Wow, I have to say I am surprised at the comments and abuse being hurled towards the New Century School. I have been an English teacher at New Century before, about 2-3 years ago, and did a 6 month stint with them again recently. I had no problems with them the first time, and was happy to come back again.

Since I arrived in Dalian, I did hear of the rumours and met with some disgruntled foriegners who had their own personal gripe with New Century. The people who I met that had had issues, were ones who came late to class, had bad personal hygine and put no effort into their teaching. Something to bear in mind is if you come to China to teach, no matter what school you may teach at, you should be prepared to treat it as a proper job: come on time, dress appropriately, and try and make learning english fun for the students. Its not just free money like some people would like to think it is.

Perhaps it is more like the process New Century has for getting rid of unpunctual, messy teachers they don't want is not so good. But something to bear in mind again is that New Century is a school that wants to be seen with good teachers like any other English school in China, and if after a period of time they find that they are disatisfied with you, the foriegn teacher, they will probably let you go. Its my attempt to explain why there are so many negative comments being posted, as like I have said, I encounted no problems while I taught there, both times.

I have done this and have never had an issue collecting pay or being treated unfairly or being "beaten" as one post said! While I was working at the school no one had the mentioned any problems to me either, and I was regularly in contact with other foriegn teachers while I worked there too.

I noticed one post gripe about 'hoards of children' disturbing one's rest period. Yes, there are on occasions some kids who like to come into the office area and muck around with you, have a chat and they can get a little noisy sometimes. If it irritates you, there are plenty of other places you can rest, this is something that could be sorted out by talking with someone in the office.

And with the testing system?! Yes it is a bit of a joke. But not really a big deal! Like the poster admitted with the story of the child with the psycho parent, there is a huge amount of pressure put on the kids by their parents. The english lessons are ones they are having on top of the intensive schedule at their normal school. There are kids who feel scared to death when it comes to test time and I dont mind giving them a score like 38/39 out of 50 even if they just have to repeat the answer after me. Encouragement. Keeping their parents off their backs. And there are students who do really well as well, they our course score 48/49/50. You may think that giving 38 out of 50 is a really good score, I mean that would be a B+ or something from where I came from, but I have heard students say that getting 46/47 out of 50 is a low mark they are embarrassed about. Again, a lot of pressure.

That is my take on some of the comments on this board. No complaints from me with New Century. It would be good if a few others who had no issues at this school shared their stories as well, to get a balanced view.

I think the reports about this school being 'evil' are a little far fetched, to be frank.