Sunflower English in Suzhou. They have about 7 schools all run by same people. You have to take a wide-birth on this company unless of course you want a really bad experience when you move to Suzhou.

The package they offer is not that great by a long shot. After you start watch all the hidden hours they don’t tell you about and dump on you. I can see this probably was a good company for foreign teachers to work for in the past but not so much anymore. What they tell you and the actual reality when you get there is completely different. They have an answer for everything.

They have a truly shocking fine system to get money back out of the Chinese and Foreign staff. In fact the fine system is by far the naughtiest and most complicated of any school in Suzhou if not China. I’ve actually worked for 4 since coming here with none of this type of scamming. In-fact there are so many ways of this company deducting money straight from your salary it’s scary. Even the foreign staff don’t realise until it’s too late. You can’t argue you'll just end up frustrated by it. It never failed to amaze me watching how many staff get angry over this including myself on many occasions. They screw the Chinese staff much more than the foreigners but that won’t stop you being fined believe me. You'll feel really bad for the Chinese too.

Taking holiday which is outside of the regular Chinese holiday periods is also a problem and next to impossible unless you don’t mind paying MASSIVE fines on top of your loss of salary and paying for someone in a roundabout way to cover your classes.This is despite you being entitled to a certain amount of holiday every year. But that period of entitlement means your chances of going home are slim and it will leave you very angry. Heres why:

If you are new to China here is the the problem with Sunflower holidays if you want to go back to your home country you have to go during regular Chinese holidays. But travelling during these special set holiday dates means you have to pay 5 times as much if that is, you can even get to the airport and book a flight because the *WHOLE*Chinese nation takes their holidays at the exact same time.
What I’m saying is there are a lot of options here in Suzhou. Sunflower English education is by farrrrrr one of the not such a great idea options.

Low salary for *actual* hours, poor conditions, poor management and above all being dictated to from beginning to end about how your class should be run.

The Sunflower procedure is this: parents monitor every class. They sit there with a grading form assessing you as a teacher. Makes you feel very crazily uncomfortable. There are cameras in every room and you are displayed for all the parents to watch in reception. They play back and use the videos of your teaching against you. It’s like big brother eat your heart out- on steroids. No other schools are quite like this. Usually there is a nice easy going feeling about being a teacher abroad. Here it never feels like that.

There are much more teacher friendly schools to work for. Don’t do as we did.

That’s all from me. Good luck in your quest to find a decent school here in Suzhou. We are people that believe in a review process to help others not make the same mistakes as we did.