I want to teach English abroad.
Should I work for an agency or directly for a school?
It’s a question that I think everyone should ask themselves before they decide to teach abroad, but many people don’t even know to ask it.
It’s so much easier to just send your info to an agency and have them set up all your paperwork, housing, contracts, and school placements without a second thought.
From my personal experience, I’ve met a lot more people who went with a teaching agency than did things on their own, and its fine really, it’s whatever you feel safer, and more comfortable doing! I am only posting this so people can make an informed decision.
If you work abroad for an agency I can guarantee that you will lose profits and have less freedom, whereas if you do the work yourself, you can choose which city to live in, which apartment to live in, you can haggle for pay and benefits, and most importantly you have the freedom to quit without paying a huge penalty to the agency if you decide a certain school isn’t right for you.
I worked for a school that had 8 foreign teachers. 5 of us were hired directly by the school, and 3 of us were hired from agencies. I know there were some minor differences in pay for the teachers who were hired directly based on need and experience, but the real difference was between direct hires and agency hires. I made 24,000 yuan a month (about $3,500), 2 of the agency hires made 19,000/ month ($2,700) for the same exact job even though they had much more experience teaching than I did, and one poor teacher only made 11,000/ month ($1,500) from his agency and he had no choice in where he lived, so he lived almost an hour away with a terrible roommate, whereas I lived in a luxury apartment a 10 minute walk away. The agency just keeps all that money for being a middleman. When he found out he was making less than half as much as us, he brought it up to the agency and found out he’d have to pay THEM 22,000 yuan to get out of his contract.
I’ll admit it is frustrating dealing with visa paperwork, deciding which school to work at, which city to live in, and finding and renting your own apartment, but you can’t argue how much better I had it simply because I had the freedom to work for myself.
There are also tons of resources when putting your resume out there and comparing schools. We got the most hits from DavesESLCafe
This doesn’t apply only to China either. When I started applying for jobs in Russia, I found 2 options that looked really good. One was a chain of kindergartens, and one turned out to be an agency. The school I chose pays 175,000 rubles a month to teach 5 kids with an assistant. The agency wanted me to work at 5 different schools across the city, working crazy hours and living in shared housing that wasn’t even covered and they wanted to pay me 75,000 for it. The only plus side would have been that I wouldn’t have had to look for my own apartment, but for more than double the pay, I’ll accept the hassle.
The very last point I want to make is that while it’s a great opportunity to teach and travel abroad, it’s still a job and it’s hard- you should be getting paid for it. Please do not pay someone for the opportunity to work abroad. That’s crazy and you could be making tons of money instead of hemorrhaging it.
Finding Eden 