As a teacher who completed a one year teaching contract at Shane in Kunming in 2011 I would like to respond to the comments made by Sparrow which I feel are lacking both in balance and objectivity.

All Shane schools in China operate under a franchise arrangement. Therefore with each school (or group of schools) having different owners there can be wide variations in governance, even though the core syllabus and teaching methodologies employed are notionally the same. The Shane schools in Kunming have been operating under the same ownership for around ten years, and have during this time had a total of three incumbents of the Director of Studies position. In this respect Shane Kunming operates with stable and consistent management within an industry well known for its high turnover of staff.

The management structure at Shane Kunming consists of both foreign and Chinese management and for the most part it is the foreign management who deal with the foreign teachers, and the Chinese management who deal with the Chinese staff. Largely this arrangement works well and avoids many of the cross-cultural misunderstandings experienced by western teachers that are prone to arise where the management structure is 100% Chinese. Because of this split arrangement there are occasions where the communication between the two sides falls down slightly but in general it works well and all staff can easily understand the division of responsibility and the reporting structure. The accusations made by sparrow concerning the managements supposed ‘incompetence’ and a lack of ‘empathy’ are highly subjective and somewhat misrepresentative of the real situation. Certainly there are young staff in some of the administrative positions, as there are in many companies, and these people are paid at market rates (which for natives are of course quite low in China). Clearly the writer fails to understand the commercial nature of business and perhaps still believes that ‘money just grows on trees’.

The writer also complains that the school uses classroom assistants to gather critical feedback, and that “These teaching assistants, with little or no experience, are then set about the task of assessing the teachers and advised by the owner to be as critical as possible.” Clearly it is in the interests of the management, the students, and ultimately the teachers for observations to take place. Formal observations are made by the Director and the Assistant Director of Studies every two months or so, and therefore Teaching Assistants are also asked to provide feedback on the teachers they observe on a more frequent basis. This is done not with any malicious intent as the writer alleges, but rather it is a way to obtain information especially in instances where students may have leveled complaints about a particular teacher. Perhaps the writer’s defensive position belies an issue with the quality of his teaching.

With regard to the contract, again I feel that the writer’s comments are unfounded and misleading. The contract allows for a maximum of 13.5 contact hours per week with additional administration hours during which time teachers are required to prepare lessons and take part in other legitimate activities. All in all the total number of hours required for teachers to be on the schools premises is never more than 20 hours a week, which is generous indeed. Additionally many of the teachers actually have schedules where their actual contact hours are less than 13.5 a week. In such instances teachers are not required to be on site but are expected to be available on ‘standby’ in the event that another teacher is unavailable to teach at that time. The writer accepts that it is ok for the school to allow him to not teach a full schedule but pay him the full wage irrespectively. However he then believes that he should be paid extra when the school requires him to be available for the hours he is contracted to work in the first place! The holidays are as stated in the contract and anyone signing the contract knows the situation before taking the job. Again if the writer believes this to be so ‘paltry’ he should not have signed it and instead should have sought employment with of the other schools he describes which allegedly offer 2-3 months of paid leave.

Shane Kunming is by no means perfect. However as a place to work and teach you could do much worse. Teachers are treated fairly and in accordance with the contract they sign. Furthermore they always receive their pay on time and in full (something that not all schools manage to do). The Shane school in Kunming is going through a process of change whereby systems and materials are being updated. As the market for private language schools in China is becoming increasingly competitive so Shane has to evolve in order to survive. Sparrow, the writer of the article clearly has a personal axe to grind which in all likelihood is probably due to his own personal shortcomings. I would also add that teaching at Shane Kunming was (at the time of writing) Sparrows first and only teaching job in China, therefore the relative suppositions he makes between Shane and other schools in China can be discounted. Unfortunately in his review of Shane Kunming he reveals far more about his own lack of maturity than he does about the true nature of working at the school.

For those wishing to teach children and seeking a decent school with a pleasant atmosphere I would recommend seriously considering Shane Kunming.