The International Schools Review Forum

I saw a job posted at UWCSEA that I’m pretty interested in, but reviews around here make it seem totally unreasonable if you have a family. I don’t want to waste my time on their very extensive application if it’s not feasible. Any thoughts about this recently? Most of the posts about them are 8-10 years old.

Massive workload. Expect lots of events and games to attend as well.

They work their ITs very hard and the workload is deep. Not only expect heightened ASPs and XC obligations but as a parent youre going to have to make deals with other ITs to cover this, and swap that. If you have a trailing spouse who can be the house parent youll have less of that but any IT appointment is more than a FTE 1.0 job.

I enjoy games and school events and often bring my kids along to those things at my current school. I’ve always been pretty involved in extracurricular stuff coming from American public schools. If that’s the worst of it, I think I can handle it.

@teachingoverseas16

Its not, the events are just the topping on a very, very heavy workload. 12 hour workdays are the norm, plus whatever you need to allocate from your weekend. The more you get done the more they give you. The reward for efficiency and high quality work is more work. If thats you though, youre just the type of IT they are looking for, the type that puts the cause first, and the IS is the cause.

That seems overstated. It’s a heavy workload plus events. It’s not 60 hour workweeks plus plus.
Ask the school to put you in contact with some teachers who work there and see what they say. It’s bound to be more accurate than second hand information from us.

To clarify, Its about a 60-65 hour work week total, plus whatever time the IT needs to build in from their weekend to get the job done. Marking commitments vary on a number of factors literature and long essays takes more time than art projects as an example. An art IT is less likely to have to build in marking time from their weekend than a literature IT with a stack of long essays.

Talking to current ITs is likely to produce a very skewed perspective, those current ITs are going to be ones that thrive under the workload, they arent going to put you in contact with ITs that are no longer at the IS and who found the workload oppressive.

I filled their application form once. So painful it probably shaved a few months off my lifespan. Submitted it and was never contacted.

I think other posters have reported here that they tend to avoid teachers who are above the age of 35.

@PG - how long since you worked at UWCSEA or in Singapore?

buffalofan wrote:
> I filled their application form once. So painful it probably shaved a few
> months off my lifespan. Submitted it and was never contacted.
>
> I think other posters have reported here that they tend to avoid teachers
> who are above the age of 35.
I remember doing the same. I'd also heard about the age thing (but quite how you can teach equality when you clearly have a discriminatory recruitment policy beats me.)

I don't mind working hard, but all I've heard about UWCSEA makes it seem less and less appealing.

I know a few people working at UWCSEA, and all them enjoy working there. They do indeed work hard though (some of them harder than they have to because they just can help themselves), although not 12 hour work days.

Not sure if I'm correct, but it does seem the salary at UWCSEA has dropped a bit, or maybe the other two of the top 3 schools there have just increased theirs significantly, leading to a bigger gap.

True, the people I know there (several past, 1 current teacher) have all enjoyed it despite the many commitments. None had small children though.

I will say, I’ve been on campus there a handful of times for various PDs and do not believe the “no teachers under 35” thing for a minute. Maybe in the elementary division since I was never with them, but the secondary teachers were older than I expected. Many, many older than me and I’m mid-30s.

Heliotrope wrote:
> I know a few people working at UWCSEA, and all them enjoy working there.
> They do indeed work hard though (some of them harder than they have to
> because they just can help themselves), although not 12 hour work days.
>
> Not sure if I'm correct, but it does seem the salary at UWCSEA has dropped
> a bit, or maybe the other two of the top 3 schools there have just
> increased theirs significantly, leading to a bigger gap.

I heard through the grapevine after some digging that UWCSEA does not have accurate salaries posted on Search and other forums and that the actual packages are higher than posted. One person also told me she believed they offered a 13th month which doesn’t factor into the base salary where SAS does not offer that. Can’t speak to the accuracy of that, though.

teachingoverseas16 wrote:
> I heard through the grapevine after some digging that UWCSEA does not have accurate
> salaries posted on Search and other forums and that the actual packages are higher
> than posted. One person also told me she believed they offered a 13th month which
> doesn’t factor into the base salary where SAS does not offer that. Can’t speak to the
> accuracy of that, though.

That's also what I heard - that the salary is higher. I thought that perhaps they lowered it since then, but your explanation makes more sense.
Their profile used to (as in: around 5 years ago) include the sentence "Annual Gratuity based on 20% of gross salary (not including housing allowance)", with about the same salary in the profile as they list nowadays.
Back then it all (including that gratuity and housing) came to around 100K per annum AFTER taxes (which are around 15%), if I remember correctly. Of course it depends on where you are on the pay scale and having kids will also affect this.

Yes, the “no teachers above 35” is incorrect. All people I know that currently work there are between 35 and 55. There might still be an imbalance (my sample size is small), but it's not that you won't have a chance there after you turn 36.