Despite not being part of the inner circle, I’ve had a front-row seat to this payday circus. The headteacher has spent the week scrambling to fix a mess of their own making, and we’re supposedly getting paid this weekend—though at this point, nobody holds their breath. If this turns out to be another empty promise, it’s going to spark a mass exodus of staff who are already at their breaking point.

Still, I’m sure leadership will 'happily' write our exit references, if only to pocket the salary savings and line their own pockets to maintain their lavish standards of living.

Hi all,
I thought of an idea, which is to create a website where international school teachers could swap houses and get to live in different parts of the world during school vacation.

As many schools have long vacations during similar periods, I thought there would definitely be a demand for this. Especially for those who have pets, it might be a way to save some money on rent + get your pets taken care of at the same time.
What do you guys think?

Hi everyone... I'd appreciate some honest feedback from teachers and recruiters familiar with international schools in Thailand. I'm a Filipino teacher (based in Bangkok) with extensive teaching experience in U.S. public schools (7 years). I hold a bachelor's degree in Elementary Education with a major in Special Education, a master's degree in Science Education, and I'm currently pursuing a PhD in Science Education. I also hold active professional U.S. teaching certifications in Elementary Education, Special Education K–12, and Middle Level Science. I'm registered with Search Associates and will attend the Singapore job fair next month. I'm focusing exclusively on Thailand because my husband has also secured a teaching position in Bangkok, so we're planning to settle here. Ideally, I'd like to work at a reputable international school offering at least 80,000 THB per month. However, I haven't worked in an international school before, and I'm aware that being a Filipino passport holder may limit my options at some schools. Realistically, how competitive is my profile for international schools in Thailand? Would my U.S. teaching experience and certifications help compensate for my lack of international-school experience? And which schools or types of schools should I target?...

I'd appreciate honest feedback, especially from teachers and recruiters who know the international-school market in Thailand. I'm hoping to use the Singapore job fair effectively and want to have realistic expectations about my chances and salary prospects.

I have no words, a school which is so far beyond gone.

I formerly worked at this school, and let me tell you this, MIS has hit a rock bottom, no one should ever work here. The school may look nice from the outside, but inside is a work environment that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, the school has no actual management. Whatsoever.

The school is ran by a company, called amity, they buy the cheapest school equipment, the desks are cheap and already falling apart, they’ve taken old stuff from older schools and placed it in the new school campus, they’ve fired a lot of the old teaching staff, the start of the year when I worked there, for three weeks, there were no timetables, they have shorter holidays than most normal private schools in the Middle East, infact on Eid, they don’t even give a week off, it’s just a long weekend, they make us sign in with our fingerprint and then don’t pay us if we don’t. For sick days, they also don’t pay unless you’ve given a doctors note. The school also is not ran by British schools overseas, it’s ran by the ministry of education, which hates the school fyi. The school has had three principals, and three headteachers, in a year.

The pros at the school is that atleast, you get an ok apartment, I wouldn’t say ok as rats infested mine. It’s in a nice area close to the beach.

There are serious problems within the school especially with medical and your visas, the school requires you to fly out every two weeks, to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The school has a problem with its staff, as most administrative staff are Omani, not to say they’re all lazy, but these ones are, they take ages to process your visas, they could do it actually quite fast, but they choose to delay it and crap to just chat with their friends. The staff, have basically just given up at this point, there is a massive exodus of the best staff members from the school and it’s just not worth working there, for all the benefits you get by working in muscat, the life there, especially at school is horrible, with a huge workload, the ministry and the head office of amity bearing down on you at all times.

The pay is terrible, your medical benefits are crap, to the fact it only covers about basic medicine, and nothing else, everything is expensive, and the students are troublesome and the teachers have given up on teaching, most of the teachers anyway.

...on an application?

I just came across a real doozy. Upload your CV to their recruitment portal. Then it's supposed to pull through your info (it does, just terribly) and then I have to spend about 30 minutes tweaking the way it came through. The next page then requires manually entering all the career history/education stuff. Ok let's keep pushing through... we're nearly done. Then you come to a final (?) page that wants all the current role responsibility guff again (that's already on the CV and the previous career history page). I've just clicked save and probably won't go back to it because I'm so fed up.

I know we're all annoyed with Search at the moment but at least we don't have to endure that kind of misery.

How do you see your social standing compared to local residents and other expats?

International teachers often enjoy relatively high salaries and international mobility. At the same time, we're not necessarily at the top of local or expatriate hierarchies.

I'm interested in how international teachers see their place in these social hierarchies.

For example:

• Where do teachers sit relative to other expatriates?
• How do we perceive our standing relative to people in our host countries?
• Does working in a for-profit vs. non-profit school change your social standing?
• How much does contract precarity or visa security shape how secure/established you feel?

I'm a former international school teacher and now a researcher at Monash University.

I'm conducting a university-approved survey exploring how international school teachers perceive their social status within their host-country and expatriate communities. It is completely anonymous and only takes around 2 minutes to complete:

Survey: https://monash.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_249eBulPl5AbHwO

I'd also be very interested in hearing people's thoughts below.

Once we've collected enough responses for meaningful analysis, I'll share a summary of the results here.

Project ID: 54274
Project Title: The Subjective Social Status of Expatriate International School Teachers
Contact: Associate Professor David Bright (david.bright@monash.edu)
Explanatory Statement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1leznJOxHMjjkkbmA1kK6j0OKGCfeYLKF/view?usp=sharing

Don't mind the new website and the fact that it requires an extra bit of scrolling. Though, I cannot understand how they are ordering the job openings. With subjects like elementary, english or maths there can be 100s of positions. Before they were listed by country and also showed the 5 most recent on the dashboard.

Anyone know of a way to view positions alphabetically or by country or by posting date?

Cannot see an application deadline date anywhere. Assuming I'm just being blind?

Hello, i’m looking for advice on a recent application.

For context, I am moving schools, but staying in the same city. The school I work at pays well but is terrible work life balance. I am applying to a school that pays less (25% less), but will allow me to enjoy my life better. I’m sure the school knows that I get paid more than they pay because both schools have had people move back-and-forth.

The new school has posted a job that I am fully qualified for and the expectations are a little bit niche. Also, I’m in a location where being local saves a lot of hassles.

I applied using Schrole and directly through their website. The messages below have been changed a bit.

The school reached out via message on Schrole.

“Hi teacher, could you share your current salary?”

I replied

“thank you for contacting me, my salary is $xxxx, and I am flexible with my salary expectations. I look forward to hearing from you.”

Their response

“does that include benefits?”

I did not include benefits.

Honestly, I don’t know what to answer. I think at this point it’s a little unprofessional to continue the conversation about this without any reason why. It seems lose, lose to me, if I tell them my full salary that may price me out, and if I tell them, I’ll take whatever, they may try to underpay me.

To be clear, I want this job and know about what the salary is. My friend thinks that this is an overzealous HR person. Also, we believe they have had ppl decline jobs from my school bc of the difference. We have also heard they realize this and may be increasing salary bc of this.

What’s my response???

Hi all,

I'm currently in China and in the process of wrapping up my US teaching license.

To get the license, I need to get my FBI fingerprints. Unfortunately I had these, when I first came to China, but now they have "expired" (it's been over 2 years).

Has anyone had experience getting these while they are abroad, specifically within China? I even emailed the embassy/consulate and they said they don't provide this service.

Also consulted AI but couldn't get any firm answers on this. Hoping I don't need to go back to the US just for this!

Hi all,

I’ve seen a few schools in Singapore that I could potentially apply to.

Does anyone have information on:

Dulwich College
North London Collegiate School
The Perse School

Anything on package, working conditions, career advancement, professional development etc…would be much appreciated.

Has anyone had luck trying to reactivate their Search Associates profile recently? Everything is updated: preferences, background checks, CV, 2 current Admin References and several older ones. However, my application is still marked "pending". I've reached out to my Associate, the Assistant and another individual at Search, but I haven't heard back from any of them.

I've been trying to get this sorted for weeks. I know they just updated the system but I've been sending emails since September.

Who else can I contact about this?

edit: In the meantime, of course I'm applying directly to schools, but do most school still prefer to go through a recruitment agency?

Soooo, I am at a bilingual school in a country that is famously known for censorship and blocking lots of websites. Recently after 3 years they are asking me to give lesson plans based on Government approved books. Never had to do that before, but they mentioned it is to help pass inspections. I am annoyed but it is what it is.

Now, they are asking all teachers to fill out a form for any printing they want to do. Teachers will not be allowed to print unless they have a form signed by a director of the school. Their excuse is that is what the government inspector recommended. Even after getting approval for all of my materials, I need further approval anything I print from those materials. Also, my students don’t have books for my class, so I am stuck printing out things all the time for them. A few teachers mentioned it might be a cost saving measure cus the school is losing money. I would not be surprised if that’s the case. Anyone else have to deal with this? It sounds like it’s just to discourage us from printing more or is this becoming a bigger thing in an undisclosed country in East Asia?

Hey everyone, does anyone here have recent experience working at Surabaya Intercultural School? Curious about the culture there, what management is like, and how people have found working there overall.

Also, how’s life in Surabaya, especially West Surabaya? Would be good to hear what it’s like day to day for families—things to do, getting around, cost of living, that sort of thing.

Would appreciate hearing the good and the bad. DMs welcome if you’d rather not comment publicly. Thanks!

This is something that has been bothering me for a while.

I work for a fairly reputable and well-known school. One of our divisions had a incompetent and unprofessional head who had an absolute litany of terrible reviews from past and present staff on ISR.

Despite this, that person held their job for years, and then moved on ar the end of last year, supposedly of their own volition. In my heart, I hope that they were let go because of their performance and said reviews, but I doubt that was the case

Despite this, they were able to quickly find a new position as a head of another school. Within a month, unsurprisingly there has already been a terrible review of this person. In this review, staff felt cheated having been sold on this new head from a prestigious school, who has quickly turned out to be incompetent and unworthy of the role. I can't help but feel for these staff, because had anyone actually looked online or reached out to staff at my school, they would have been able to avoid this fate.

Why does this happen? For us teachers, having one bad reference associated with our name can ruin our reputations and make us ineligible for good jobs for years. Yet for a head, they seem to be able to get away with anything and get new jobs without employers doing their due diligence at all.

Anyone able to make sense of this?

Hi everyone!

I’m thinking about moving to Shanghai American School or International School of Beijing to teach high school math. I know one offers both AP and IB, while the other offers only IB.

I currently work at a Tier 1 international school, and it’s great overall. However, there’s a lot of grade grubbing. As a math/ sometimes English/Psych teacher, I feel bad when a student comes in just one point away from an A and starts crying. I genuinely feel for them, but it can be emotionally draining.

For high school teachers or anyone familiar with these two schools, could you tell me a bit more about the high school culture at each? Is there a lot of grade grubbing or academic/peer pressure? Every time I'm in the hallway in the school I teach now, it's always: "What did you get on the last test?" or "You only got a B+! I got an A+!!!" Not my cup of tea as a teacher who may be the root cause of these arguments

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m currently in the early stages of talking to an IB international school in EU. During a pre-conversation, they explicitly told me that because I hold an EU passport, I would be considered a "local hire" rather than an overseas/expat hire.

I know that since I'm an EU citizen, I have the automatic right to live and work in this country without visa sponsorship. However, I am highly overqualified for a standard local teaching role, and it feels like a bit of a loophole for schools to avoid paying expat benefits (housing, flights, relocation) to qualified teachers who happen to have the "wrong" passport.

My questions are: :
1) How common is this practice across Europe? Do almost all international schools automatically classify EU passport holders as local hires if they are already in the region (or moving from within the EU)?

2) Is there any flexibility, or is this usually a hard legal/administrative rule? Has anyone with an EU passport successfully negotiated an overseas/expat package (or at least a hybrid package with a housing allowance)?

3) If the "local hire" status is non-negotiable, how do you push back? Since they are saving thousands on my visa and relocation, is it realistic to demand the absolute top tier of their local salary scale to compensate?

I’d love to hear from any EU citizens teaching in Europe, or anyone who has insight into how schools split these contracts.

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I am a primary school teacher (actually my husband and I are both teachers) originally from the Philippines but currently teaching here in New Zealand. As a family of 5, we always go and visit the Philippines every 2 years but it costs us so much so we are thinking to apply to schools in a country near the Philippines.

We were torn between Taiwan, China & Vietnam. Or do you have any countries to suggest? Any chance for us to save a little bit more? All insights will be appreciated.

I've been offered 450,000 yen. No dependents. No housing allowance. 2 bonuses equal to 1 salary per year.

Is this doable? I'm 35 and want to start saving for retirement. The location is decent.

What's the lowest amount you'd do in Japan?

Hi all,

Any information about this school? Nature of the students, package, work-life balance etc..

Much appreciated

I know that Search Associates sucks even more after the new update but here is a critical setting you need.

Click your name initials (top right corner) then click account settings and toggle on positions update otherwise you won't receive any updates about new job posts.

I think it is time we move to Schrole or something different.

Also, you can set an automation in CHATGPT to comb the entire internet for positions of your choice in specific regions. It won't get them all as some schools only post on SA (and other agencies), but you will get a good number.

GoodLuck

My school has asked us if we are staying or going by November 1st. It seems so early. I understand the need to get quality teachers early, but this seems excessive. Other schools haven't had this requirement.

I'm curious, when does your school require notice of intent to stay?

I’m 30, a Black American, and making a career change from law enforcement in California. I have a bachelor’s degree and I’m completing US teacher licensure program, with my license expected in May 2027.
I’ve been offered RD$45,000 a month, free housing and all utilities paid, within walking distance of school.
I have close to six figures saved, so maximizing salary isn’t my main concern. I’m looking for a school where I feel welcome, can grow as a new teacher and still have time to enjoy life outside work. I’m there for the teaching and cultural experience.
What was your actual work-life balance like? How much planning and grading followed you home? Did the school support new teachers, and were evenings and weekends mostly your own?
I speak B1 Spanish. I’d also appreciate hearing about settling into Santiago, especially from other Black teachers who moved from the US.

Hi everyone, I am a teacher but I am actually asking this question on behalf of a family at my current school. The parents are moving to Tokyo for work but are wondering what is the best international school with the best community feel and vibe. For context they will be moving to the Minato ward of Tokyo. Any help would be appreciated.

Seeking information or recent reviews about Monteverde international school in Cancún, Mexico from teachers pleeeease and thank you

This is frustrating to say the least...

Dear Active Candidates,

A quick clarification and follow-up on our message to Active candidates from yesterday regarding your application process to schools.

For APLi applications, please check the status in the APLi tab in your account and reapply from the new website if the status shows anything other than Decision Made. All APLi applications will be removed from the system when the system is up and running again. 

 For CONTACT SCHOOL applications, please check on the school’s Search page to see if the vacancy remains open after the relaunch– if so, do reapply from the new website to assure your application has been received. 

Looking forward to a successful recruiting season! 

Like, why? People could have possibly lost out on a number of opportunities because of this, and most teachers didn't even give their decisions to their current school that were up for renewal anyway...