I'm a teacher currently employed with Ahead Education. I've been working with their University of New South Wales foundation year program on the campus of Nanjing Foreign Language School. I'm sorry to hear that people have had bad experiences with Ahead because mine has been mostly positive in the time that I've been here. To be fair, I think that Ahead has a lot of different programs of various levels going on in a bunch of different cities across China so I imagine it's quite possible that people's experience in other places have been much more different than mine.

In Nanjing, we've certainly had our up and downs but my personal experience has been nothing like some of the claims that people have stated here. It might be because this UNSW program in Nanjing is probably their flagship program and we have honestly been without want when it comes to resources and support (though there are certainly hiccups or delays. Hey, it's China!). Some of the things I have experienced include:

-The salary has always been paid on time and I have never had an issue with anything in my contract.
-Our students are generally top notch and we've sent over 90% to the top 3 or 4 universities in Australia. As crazy as this sounds, I can't say there's even been one bad egg in the whole time I've been. Space cadets, divas, eccentrics and the pathologically shy, sure, but bad kids? Nope. Can't recall a single one.
-I'm in semi-regular contact with the UNSW staff on the Australian campus. They're busy but I know that their Science, Math, and IT folk are exceedingly quick to respond if there's anything that comes up on this end.
-Our turnover here is small as teachers tend to stay here longer term. Most of us here are going on our third and fourth years now. In my last few years, the few teachers who have been asked to leave were either a) incompetent, b) misanthropes, or c) insubordinate, even by Western standards. Some of this definitely goes on Ahead. They hired them and with some of them, didn't do a good job with communication.
-Are there problems? Of course! My co-workers and I get frustrated with a lot of things. People make mistakes. Things are misunderstood. There can always be better communication. But at the end of the day, there is a general trust between the admin and the teachers that we are all doing our best as well as continue to improve. Right now, it's by far the healthiest work environment I've seen during my time in China which includes time in foreign international schools as well as the private sector.

This has been my experience here, that at worst, the admin was 'green' when it came to a lot of issues but I've never felt there was any duplicity involved. It's been a huge learning curve for both admin and teachers but positive nevertheless. I know others don't share that sentiment and I guess I'd be disappointed to find out if any of the other claims were true. Still, I can only share what I've gone through.

Feel free to contact me at the email below if you have any questions or want to learn more about life in Nanjing or how things are in our program.

Charles

mrkim.nfls@gmail.com