You know, it really is time to do something about this lamentable turd of a 'career' that Tefl in the UK has become. I mean, there are times I really wish I was just a snotty-nosed 19-year-old with a mere handful of useless GCSEs . Take a look at a recent advert that appeared for just such an individual...Data Entry/Office Assistant - LONDON
Leicester Square, London, WC2H
Hours to be arranged: 39 hours /week, 9AM - 5PM, Mon – Fri
Salary/Wage: £26,000 annum
Employer: ID Statistics Ltd
Closing Date: 15th February 2010
Still not sure what I'm on about? Well, compare the job advertised above with this one below...
Date posted: Monday 11th January Ad viewed: 1030 times
Location: London
We are looking to employ 3 part time English teachers
1 position for :2 * 6 hour shifts and 1 * 3 hour shift
2 positions for evening 18.30 to 21.00 4 days per week.
We are a friendly school and very flexible.
Must have TEFL or Teaching qualification.
The rate is £8.50 rising to £9.00 after 3 months.
See what I mean? A job in London that has no need for a degree or any sort of 'professional' qualification pays 26,000 quid a year. Another job in London that requires a degree and a teaching qualification pays ... what - about half?
Yes, you read right there - the 'professional' job gets you about half the salary of the scrote from the council estate. See, if you calculate the rate of remuneration as 9.00 an hour for six hours per day (£54), five days a week, then that equals 270 quid a week. Multiply that figure by the 52 weeks of the year, and you get an enormous annual salary of ... just a shade over £14,000!!
So, I've decided - enough is enough, really. I'm gonna do something about all this, even if it does only involve shaming a room full of Tefl twerps. The plan is to book a slot at the next EFL conference (IATEFL? English UK?) in the UK and do a presentation on 'Why is TEFL crap in the UK?'. OK, it's a rather rhetorical question, I know, but it should attract the necessary attention.
My presentation plan, complete with a wide range of colourful powderpoint slides, will be something as follows...
Part 1: Is the UK Tefl scene really crap? Cue slides of teaching jobs and scrotebag jobs (as per above). Elicit comparisons with other industries too; invite salary comparisons from members of the audience (both of them).
Part 2: Just why is it so crap? Steam in to the British Council for failing to acknowledge teachers' salaries and conditions in their accreditation scheme; Slag off English UK for running the industry into the ground in terms of teachers' opportunities; and give serious grief to HM Government for allowing utter criminals and total shysters to set up 'language schools' with no knowledge of education at all.
Part 3: What can we do about it? Unveil my plan for (a) lobbying the Government to take a serious look at the private EFL sector in the UK and REGULATE it properly, (b) picketing the offices of the British Council at Spring Gardens until they change their accreditation service to reflect the true value of the teachers employed in EFL in the UK, and (c) sending parcel bombs to EnglishUK.
Oh, hang on, I might need to revise that last bit. Maybe it would just be more appropriate to send them packets of dog-shit? It's about what they're worth, in the eyes of every UK EFL teacher, I'd say.
So - what do YOU say, dear downtrodden UK Tefler? I'm very serious about this idea of doing a presentation at one of the upcoming EFL cenferences, by the way. Perhaps I should try and deliver a presentation at ALL of them? What do you say, playmates?!
30 comments:
Looks like a cracker, Sandy. Will you be selling tickets? I'm sure there'll be a very large turnout.
I can just see it in the IATEFL programme - a presentation by Mr Sandy McManus on the crap nature of the UK EFL scene. It's bound to attract all the industry heavies!
Do it. I might even attend if you do, although under normal circumstances I avoid conferences like high voltage. There is absolutely fuck all left to say on ELT, other than what you are proposing.
Picketing those fatuous, pompous arses sounds a lot more exciting than actually having to attend their seminars. and that's just given me an idea.
An alternative Sandy McManus seminar at the nearest pub to wherever IATEFL and their keeny goody2shoes brigade are having their conference.... blimey it's like the weathermen and 1969 all over again. if only stan cruddy was around.
One way to remedy the tefl pay problem i think could be this... if only it could happen.
If All those droves of trainers about to do their CELTA before packing off over the world after uni were obliged to read your blog as part of their training...
Think you can be sure that number of people attending courses would dwindle severely.
I'm in, lad.
You'll need someone to deal with that 'The Baron' when 'e turns up with 'is cutlass. An' if PL shows up I'll confiscate 'is 'ead.
I'm in, anyway. From what I've seen of late the whole game is a fookin' circus. No ringmaster though: just a fookin' crew of clowns.
Coonts, all.
'Ave at 'em, lad.
Will you be wearing a ski mask?
do it. can't be worse than the other shite that's peddled at these htings
Thanks for all your support, playmates. It's good to know that I DO have a few supporters out there, anyway!
However, once again I seem to have made a rod for my own back - or just cocked things up. You see, the next IATEFL conference is in April, and the English UK one takes place in November - both times when I'm busy with work.
So, maybe I could find a deputy to step in and do the dirty work for me? Fat chance, I reckon!
Anyway, I think I'll still contact those highly esteemed organisations and submit a conference proposal. Something like ... "Try TEFL and eat shit for lunch. Just why is Tefl a bag of crap in the UK?" Snappy, eh?
Whatever the results, it should all be eminently bloggable, anyway!!
I will speak for you!
i'll do it but i reckon i'll need protection - a bodyguard, armed police, hell's angels, that kind of thing.
what do you say?
Well, thanks for the offers, fellas! But I guess it would be much more fun to do it myself, not to mention character-building. I mean - just think of the publicity, the rotten tomatoes that will comem way, as well as the prompt delivery of several libel suits!
But of course, there is always ... YouTube!!
You should do this. Or rather, we need that someone do this and you're just offered, so....
Just don't forget to mention that just 'cos it's a truckload of crap in the UK, doesn't mean it's better elsewhere.
I can't count the number of foreign schools that refused to tell me just how much they'd be paying. Or indeed just who and where I'd be teaching.
I disagree that TEFL is cock though. If it were, I'd enjoy it a lot more.
My dear Krapitano, you appear to have grasped the wrong end of the , erm, 'stick'. When I say that 'Tefl is cock', I don't mean that slippery thing you stick up your butt, or brush your tongue with.
No, my meaning of cock is more akin to the following well-known quotation ... "Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill." By extension, therefore, Tefl in the UK is like a stupid old rooster full of its own importance.
Well, if you MUST persist, I guess you can have it your way, Herr Krapitano. And NO, I didn't mean it like that, either!
Honestly, some people have the most POLLUTED minds you can imagine!
So what does the relative wage level tell you. Why after so many years do you not GET IT.
The average efl teacher is worth less than a gcse scrote but has a massively inflated sense of their own value
DOOOOOH
I shall explain as well. If employees are in demand, then even poorly qualified ones will be paid well. If employees are not in demand (for eg if there are too many of them) they will receive poor wages as they are worth less even if very good at their jobs.
Efl teaching is a low-skilled job with loads of potential employees.
No matter how high an individual rates themself, they are simply in the market and until Socialism rules completely in the UK and the mandarins decide that efl teachers are the cream of society - nothing will change. NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
Good so shut up
boggle yer mind these blogs,do.
i mean what are the odds that the last comment came from this particular gentleman?
http://www.sz.uni-augsburg.de/englisch/dozentenjames.htm
yep, i know what you're thinking. idle hands, devil makes, time.
Doubt it, CO. That nice Peter James looks like a decent chap, who'd never dirty his hands on a blog like this one.
Anyway, I've had no hits from Krautland recently, so it can't be him, can it. Unless he's taking a break back in blighty - Coventry or Bristol, eh?!
I used to work for the BC in a warmer clime. I managed to save money while employing two household staff and eating out for a majority of the time. I've been back here in the UK for about a year. The wages are truly shocking, I have had to dip into my 'rainy day funds', and have had enough. I can't remember when I last dined out. I have been looking into jobs in other fields, still related to education, just not specifically EFL based. I'm feeling a lot happier now, my skills set and experience would seem to be worth 32,000 - 37,000 GBP as opposed to the 23,000 I'm not surviving on at the moment.
Goodbye TEFL - hello ...... I'm not going to tell you lot.
PS my valedictory conference presentation will be at IATEFL this year I may, or may not, see you there.
anon - the skill set of an efler worth that much! don't make me laugh. If you've been dirtying your hands in that trade you're in a supermarket chum or signing on as you are above real work - you high net self-worth twat.
I wouldn't pay an efler to clean the toilets
BC are lizard men planning global domination. All their schools have roof landing platforms for airships. I have photos and maps which prove everything. Paul understands and is working with me closely on this.
Never been happier.
I see that i'm still attracting those high-echelon people from all walks of the whacky world of education. Nice to make your acquaintances, Clarence, Harry, Peter and, erm, Anon.
Your points, Anon, are entirely apposite, I feel, and I'd like to know when you're presenting at the IATEFL conference. Or perhaps you could make a recording and put it on YouTube, eh?! Could be a smasher, I reckon!
As for Clarence - well, I really feel that you've been sharing Paul Lowe's company for too long, and are coming to inhabit his dark hinterland of fictitious goings-on. Do yerself a favour and get a proper job, will yer? I hear that Tescos are recruiting in the Windsor and Slough area...
What's the point of mr anon above's ('with my skills set and experience..')post. boasting under anonymity?
hopefully you've got someone else to market your valedictory conference speech more appropriately. can't frigging wait for that one.
Well, it appears that IATEFL's all booked up, but English UK are interested - they want me to send a proposal/outline for their November conflab!
So watch this space, guys an' gals...
So 'Anonymous' worked for BC and has an impressive skills set!!
WOW!!
Let me guess the skills he developed at BC:
1. 'Monitoring' behind female students to look down their blouses.
2. Having furtive relationships with other teachers which he then denied strenuously to his partner.
3. Looking at pictures of Czech women on the Internet via the school computer, then deleting the search history.
4. Phoning in sick using a plaintive voice when he had a hangover.
5. Writing three chapters of a novel in a scrapbook while sitting in a cafe.
6. Asking his students to interview him in class about his amazingly interesting life, and exaggerating his achievements.
7. Turning 30 and buying a new pair of trousers.
8. Adding up his bank balance endlessly on a piece of paper between lessons.
9. Asking a student out on an 'interesting' date and being laughed at.
10. Sitting in a lesson knowing that all the students are talking about him and making hand gestures that he can't understand, but pretending he is checking their written work.
Am I right or am I wrong??
oh so very right
don't forget highly qualified, intelligent, undervalued, underpaid but oh so valuable
Niggerfuxation anyone
Ooh, you are SO naughty, mr coalburner!
I bet you'd like to come and light MY fire, eh?
wocha talkin bout willis cochachamba
British Council could start making 'treat your teachers properly' one of the accreditation requirements. A student at a school with poorly paid, no sick pay, zero hour contracts teachers is not going to get the same standard of course as at a school with properly treated teachers. From this point of view - student experience - BC must start taking the treatment of teachers into consideration.
But when you look at the list of the accrediting panel and see the number of private langauge school owners etc, suddenly the BC's lack of interest in teacher treatment becomes clear...
Exactly, Anon. It's just a front for the private schools, really, this whole accreditation lark. Call it what you like - mafia, vested interests, its main purpose is to (a) guide the punters towards their own accredited schools and (b) keep costs down by ignoring the needs of the teachers.
Quite simple, really!
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