Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Play TEFL and Enjoy Life in the 3rd Division!

Yes, it's all very true, I'm afraid. If you choose to teach EFL in the UK, you'll be condemning yourself to a life of penury and insecurity in the equivalent of education's 3rd division - the basement league for failed actors, poets, and assorted over-educated loafers.

And I've got the stats to prove it, actually. To start off, there's the official info from TeacherNet, which clearly states the salary scales for UK teachers, and it's a lot more promising than the usual financial insults that are handed out to EFL teachers in the UK every month.

For starters, even unqualified teachers earn between £19,445 and £28,434 in London, whereas outside the throbbing metropolis the figures are £15,461 and £24,453. Quite how an 'unqualified' teacher can get a job in mainstream teaching is beyond me, but the killer fact is this - even unqualified teachers get paid more than EFL teachers with Masters degrees!!

So let's move onto properly qualified teachers, shall we? Of course, the news gets even more distressing now, as the official stats reveal that the going rate varies from a minimum of
£21,102 for a newbie teacher in the provinces, to a mind-blowing £35,568 for an experienced teacher in the smoke. And these are just the rates for bog-standard teachers with a PGCE and nowt else, remember - those with extra qualifications and duties earn a good deal more!

"Oh, alright, we all know that teaching in state schools pays more than the UK Tefl scene" I hear you mumble bad temperedly. Yes, but ... "were you aware of just HOW bad the comparison is?" I counter. For an hour or so spent last week on tefl.com, the UK Teflers' main recruitment site for dismal jobs, revealed the following shocking statistics...

Firstly, there were almost 40 EFL teaching jobs going on the site, and only two, in my opinion, were paying a salary that was even barely comparable to that of a 'proper' teacher. So, some kudos to the London School of Commerce, who were offering up to £30k, and the Leeds Language Academy, who set their remuneration at £26000.

To be brutally frank, the rest of the jobs on offer came in varying shades of shit-brown, but let me first deliver a Sandy McManus anal raspberry to the schools who were too ashamed to even name a figure! They were ...

Malvern House, London (salary not given), King St. College, London (not given), LITE (no mention at all), Regent Cambridge (not given). LTC of London (not given), and the not so mighty Hampstead School of English (not given). Or perhaps they are expecting us to work for nothing?

Of the hourly-paid sweatshops, let's have a look at the real crap sticking to the toilet rim first. Deep down there, nestling menacingly at the bottom of the Tefl turd pool, is a rather posh-sounding place that calls itself Belgravia College, but which offers 'compensation' of just £10.00. an hour!! Some compensation, eh?!

Now take a quick look at this table below - which of these crummy outfits would you rather (not) work at?

£10.50 to £13.00 per hour - Castle School, Brighton
10.00-£14.00 per hour - West London Business College
£11-£15 per hour - English Studio, London
£11.80 to £15.00 - ELT, Clapham, London
£10.30 per hour (DELTA qualified, from £15/hour) - Williams College, London
Hobson's choice, eh?!

And then there's the always self-congratulory Devon School of English, in cosmopolitan Paignton, which appears to be making a great deal of the fact that "Payment will be weekly at rates starting from 13 GBP per hour". So, for teaching the obligatory 23 hours per week, you'll be earning a dizzying sum of ... erm, 299 quid a week!! In other words, the equivalent of 15,540 a year - terrific!!

Of course, I've really saved the worst till last. On a par with the smug Devon School and Belgravia College above is a truly awful place that labours under the awkward name of the London Empire Academy. Here the intrepid Tefler can work his butt off, teaching 30 hours a week for eye-opening rates that range from £8 to £10.90 per contact hour.

In fact, they're also looking for a DoS (any surprise?), so get your CV e-mailed pronto to cv4@londonac.co.uk. The 'Compensation' on offer here is from £22000 to £24000, but - and I'm not joking here at all - "you will be required to teach 15-30 Hrs per week".

Like I said - welcome to the true pedagogical equivalent of the 3rd division!!

26 comments:

Alex Case said...

A DoS job where you might have to teach 30 hours a week! BC accredited by any chance??

Sam Spade said...

Sandy, 300 quid a week is ample for the average single-minded Tefler, covering all necessitiers of food, rent and drink, and giving enough left over for copious amounts of alcohol and dope. So why complain?

Don't forget, the school owners need to preserve for themselves a large income in order to pay for their children's private education and, and to pay the maintenance workers who look after the pool and keep the 'grounds' looking nice.

So it's really a sort of 'win-win' situation, in fact.

Kapitano said...

TEFL isn't a career, it's a fallback.

Unfortunately people don't have careers anymore, they only have temporary jobs.

BTW, I see you've put me on your blogroll. With a hilarious misspelling no-one's ever thought of before. Thank you for that.

Clarence Rhode said...

As Paul Lowe used to say: 'Sometimes when you work for a big corporation, you have to put your hand in your own pocket.'

Anonymous said...

And what in hell's name would the infamous Tefl parasite Paul Lowe have ever known about "big corporations"?

His Windsor TEFL outfit only ever stretched to THREE schools at most - plus of course, his famous 'associate' schools, i.e. gullible freaks who had been taken in by PL's bullshit.

You just have to laugh, duncha!

Clarence Rhode said...

You mean . . . the school in Playa del Carmen. . .never really existed????

darren said...

My dad was an ACTUAL third division footballer, you know.

Why should I aspire any higher?

Anonymous said...

Mmm, Tefl, ... third division. There's something about those two phrases that really makes them a perfect suit for each other. Don't you think so, Sandy?

King John said...

If TEFL is the 3rd division, Paul Lowe is the woman handing out half time oranges at the Sunday morning old age pensioners' five-a-side tournament.

Anonymous said...

My dear King John - you misunderestimate the loathsome Mr Lowe by several degrees, I believe. For undoubtedly his oranges would be poisoned, and he would trot round to their addresses and steal their pension books as soon as the ambulance arrived...

Shaun Ryder said...

Aye, an' 'e would do a bowel movement on their livin' room carpets. About three Ferrero Rocher's, two Lion Bars an' a packet of Maltesers, it would look like. All covered in gravy.

Lindsay Clandfield said...

God, what a depressing read. Only thing that cheered me up was the excellent poll you have on your site... which author would you eat first? I have duly cast my vote and look forward to the feast!

L

William Frederickson said...

Shaun!The joke about Paul Lowe being faecally-incontinent was my joke,for the love of all slappers what look like Amy Winehouse [up the arse!]Well, i did say Paul WAS a loon of the alfresco crap outside Camden Underground station type...hmmm...reminds me of a very offensive heckle i did to Anjem Chaudhury at Speakers'Corner...Hee-hee...

Anonymous said...

Sandy

I'm currently in london and looking around for a half decent wage myself and so have been giving what you've written about here quite a lot of thought. It strikes me that the reason why organisations pay average wages is because there are enough people prepared to accept it.

If you were to take a sample of qualified tefl staff you'd probably find in theory, enough collective intelligence to outmaneouvre and outgun a batallion of corporate dealers. But what did I experience recently while teaching at a summer school?... whiney, simpering little girls who staged a three hour passive aggressive sulk at the prospect of having to do something they didn't want to, then yielding to management pressure by putting someone else in the shit. Rather than utilise their supposed intelligence beyond their degrees in linguistics, they gave jellyfish backbone.

So it's little surprise to me that organisations can get away with charging so little. also, this town is probably heaving with people that can teach english.

David V. said...

Fine piece of investigative journalism, even if it makes for grim reading.

I've moved home, by the way...

www.eltworld.net

Anonymous said...

Lookee peeple it very seemple.
tefl job very easy, very simple, little knowledge, training or experience required, bit of a joke job, not for professionals at all, like working in a shop, same skills required, somee peeples v good in shop some bad, no edjumacation needed.
Problem caused when system says "degree needed" low achievers then think they worth more than man in street for a sideline/holiday type job like working in a restaurant or ice cream parlour for tourists.
Obvious some achievers need teaching so veneer of intelligence needed in teacher, hence further qualifications invented. Still mcjob. Stop moaning, not good for soul, enjoy life

Edjumacationalist

Kapitano said...

Interesting. "Libtard" is an americanism, much beloved of teabaggers, birthers, deathers and similar far-right riffraff. "Monkeyshines" is an obsolete insult from the deep south - I'd say 20 years out of date.

Plus there's the usual cowardly "Anonymous" posting.

But on the other hand, "intellectualise" has the British spelling, and there are no misspellings of that and other difficult words like "naivety" - both highly unusual for such a crowd, who are subliterate but hate non-American spellings as "unpatriotic".

So we're not dealing with an actual racist fuckwit - just another pathetic attention-seeking troll. Who, having provided an unwitting demonstration of why a TEFLer's skills are useful...has just lost my attention.

The TEFL Tradesman said...

Hmm, I'll check the IP number of the BNP member above and work things out. I reckon it could be our old mate Paul Lowe!

Anonymous said...

Mr Kapitano is not nonymous!
Picture of face, first name and evereefing!!
Big brave boy follow number one rule of tefler - when no rational argument possible, focus on spelling and grammar - just like libtard and typical "can't do so will teach" gutter type.
You wantee me IP number, me givee, just ask!

More than one enemy in world, more than one Paul Lowe, not everyone loves you, most people laugh at you, all of you

Drewj said...

Kapitano - i'm the 'anonymous' that sent the posting before the 'nigga' one, which is another anonymous. the reason i came up as anon is cause i posted it on the wrong setting.

god this gets confusing...

drewj said...

having said that, it's sad that the other anonymous managed to get more attention with his diatribe than a post like my own. which only got commented on cause it was thought to be his! think about that for a while.

Kapitano said...

@DrewJ: god this gets confusing...

Indeed. All these words which look the same but refer to different things. I'm glad I don't have to teach Eng....Oh bugger.

skeem said...

Why do you bring up state school teachers' salaries as a reference?

Don't you know about the shit the average teacher in an Inner London school has to swim through every day?

The TEFL Tradesman said...

Fair comment, Skeem, but I don't think that an inner London school in a predominantly 'black' borough is at all representative of the nation's schools. There are many schools out there that are not total nightmares to work in, so I don't think we should generalise too wildly here.

Anonymous said...

For information on teaching in mainstream in UK visit www.teach.gov.uk

Really useful site for information on training routes, salary details and extra payments. I registered with the TDA for more information and they were really helpful.

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