Package checkup for China

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cookies4u
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 10:12 am

Package checkup for China

Post by cookies4u »

Me: Licensed math teacher with bachelor degree in an unrelated field. 5 years teaching experience, 2 in the US (my country), 3 in China. 2 years AP experience. Single with no dependents.

The package - all numbers are before tax:

Basic salary: 369,000 RMB
Completion bonus: 32,000 RMB
Relocation + cash allowance: 19,000 RMB
Return flight: 13,000 RMB

Housing is only 4k/month, but I've seen the apartments they have for this amount and they are acceptable it's a Tier 3 city. I'm responsible for utilities.

3 free meals/day on campus M-F.

There's also a possible bonus for student scores on standardized tests, but the interviewer himself told me the criteria is hard to explain so I'm just not going to factor it in.

The school has a reputation for working teachers pretty hard. I'm at a point in life where I'm happy to do this if the compensation is there.

How does the package rate for someone in China with my resume, such as it is?
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Response

Post by PsyGuy »

Roughly, thats about USD$44K/yr net. The bonus is another USD$4K. About USD$1K for inbound travel, leaving you about USD$2K for shopping allowance, but if youve got to pay all the visa and document costs out of the relocation its more an even split of USD$1500 for travel and USD$1500 for shopping. This also depends on your quarantine costs, which if you have to cover that out of your relocation your not going to have much of a shopping allowance left. You may be spending a good portion of that shopping allowance in initial housing costs even if your comfortable with the housing allowance. I would think utilities are going to come out of salary.
What are the conditions of the completion bonus? Is it make it to the end of the year or is it tied to attendance, etc.?

For an IT with 5 years experience in a high needs subject in a tier 3 IS in China thats is an okay above the mean package, but that would be with positive or neutral work life balance. Youre not likely to get the performance bonus, and if the completion bonus only requires end of year completion and you can pocket about USD$2K of the relocation thats a USD$50K. As you say though they really work their ITs hard, so anything approaching 1.5 FTE (around 1.25 FTE) and the comp they are offering is below market especially if you cant bank any of the relocation or the completion bonus has a bunch of strings attached. Out in the provinces you can bank better coin doing ESOL with privates than you can putting it into your IS. Very roughly you can make 2.0x on average (can actually be a lot more but thats less common) per unit of time in ESOL then you do at a third tier IS. Third tier though you may be basing that "pretty hard" on a majority of ITs who havent been in IE or even DE long enough to develop efficiencies, so pretty hard may not be very applicable to you.
What do their students maths scores look like. If they do well, and the IS really isnt looking for you to really do any innovation and the extra work involves sitting around and generating a few pages here and there of curriculum and you can just use your own lesson plans to base much of that off and all the IS REALLY cares about is keeping those scores acceptable then this may be more of a dwaddle for you, in which case the comp is actually pretty nice.

This really comes down to how hard "pretty hard" is and what that translates to you as.
cookies4u
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 10:12 am

Re: Response

Post by cookies4u »

PsyGuy wrote:
> Roughly, thats about USD$44K/yr net. The bonus is another USD$4K. About
> USD$1K for inbound travel, leaving you about USD$2K for shopping allowance,
> but if youve got to pay all the visa and document costs out of the
> relocation its more an even split of USD$1500 for travel and USD$1500 for
> shopping. This also depends on your quarantine costs, which if you have to
> cover that out of your relocation your not going to have much of a shopping
> allowance left. You may be spending a good portion of that shopping
> allowance in initial housing costs even if your comfortable with the
> housing allowance. I would think utilities are going to come out of salary.
>
> What are the conditions of the completion bonus? Is it make it to the end
> of the year or is it tied to attendance, etc.?
>
> For an IT with 5 years experience in a high needs subject in a tier 3 IS in
> China thats is an okay above the mean package, but that would be with
> positive or neutral work life balance. Youre not likely to get the
> performance bonus, and if the completion bonus only requires end of year
> completion and you can pocket about USD$2K of the relocation thats a
> USD$50K. As you say though they really work their ITs hard, so anything
> approaching 1.5 FTE (around 1.25 FTE) and the comp they are offering is
> below market especially if you cant bank any of the relocation or the
> completion bonus has a bunch of strings attached. Out in the provinces you
> can bank better coin doing ESOL with privates than you can putting it into
> your IS. Very roughly you can make 2.0x on average (can actually be a lot
> more but thats less common) per unit of time in ESOL then you do at a third
> tier IS. Third tier though you may be basing that "pretty hard"
> on a majority of ITs who havent been in IE or even DE long enough to
> develop efficiencies, so pretty hard may not be very applicable to you.
> What do their students maths scores look like. If they do well, and the IS
> really isnt looking for you to really do any innovation and the extra work
> involves sitting around and generating a few pages here and there of
> curriculum and you can just use your own lesson plans to base much of that
> off and all the IS REALLY cares about is keeping those scores acceptable
> then this may be more of a dwaddle for you, in which case the comp is
> actually pretty nice.
>
> This really comes down to how hard "pretty hard" is and what that
> translates to you as.

Thanks for the reply.

As far as quarantine, you never know what happens between now and August, but I'm already in China and don't expect to have to quarantine. The school covers visa expenses. What is FTE?

I can bank the relocation allowance. I can't bank extra housing allowance, but to be honest while 4k is sufficient I don't expect there to be much extra to bank.

What does "out in the provinces" mean? I don't really have any ESOL training.
cookies4u
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 10:12 am

Re: Package checkup for China

Post by cookies4u »

I'm also curious what makes you say it's a tier 3 school (I'm not disputing it, just genuinely curious). i.e. What would the package roughly have to be for it to be considered a tier 2 school?
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

@cookies4u

So you get the relocation allowance your first year and youll be able to bank most of it, and your years after that youll get the bonus assuming its a simple make it to the end of the year and not have a lot of strings attached to it so your looking at about USD$48K/yr.

FTE = Full Time Equivalence
Its the equivalent of one job. Roughly that means 40hrs/wk (8am-4pm, M-F for 8hrs/day, 5days/wk) in contract time. Roughly, half of those (20hrs/wk) are instructional (teaching) time (can go 5hrs/week plus or minus). Dismissal is between 2pm-3pm, and the extra hour is either ASPs (After School Program), meetings, or collaboration. The job includes lesson planning and marking/grading but those can be contact, not contract hrs. That would be an FTE=1.0. When those factors grow, your teaching hrs are 30, your contract hrs are 50 or your preps greatly increases substantially, or your contact hrs increase significantly thats when your doing more than one job and your FTE=1.25 or 1.5, youre doing 25% or 50% more than the expectation of what one teaching job is. So if your getting this USD$48K for a third tier IS and "working their ITs hard" still is an FTE=1.0 or 1.1 than thats an okay comp package for a third tier IS. If working their ITs hard equates to a FTE=1.5 or higher meaning your doing a job and a half of another job than for a third tier IS thats not an okay comp package.

Being or acting provincial, being located a considerable distance from the provincial capital. Guangdong is a province. Lianzhou, is "out in the provinces".

You did. You stated this is a third tier city and that this is China. There are no second tier ISs in Chinese third tier cities. Not that there couldnt be, there just arent.
tangchao
Posts: 72
Joined: Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:16 pm

Re: Package checkup for China

Post by tangchao »

That is almost precisely the same package I went out to China for about 15 years ago! The RMB has depreciated considerably since then.
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