Smart Training Society; Bogot, Colombia Review

I worked for Smart Training Society for 5 months in 2010.

Due to the nature of teaching EFL in Bogot, you hardly ever have to actually go into the school, except to hand in your attendance sheets (which double as your time sheet). Smart requires you to fill in 3 monthly reports for each of your students every month, which wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to wait for an hour or more at the end of every month to hand these reports in. I waited 2 1/2 hours one month. Every other month I saw many teachers postponing or cancelling their classes due to this obscure, frustrating backwards way of dealing with the paperwork.

Other than the paperwork issue, Smart were a good school to work for - although I would recommend you speak Spanish if dealing with them as they only have 1 person in the office who can speak English (strange for a language school). They have a new young director (the only English speaker) who taught for them for a few years so understands teachers & their frustrations which is GREAT!

They always paid on time every time & in full and gave me enough work. Although I think they try and send non-native teachers first as they pay them less, but if a student requests a native teacher there's work. Hourly wage is 17,000 pesos an hour which is roughly the going rate.