Dear Fellow Forum Members

Not wanting to repeat a forum issue that has already been started, I looked through the history of forum topics. I found a very informative and fair discussion called "Money Making in ELT".

However, my experiences as a teacher over the last three years can't be described as fair.

I've been living in Milan for about 4 years and teaching English in private language schools for that time. My first experience was an ok one, the school was fair, they expected us to work,longish, mostly unsocial hours but they kept their end of the deal in terms of contract, paid on time etc. but we weren't paid for lesson preparation and had large gaps in the middle of the day.

Since then, however, I've had some shocking experiences. I was with a fairly large language school on a freelance basis, they expected contractual regularity in terms of availability, never paid on time and were always in arrears on expenses. There was no identifiable DoS, school manager, financial manager, administrator etc. and no resources.

However, my last experience has been the strangest of all. I was given a national contract, determinato, for one year and I thought, fantastic. The management seemed ok and paid salaries on time, for a period. We noticed, however, that the school had only one resource. All the lessons were in the evening and none of the teachers had a free evening during the week. Management and sales went home in the early evening every day. We also noticed that there were more sales staff than teaching staff. The school didn't have a DoS initially, but then an Italian guy with Pre-Intermediate level English became the DoS, this we found out because his name started to appear on the monthly reports, but he was no help to us didactically. To cut a long story short, in the middle of last year there were obvious financial and management problems, salaries paid late, expenses not paid, staff sackings and legal action. At the end of our contracts management offered us (teachers) indeterminato contracts, which we refused and left the school. Now, six months later, I have still not received my liquidation. I know one other ex teacher in the same position.

All the above aside, for me the worst thing is that students are still enrolling in this school, sometimes with the help of a financing company, which means that even if the school closes they will have to continue paying. I read of a similar situation in a language school that closed at the end of last summer, leaving students without courses and still paying for them! I also read in the same piece some comments by some of the ex teachers at that school, they were adding their damnation to that of the article. Why didn't they do anything?

So, that's my question: What can we do?

Best wishes to everyone.

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