I use Revolut - have done for almost 3 years (think it's been around in the UK for longer than other places.) It's reliable, the app is easy to use, and they're usually pretty responsive when issues arise.

I've only ever used it for getting small amounts of money from my UK account - there are no fees to load the card, and you can do it in $, £, Euro, AUD and a few other currencies. I've used it in the UK, Germany, Egypt, China, Australia, Cyprus, all with no problem. Also if you load it in £, you can then convert it to Euro (for example) and withdraw it with low or no cost.

As you can see, I'm a big fan of it and would recommend it - and I'm not being paid for saying all this, but if someone from Revolut is reading..... :-)

Maybe - who knows? It's unlikely that they will remember specifically because of this, but it certainly won't put them off you.

Bizarrely, I've been thinking about this lately.

While I understand the idea that the headteacher needs to have spent "time in the trenches", I do wonder whether we're missing a bit of a trick in education. In a business, the Chief Executive of a large company might come from an accounting background, so doesn't have any knowledge or experience of marketing (or vice versa.) So what he does is make sure that the people he makes responsible for that area have sufficient experience of it, so he can rely on them for advice and decision making (and gives them the authority to do that.) Indeed, a good CE provides strategic direction without getting involved in the nitty gritty of the business on a day-to-day level - he leaves that to his senior managers.

In international schools, the role of the Headmaster / Principal is probably much closer to that of the Chief Executive. So, provided appropriate authority is devolved to the heads of school, does he actually need to be a teacher? He would also need to be someone who would listen to advice before taking action, and be sure that the people he has in place are people he is able to work with closely and trust.

Going back to the OP, there are roles within admin in the bigger schools which could use his management experience - think along the lines of the equivalent of a Business Manager in UK schools. That might be worth pursuing.

@smile2017 I really hope that you've posted a review of this school now! It's vital for new teachers to know what your experience has been.

psyguy makes a very good point in his final paragraph. I'm now 5 years in to my teaching career, and it's only now that I'm really looking at things and seeing what makes sense, and being able to do things instinctively rather than thinking hard to get there (I had an observation last week where I was praised for doing something I hadn't realized I was doing - it was just the way I did it!)

Another way in for you might be through ESL. I know a few teachers who started doing ESL teaching, then progressed either through something like PGCEi (the international version of the UK PGCE) in to teaching their subjects. Most good schools need some sort of support with ESL and will have an ESL department - this may not always be the case for Tier 2 & 3 schools though.

Hmmm....

Some schools do add this info to Search, but you have to be careful with it as many will count locals with a foreign passport as being an "overseas" student. In addition, schools websites do have a tendancy to focus on the "paler skinned" students, only to find that these were actually the only Western students in the school (one school I know of in Egypt used the Head's kids in every single promotional shot!)

As a rule of thumb, the better the school, the higher number of non-native students there are (which would make it more competitive to apply.) I know that Harrow Bangkok has a fair number, but don't really know any others in that area.

My child will be completing her final school exams in a couple of years, and the final year of my contract would coincide with her second to last year of school (she goes to the school where my partner teaches, so no concerns about tuition fees.) I'm reaching a point where I feel that, by then, I will be verging on burnout and need to take some time for myself before my next teaching role.

If I was to take a year out - possibly doing some cover here and there - to support her in her final year, how would a new school look at that? Would they be particularly bothered by the gap, or would they prefer to have a teacher who would (hopefully!) be refreshed and reinvigorated?

My last school did have something like that too - our salaries were written into the contract, and after the first year the owners announced an increase. That meant to get it we had to sign an amendment to the contract which also had some other (innocuous) bits in it too.

There's lots of reasons why schools do this - some for pretty underhand reasons, but even then ultimately you don't have to sign it and either you continue on the old terms and conditions or they sack you (and you submit a review to ISR naming them!) If there's no detriment to you, though, it's probably not worth debating.

PsyGuy wrote:
> @expatscot
>
> Its possible they didnt know. They were hoping enrollment numbers would be
> higher or would improve. They hoped enough ITs would leave anyway. They
> also could have thought as posted earlier that giving ITs more choices
> means more would leave and result in them having to recruit, by posting the
> dismissals so late, staff walking out this late wouldnt have as many
> opportunities, and thus would accept the salary reduction.

Sorry - wasn't clear in my original post. What I meant was why they couldn't have just said that when they sent the original email saying the contract wasn't being renewed? That would have saved the OP's stress and probably saved the school a lot of anger, even if people were disappointed.

dolphin wrote:
> Finally I my answer yesterday from the the VP! Enrollment and monetary
> issues. The VP also was not renewed and three other teachers. The ones who
> got renewal got a salary cut.
>
> I would like to thank everyone for all the help.

Why could they just not have told you that at the outset? I know some people just don't think about it but if it comes down to something out of your own control then at least it would have put your mind at rest. Not doing that threatened the possibility of staff walking!

I'm going to start by giving you the warning I give to anyone who is thinking about teaching. Unless you are 100% certain it's something you want to do, then it's not the right career for you. You talk about the comfortable lifestyle, but your first two or three years (sometimes more) in teaching can be really frenetic as you try to get to grips with dealing with 20+ hormonal teenagers in a small room who may or may not be in a mood to cooperate, or, indeed, care about your subject.

Usually, most ISs look for a couple of years teaching experience. In China, I think they are moving towards requiring this as part of the Z visa process, so you may well fall down on this.

However, on the plus side, you aim to have a license for Maths and Physics, two shortage subjects. If I were you, I'd consider looking first to somewhere like the UK or the US for your initial experience - you could get your license in the US or the PGDE in the UK. The two years or so when you would be training do count as teaching experience so at that point you'd be in a better position to move.

You could - but in all honesty, this sort of thing is really frowned on. You will have verbally accepted the position and then gone back on it, and if the school then contacts agencies like Search etc to let them know you backed out you'll find it much more difficult to get a similar role in the future. They will also likely have put a limit on when you can sign the contract before they withdraw it - if it's a genuine "top tier" school then they won't have a problem filling it - so you could well find yourself with no offers at all and it being difficult to get another place.

I always think "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" applies in this position.

Your contract with your current school will have guidelines on how and when you need to let them know you're not staying - though that said, the earlier you give notice then the more able the school is to replace you. Most schools won't know their full staffing requirement for 2019/20 until around November 2018, so there is still a huge amount of time for you.

What I would do just now is start doing some of the admin-type things which you can do to your Search profile without actually reactivating it. Update your CV and schools, look at your references (could you add a parent one, for example?) and even have a chat with your associate or one of his people about what the best thing might be.

I would tell the school within the first couple of weeks of the new year in August of your intentions. That way, you can get your Search profile live (your head will need to give a new reference for you) and start looking from then. Before that time, TBH, I'm not sure it's worth it.)

Just a thought - if you're coming from the UK rather than the USA, the longest a UK doctor will normally prescribe for is 3 months supply (mainly to do with cost management - getting the repeat prescription shouldn't be a problem.) You might need to go private to get the longer prescription, but check with your GP.

There's two ways in the UK for this.

Firstly, you could set up a US$ account to accept it, either onshore or offshore. You'd still have the problem though of it being in USD so not much use for paying bills in the UK!

The easiest way is to just set it up to be paid to your normal bank account. I think you have to choose where the conversion is made - but unless the school is picking up the tab for it, it will probably be done at your home bank. Check with them that this is possible (it probably is) and what any charges will be. Downside is that the amount paid in to your account will change monthly depending on the exchange rate.