Alright, here's an Aston review!

The school is a hit or miss, depending on which city you go to. There are two types of schools that fall within the Aston umbrella... corporate and franchise.

Currently I work at a franchise. From what I understand, most franchise owned Astons have problems. With regards to my school, it's mainly incompetence. The managers suck, they screw up scheduling constantly and they like to play the blame game which really makes getting things done slow. However, compared to the stories I've heard from other teachers, my franchised school is pretty good. To be fair, they get what I need done. The only real problem is with them ordering teachers books and with some scheduling problems. Other than that they're very helpful.

The biggest problem is the fact that they're Chinese. Sorry, it might sound a little racist but that's the truth. They do things differently here and we won't always feel that it's fair (whether it's to us or to the Chinese teachers). This becomes much more apparent when the managers are noobies and like to exercise their "power" against people who they feel are a threat, or people they just don't like in general. I'm pretty sure that'd get most managers fired one way or another (in a western country), but in a franchise it's really up to the owner. If they've got an "in" with the owner, they're probably there to stay.

So my advice? Find a corporate school if possible. Even though my school isn't horrible, I hear stories of how other schools try to screw people over (other franchised ones). Pretty much all the foreigners who have a higher position are pretty cool here, and have been here for a while. If you have a justifiable problem, they'll fix it asap. At a franchise... all they can really do is push them to do things... so you might not get what you need without making a huge fuss (in which case, they'll sometimes decline rehiring you at that particular school!).

All in all, the company is pretty good. It's too easy to dismiss them all based on one person. But then again I've also noticed a lot of the foreigners here are kinda dumb, don't read their contract, think of this as China town and then get all butt hurt when things aren't done their way and complain/go back to their country.