This school has been advertising for teachers on and off for some time and wants one of them to filfil the role of Headmaster's Assistant , or "Teaching Manager" The school is apparently very new and is run by a lady named Litta.

I have no reason whatsoever to believe that Litta treats her staff badly but she does seem to lack any significant experience of management of a school nor the management of the very people who she needs to help her school become a success.

My purpose in posting this review is to recommend to anyone contemplating applying for employment, that they be extremely fastidious with the form of contract that Litta may send to you.

Her terms are not so good and the working hours are completely anti-social. She proclaims that teachers will have four clear days off per week - needless to say these are the weekdays. This suggests that her school only has students at weekends, which in turn suggests she is not running a proper school in the sense that we all know and love. Holidays other than those declared by the government are simply non-existent.

Her Form of Contract is a potentially invidious document that no-one in their right mind should even think of signing and when - as I did - you send it back to her modified VERY substantially to make it fair and reasonable to both parties, instead of favorable mainly to the school) you may not hear from her again. She also insists that the employee be responsible for obtaining his own visa and paying for it himself - although she does offer help in this, it suggested to me that Ms Litta's school does not have the authority to directly employ its own foreign experts. I asked her to confirm this but I still await her reply.

Ms Litta has also run advertisements at different times on different ESL websites, each of which have offered different salaries and different terms. Her Filipina teacher has also decided to leave the school at the end of her contract which somehow expires before the end of the semester. I was expected to join Kitta's school at the beginning of the last week of June. Evidently the departing teacher cannot be persuaded to work a minute longer than necessary so as to finish off the semester and leave the school in good order.

My recommendation therefore is to consider Ms Litta to be basically a straight and honest lady but lacking experience of what she should provide to foreign teachers who are worth their salt. However, BE VERY PARTICULAR on all points of detail in her Form of Contract. Get rid of un-necessary and conflicting clauses (of which there are plenty - most of which are potentially dangerous for the teacher) and insist that the contract is supported by an appendix that sets out the nature of the accommodation and a full inventory of its contents IN DETAIL. Insist that another appendix contains the various school procedures, rules, evaluation techniques, periods of notice, and practices that the contract requires you to blindly comply with.

In short BE CAREFUL HERE - if you are not careful, you may find yourself in a bad situation.

No offence meant to you Ms Litta, but I've been around far too long to get involved in a contract such as yours.

Dave John