EF (Education First) reviews

Salary is literally about half of what you could achieve elsewhere. Middle management, team leaders, etc., are hired without any management experience (usually because they're Swedish) - and it shows. (In over 3 years I never saw anyone promoted from within EF.) Work is chaotic and very stressful. Deadlines are apparently set arbitrarily and without any discussion with the staff who will actually do the work, and highly unreasonable demands are thus placed on the staff who are expected to regularly work 14-hour+ days. The company charges its students a fortune but pays out remarkably little in salary, though they're happy to pay for lots of nights out and expensive office locations - it's all about looking good without rewarding the overworked staff.

1) The company has been going through constant change over the past year and a half. There have been three different CEO's, the first was Peter Winn, followed by Bill Fisher and now a new one. This constant change leads to new management structures being introduced every time a new CEO is brought in. This leads to the whole company being shaken all the way down to the lowest levels. 2) Another major change for the Adult centers in China has been the removal of a Director of Studies(DoS) at all centers to be replaced with just one or two for each city. The responsibilities of the DoS have been turned over to Center Managers, who have no teaching experience and sometimes limited English ability. This places teachers in a compromised situation, in that they now lack an experienced leader in their field to rely on and to ask for advice. It also compromises teachers by putting the teaching team under the direct control of the individual who main concern is profit and not education. One of the last pieces of advice being tossed around carelessly at EF Adult centers in China was "Let's make it a circus in the classroom." This show the lack of commitment towards educating the students and more towards a commitment to entertain them. 3) Another con with EF in China is that when a center is not doing well or could do better they do not want to hear any constructive ideas on how to improve the center. The management does not do well when it is questioned on new ideas and plans they present to the staff and teachers. If constructive ideas are presented to the management which are not in accordance with the upper management, then that person will quickly find that their position in the company is to follow and obey not to think. 4) EF used to attempt to develop their staff and teachers with a weekly meeting where new ideas would be introduced and taught to the teachers and staff. This was labelled CPD and it was mandatory for all teachers to attend these meeting weekly and were placed on days which all teachers were present. This is no longer the case. Management has done this through removing Directors of Studies and making it the responsibility of teachers to attend training on their off days. In removing the Director of Studies they removed the main educator of the teachers. They have replaced the Director of Studies with some center teachers and labelled them as trainers, even though they do not have the credentials the position should require. These trainers now have the responsibility of training teachers with prepared Power Point Presentations and teaching the allotted 25 hrs a week. Also the trainers offer the training on a specific day of the week. If you are off that day then you should come in on your off day to attend training. This effectively means the teachers are now working 6 days a week instead of 5 days a week. 5) Teachers are burning out faster at EF than at other companies. Teachers at EF teach the contracted 25hrs of a 45hr work week that is in the contract but on top of this have many other duties that they must attend to which include 2-3 hrs/week doing oral testing for new students, 2-3 hrs/week doing lounge chats, 5 hrs/week to plan all lessons and to write new classes for life clubs (most teachers spend more time on their off days creating materials for their classes as EF does not allow for more time at work to do this). On top of this the teachers must do their own development during hours that could be better spent on correcting homework, creating class materials or completing feedback for students. 6) Recruitment of teachers. The on-line materials, specifically the on-line classes, that EF use usually recruits teachers from non-native English speaking countries such as India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The reason for this is that they are cheaper than teachers from Native speaking countries. The main problem with this is that native English speaking teachers in the centers then have to correct the pronunciation errors being taught to the students.