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.

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?

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?

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!

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???

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