in living and working conditions).

As long as folks accept these wages there's nothing to stop downward salary spiral from continiuing.

I live in Nanjing, and when I arrived here in 2003, it was standard policy for part-time teachers (from almost any nation) in training schools schools to be offered at least 100RMB per hour (with little or no negotiation).

Today, a number of training schools here, Web International and Global Village for example, are topping their FT scale at 65RMB per hour! When I balked at this rate recently, they said "This is what the other training schools are now paying, and what foreign teachers are accepting!"

I asked if the teachers who accept this rate of pay are experienced? (Usually, they admit, "No.") I then remind them that reason Web International students have recently gone on Nanjing TV to complain about poor teaching services and broken promises is because the school is filling its classrooms with these inexperienced "teacher"/travelers.

Thanks for posting!