Pros
- Teachers are generally nice to each other, albeit the lack of camaraderie - Some students can be nice and spur you to work for them - Block leaves and bonuses
Kontras
Initially, when I joined the company, I ignored the red flags (e.g. people saying the management only thinks for the company and not the well-being of the staff, over-working and mean Centre Managers). It only became apparent to me when I experienced it first-hand myself. Reasons for exploitation: - 6 days work week, official hours are only teaching hours. They do not count meetings, curriculum planning/marking into the working hours. Hence, we have to spend our only off day to prepare for lessons, leaving little to no personal time. - Classes are huge; some can be more than 20 students, which is super difficult to manage. Marking becomes a big issue as well. Imagine marking more than 20 students' works in each class, 3-5 classes daily. - Relief classes frequently happens at the very last minute. You could be travelling to your class already and get called to relief another teacher's classes. - If a PH falls on your off day, no OIL will be administered. - Even if you are really sick, your variable bonus of $200 will be forfeited. - Mavis is racking in lots of students (which also means lots of revenue), but they can't seem to afford providing a conducive environment for lessons. E.g. Teachers are forced to purchase their own Ipad + Notability and Apple Pencil required for lessons ( easily costing more than $600-1k++). The ipads they provide (ipad mini) doesn't even support Notability (needed for lessons), which really defeats the purpose of providing it. All cables for projecting your work in class also have to be purchased by teachers (e.g. dongle/ugreen/HDMI cable). No dustbins / tissue/ stationery in classes. Staff: - The teachers in general are rather understanding and nice because we can understand each other's plight. On the other hand, most Centre Managers (especially the Aunties) are very rude. If the student loses his/her worksheet, some CMs would first blame the teacher for it. Honestly, it's a common problem that students lose their worksheets, and it is not nice for teachers to get wrongly blamed for this, when we are already trying our best to check if all the students have their worksheets. As CMs they should already know that. Everyone is trying their best to do our jobs, and yet some unreasonable centre managers can make baseless false accusations, causing a toxic and unhappy work environment. Almost feels like students/parents are royalty and teachers are the students' workers. Some CMs can boast that they want to make the workplace a happier one, yet they're ironically creating such unhappiness. Other examples are when CMs blame you for low enrollment rates/drop-outs. Honestly, there are many external factors affecting reasons for quitting/low enrollment, (e.g. if student is moving house, which is totally out of the teacher's control), but it appears to be the teacher's fault as well over here.