I just want to put in my 2 cents about Satit Bilingual School...
I was offered a contract stating 52.800 thb (including housing allowance) a month as a music teacher in February 2010. I signed the contract and thought that I would get my copy within one or two days. At the same time I signed a contract for teaching Mondays and Fridays for Summer Camp in April, since I had nothing else to do at the moment.
However, I never saw the contracts again - so, every 2 days a week at Summer Camp I would go to HR to ask for my contracts. "Not ready yet", would be the reply. Finally, they told me that the owner was in Dubai, and therefore could not sign them. Okay, I thought, I'll wait until start of Term 10/05.
Then, the week before that, HR suddenly called me and asked if I could come in immediately. I asked if there was a problem, but no answer, just: "you come today, yes?" So, I hurried there, to be informed by the Head of HR that the owner objected to my 2-year contractual salary, since I was not from a native English-speaking country. So, in her opinion, I fell into another category of teachers and would only get max. 40.000 a month, even though I'm completely fluent in English and teaching Music, not English. But it was no problem, he said, because they wanted to pay me 52.8000, they just had to consider all the other non-native English teachers. He told me that one option was maybe to pay me by the hour instead, but this was something he had to talk to the owner about, which he promised to do before Monday 10/05. This is where the small alarm clock in the back of my head really started to ring. I had heard many romours from teachers (and others in Thai society) already about the owner and the general management of the school, and had experienced the total lack of information-flow and organization during Summer Camp, and this confirmed many of my suspicions.
On Monday 10/05, I had first of all received no information about when to come to work for my first day there, but I knew that the working day was 7.30-16.30, so naturally I made sure to be there BEFORE 7.30 - since I didn't want to be late for my first day. But, me, and a bunch of other new employees simply milled around like confused cattle until someone from HR finally showed up around 9.00...
A little bit later, I met with the Head of HR again, but he still hadn't talked to the owner. I had been thinking about it, though, and told him that if they wanted to hire me on an hourly basis, then my hourly wage would have to reflect the fact that they originally promised me 52.800 pr month, including sick leave, holidays and other benefits I would NOT have if I was paid by the hour. I basically told him to show me my teaching load pr. week and a full school year schedule, and then I would be able to calculate the appropriate hourly wage by multiplying 52.800 by 12 and dividing this by the sum total teaching hours per year, rounding up a bit to compensate for the 10 day sick leave pr. year that was part of the original contract. I said that my rough estimation was something around 700 thb pr. hour. He visibly balked at this, and it was clear to me that he had not expected me to be able to take all these factors into account. He told me that he and the musical director would talk to the owner about this. But, as the day wore on, nothing happened. So, in the end, I decided to save them the trouble and told him I was leaving...
He seemed like a nice guy, but how much was the famous Thai smile, I cannot say. It is my impression that this school suffers, like so many other Thai schools, from the fact that the owners are simply interested in getting money and saving money, no matter what...
Topic: Satit Bilingual School of Rangsit University (Read 4277 times)