I actually kicked off my ESL career in China with EF, the centralized organization (not the franchise). I was young and stupid and thought that EF's online reputation came from dodgy, Chinese-owned franchise schools, and that I would be fine with the Western-run company. To say that I was wrong would be an understatement...I basically got one glorious marriage of Western and Chinese ways of screwing employees.
In the first place...I did not get my own home from day one. EF had me live in a gross apartment with two men I had never met before for a month, then shipped me off to a 2nd tier city in Southern China to work at one of their minicenters. That center was more of a summer camp than an actual school...they even had me go to bars with my students during my work hours...which is royally unprofessional. I basically just had to watch my students get drunk around me. I finally quit after EF refused to reimburse me for my travel expenses. Which brings me to the best part...thanks to EF's 'indentured servitude' policy, they do not transfer permits to new employers when employees leave. They cancel it, give you an L visa, which would have forced me to go to HK for a new work visa. I flew home instead. All in all, it was an expensive waste of my life.

The one nice thing I can say about that company is that it turned me off of TCs forever. I will only teach in universities now. I get paid on time, I don't have to do a song and dance in lieu of actual teaching, I get great vacations, and I have set up my own online business in the COPIOUS free time I have that nets me far more than I would pissing away my week trying to make my students like me.

One like I really like about this thread and a few other recent ones, is that all the good, decent teachers that lurk on this site seem to be coming out of the woodwork... I wish you guys would post more regularly, maybe spice things up a bit, you know?

By the way Nova, the last paragraph summed things up pretty well. We might not all be the very best teachers in the world, some of us are young, inexperienced and don't have PhD's but... Deep down in our hearts, we actually want to teach, become better teachers and not do dancing monkey shows.

Some people think that this board is all about a few regular posters like me with some kind of agenda against private schools and you get all the G.W types trying to put us down, but really, that is not the case.

In my experience, in many a city in China (bar Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen maybe), you can go into any bar that is popular with foreign teachers and they will tell you that the university jobs are the best... This is not just a common view that magically formed on the internet based ESL forums, but one that gets around on a mouth to mouth basis. I wish I'd interacted socially more with more English teachers before I took that jump into the world of teaching.

As for any teacher that has been screwed, I will not laugh at you, I will sympathise with you. Due to the nature of the ESL industry, it has happened at least once to most of us.

As for any G.W/Wumao, Agent/Recruiter or training centre boss that mistakenly believes that all victims could not make it in China and have been banished from the country, you are very mistaken. Some of us are not only still here, we have bounced back from bad experiences and have become far stronger because of them.

There are some very good points here.

EF in Changsha pays 5000 to 9000 a month = that’s below average for training schools.
It’s even below average for public schools, public school that only require actual class hours and not office hours.

Before you hit back with "EF provides trainning...
" that’s all bull. If you are a real teachers then you don't require a pay cut because the job includes training.

Half of the training given at TCs is bullshit, if you have already done a TEFL course or have experience, that training is not something that you need.

When I worked at a TC, we just saw these training sessions as an excuse to sit down and do f**k all. Even the 'trainer' admitted it was a load of shit and did not take it seriously, he just did because he had mysteriously been picked out for a future promotion. They were really just reading from a CELTA student book (not even the materials intended for the trainer) that had been left behind by a former teacher most of the time.

Also, it could be argued that if you are actually qualified to teach... Very little training will be needed!

Before you come back with class size
Give me a large public school class where students have to behave and pay attention or their grades suffer rather than a load of private paying students who are over worked and tired at the end of the evening.

Not to mention that sales guys will often ignore those class size limits and give you too many students anyway. The paying students then feel pissed off because they aren't getting enough direct personal attention and then blame you, not the sales guys.

Half of the customers are also the spoilt brats of rich parents, who have been sent there of their own will, due to failing to perform at school. No surprise that half of them have no discipline whilst in class at the TC either.

Before you come back with class support
All decent schools worth their salt will support their staff, if they have to boast about this basic requirement then you have very little to offer.

'Class support' at a lot of TCs and agents simply equates to spying and interference. In my opinion, good support means having approachable managers who you can sit down and talk with, when there is a problem. Although not everything is perfect at my university, there is the occasional error etc, I know that I can call my superior or go to their office to have a chat, request extra advice, materials etc as and when needed.

I always see EF getting bashed on this site and many other sites so last summer I accept a few interviews with some of their branches just to make up my own mind about EF. I mean there's no smoke without fire and we know many expats like to boast so I figured the best way to find out for sure about EF was to do a little research.

I can honestly say the interviews where shocking. Between the non natives interviewing me that could hardly speak English and the D.O.Ss that told me they don't release salary till the second round interviews and the Chinese staff that just lied to me about hours, I was shocked. I should point out that I was offered every job and all the schools sent contracts for me to sign. I of course did not sign and made my excuses however I did record the interviews to play back and watch.

My short experiences with may different EF schools gave me enough of an insight to see that they are not creditable schools and I would not recommend ANY foreigner to work for them.

True, when you have an interview, it is a two way process... Too many people believe that it is a case of you proving that you are the right person for the job. I have learnt in recent years, that you should use the interview as opportunity to find out if that company is right for you, if they are trustworthy, etc... Remember that you are not obliged to instantly accept an offer, you can reject job offers or negotiate for better terms!

Well said, what he wrote is a lot of garbage!

EF in Changsha pays 5000 to 9000 a month = that’s below average for training schools.
It’s even below average for public schools, public school that only require actual class hours and not office hours.

Before you hit back with "EF provides trainning...
" that’s all bull. If you are a real teachers then you don't require a pay cut because the job includes training.

Before you come back with class size
Give me a large public school class where students have to behave and pay attention or their grades suffer rather than a load of private paying students who are over worked and tired at the end of the evening.

Before you come back with class support
All decent schools worth their salt will support their staff, if they have to boast about this basic requirement then you have very little to offer.

I always see EF getting bashed on this site and many other sites so last summer I accept a few interviews with some of their branches just to make up my own mind about EF. I mean there's no smoke without fire and we know many expats like to boast so I figured the best way to find out for sure about EF was to do a little research.

I can honestly say the interviews where shocking. Between the non natives interviewing me that could hardly speak English and the D.O.Ss that told me they don't release salary till the second round interviews and the Chinese staff that just lied to me about hours, I was shocked. I should point out that I was offered every job and all the schools sent contracts for me to sign. I of course did not sign and made my excuses however I did record the interviews to play back and watch.

My short experiences with may different EF schools gave me enough of an insight to see that they are not creditable schools and I would not recommend ANY foreigner to work for them.

Writing all of these from your safe haven back home eh?

Thought so, because you couldn't hold down the job long enough. EF has it's up and downs, perhaps i'm working at a branch which doesn't screw people over as we are franchised all over the world.

My apartment was shared as most agencies tend to do, but unlike what the OP said about no work visa is just bollocks. All FT's given work visa. As for Turmoi you are right about the apartments, they are top notch.

So to OP, stop bashing on companies because of your poor experience. It's more of your fault than there's, stay where you belong and hopefully one day you'll make it back to China.

Its all about the luck of the draw.

Safe haven? I have nothing to fear from you regardless, you daft twat.

As it happens, I still work in China at a uni which has not given me any real shit so far. I don’t need to work at shitty training centres, haha.

Even if I did not currently work in China, obtaining a job there is hardly a golden ticket to riches that only the very best can obtain. These days, you’ve got the worst kind of bottom of the barrell foreigners coming over as a last resort, when they can’t find work back home for crying out loud.

When it comes to your franchise excuse, that just hints that your company does not set brand standards for branches to adhere to. Not to mention of a complete lack of quality control management or auditing.

Shared apartment? If you want to employ ME, you better provide an apartment that I will not share with randoms that I barely know. If you think my demands are too high, tough titty. I simply will not sign the contract as far as I am concerned, it is you that is losing out, not me.

You post in two websites, this and eslwatch.info. I think you just couldn't handle the life in Beijing. Expertise Education was the best choice I made at coming to work in China, I worked for almost 2 years. Work visa, TEFL certification and adequate housing. You were after a free lunch and you hated the taste , its your fault so get over it.
Now, I am Director of Studies at EF Education First in Shanghai with a good reference from Expertise Education i'm earning three times the amount. So stop posting lame pathetic lies about this company because of your own problems.

Same old GW talk, trying to label their victims as the weak that could not handle it... Well, nobody wins any prizes for accepting bullshit, like the pain-loving masochist that their company would want them to be. In fact, I have far more respect for those who dare to make their true feelings known and stand up to abusive bosses.

Before you try to declare me to be somebody who doesn't know what they are talking, I actually have previously lived and worked in Beijing.

Sure, due to my job at the time, I was provided with far more luxurious accommodation than most people on a teaching salary can afford (a luxury serviced apartment managed by a 5 star hotel), but I am very familiar with the ups and downs of Beijing life, was faced with long journeys to several destinations around the city and high living costs, but the living and working conditions which that poster described is not in any way what I would describe as reasonable in any way at all.

By the way, nobody with any knowledge of the ESL industry in China regards EF as reputable company, they even got a lot of negative publicity on CCTV News, lol.

Moving to Beijing to work for Expertise Education with my friend was a big mistake. I have worked in various countries for company's that can be frustrating at times but Expertise Education were terrible. The staff will say anything to get you to do what they want.

1) Apartment: Faeces and urine over the floor, black walls, broken and smashed windows, on the 18th floor with all 3 elevators broken, no internet connection like promised and broken beds. (Not the homley, clean and safe apartment promised).

2) School close to apartment: An hour and a half commute each way is not close. When I said this I was told I was lucky because most Beijingers commute 2-3 hours. (Told in interview we could cycle to school).

3) Medical: Be prepared to have an internal exam. We weren't warned about this and the staff member who showed us to the hospital left us so we couldn't communicate and only knew what was happening when the doctor started pulling at our skirts. Another teacher with us had a seizure while queueing for his blood test and no one helped. The Expertise staff member came back half hour later and told the teacher to finish his medical even though he was lying on the floor, white and we told her he'd just had a seizure.

4) Expertise Office: No one here communicates with each other. We were given so much conflicting information. Told we had to start at a school only to go there and find someone else in the office had given the job to another teacher. Told to go to an interview at a school and then changing the location again, and again, and again. Asked why we weren't at an interview when someone else had called from the office saying it was somewhere else... etc.

5) Free Mandarin classes? It would have taken us nearly two hours to get to the expertise office for our mandarin class.

6) There were no other teachers living in the area we were placed. We were completely alienated.

7) When we went to the Expertise office to discuss our issues we were told we had no other option and no choice.

8) When I was Ill from school one day and called the office to let them know they sent someone who banged on the door continuously until I answered it and told me I should be in school and I would loose my job if I didn't go. Also tried to get my passport to keep in the office. DO NOT give them your passport.

9) The visa they get you to come into the country on is illegal to work on. We were told we would have our working visa after training which never happened. We had been there for nearly 3 months when we left and still no sign of getting us our legal working visa as promised. Also, we NEVER got paid in the time we were there because of a huge list of ridiculous reasons.

There are plenty more things that I could go on about but it would take a lot of time. The bottom line is we had a terrible experience and were devastated to come home. We spent a long time preparing to go to China and a lot of money as well. We tried very hard to be optimistic and make the best of a bad situation but in the end we were so miserable we gave up and came home. You could be one of the lucky ones. I still keep in contact with teachers who are still working there who are in an apartment that's clean, within an hour of their school, who've met other teachers to socialize with, only needing to have minimal contact with the company. Just PLEASE don't rely on the information they give you in the Skype interview. There are many other teachers like myself who have been discarded and treated like crap by this company and you could be one of the unlucky ones on a plane home.