TEFL/ESL Job Hunt, China

If you’ve ever done any research into finding work as a TEFL teacher, you’ll find that one of the countries you’ll come across most is China. This huge country, with it’s overwhelmingly large population, are crying out for foreign teachers to come and teach English. So, here is my experience of finding work as a teacher in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in October 2016.

I started off my search for work with training schools. Training schools have lessons in the evenings of week days and the weekends, so students can come after their normal school hours for extra lessons. The biggest companies for this in Chengdu are English First (EF) and i2. There is also METEN, but METEN work with adults and teenagers only, meaning their lessons can begin from 9am on weekdays. For all three of these schools you will still have 2 days off a week but these will be during the week, as your weekend schedule will be fully packed with at least 6 – 8 lessons. The weekday work will usually be 2 hours in the evening. Though on top of this there are mandatory office hours (for admin work, preparing lessons and advertising – such as Demo lessons in shopping malls), this can bring your work day up from 2hrs to 6hrs on the week days.

The thing with the training schools, and something that makes me really understand why so many people are drawn to them, is the security the offer. They help you with all the paperwork, they give you a housing allowance so you actually get paid 1500RMB more than your monthly salary, and there is a really awesome sense of community too. You will work in a school that will be in a high-rise office block or a shopping mall and the students will be from 3 years old to 17 (usually). The pay tends to be between 8,000RMB and 10,000RMB depending on the school. If you work for i2, there is also the opportunity to do a 15hour-per-week contract which eliminates all office hours, compared to METEN where you will teach for 35 hours a week and EF where you are expected to cover 18 hours of lessons and 16 office hours per week. Also in summer you can be expected have many more hours as the kids aren’t at school anymore, so every day can be a full 6-8 hours of teaching. To be hired by a training school, generally you have to be a native English speaker (UK, US, Australia, New Zealand… Legally you can only work as an English teacher in China if you are from these countries) and have a bachelors degree, a TEFL qualification and 2 years work experience in any field, though they don’t ask for teaching experience.

The only problem with a training school is that your visa is tied to the company you are employed by. This means if you want to leave you have to give up to 2 months notice and there will be fines and penalties for you not seeing out your 12-15 month contract. The company also has to give you the correct legal paperwork to cancel your work visa with them. If they do not do this, you can't work in China again for around 3 yearsSo, if you really do plan on living in your chosen city for a whole year or more then awesome, why not go for a training school?

However, if you are travelling and need a little cash, or if you think you might be here a while but you can’t be bothered to deal with all the hassle if you change your mind, then part time work in kindergartens, primary/secondary schools and VIP 1 on 1 lessons are probably better suited for you.

These part time jobs are easy to come by if you build yourself a web of connections. Use WeChat and get yourself into a couple of Jobs Group Chats, once in you’ll see just how many people are willing to hire you even without the TEFL qualification. There is little-to-no job security, so it could be you are on a pretty constant job hunt, that being said you do however get paid a lot more to do a lot less. Generally if you have teaching experience and the TEFL qualification you can get 250RMB per hour (around $30), where as full time work you’re more likely to be getting around $6-8 per hour.

From my experience here, I have pretty much got every job I applied for, because I am white, blonde, from England and I have the TEFL. But also you can fake it all and just say you have teaching experience and the qualifications necessary, because unless you are applying for the training schools, no one else tends to check that kind of information. If your CV says you can teach, you can teach.

For example, one of my part time jobs have seen my CV and gave me a job straight away, but I have never met them and it seems even the teachers in the school I now work for had no idea I was meant to be there. There was no demo lesson, there was no interview, just a couple of quick questions and off I went to teach.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, legally you have to be from the UK, US, Australia or New Zealand to work as a teacher in China. They’ve recently changed the laws so South Africans used to be in that group, but no longer are counted as native English speakers. However, there is a huge community of non-native English speakers who work as teachers too, generally as long as you don’t have a heavy accent the local Chinese people won’t even notice you aren’t English… They genuinely seem to have no idea. That being said, you won’t be able to apply for the work visa in this case, you’ll need a business visa which states that you can not make money on this type of visa, so everything would have to be cash in hand and kind of under the table, if you get what I mean.

It generally just depends if you want a relatively hassle free experience here, but with companies that are very money-orientated and don’t seem to care too much about the level of teaching, or if you want a lot more freedom and money for a lot less hours but you are left totally to your own devices.

Also, I would obviously suggest that - if you can - do everything fully legally. If you are a non-native English speaker and plan to work in China as an English teacher, do so at your own risk.