Types of English Schools and Teaching Jobs Available in Taiwan

by Antonio Graceffo

The bulk of the work in Taiwan is teaching children. There are other options, such as schools which only teach adults, or services which send foreign teachers to companies, but the largest part of Taiwan teachers are teaching children from pre-school age through about junior high school age. In Taiwan, there is a bias that children need a foreign teacher, to learn proper pronunciation, but once students get into junior high and high school, and are preparing for competitive exams, the bias is that they need Taiwanese teachers. The average employer or the average Taiwanese believes that foreigners can’t teach grammar. I personally think this is rubbish, since I know grammar and I never had a Taiwanese teacher. But, this is how they do it. It may seem completely backward to us, but in Taiwan, they want beginners to have foreign teachers and advanced students to have local teachers.

Buxibans

Cram Schools or “buxibans” (補習班 BǔXí Bān) as they’re called in Taiwan are the single largest employers of foreign teachers in Taiwan. These are supplemental education centers where overworked Taiwanese children are sent after school, in lieu of having a childhood. Kids finish government school by 4:00 PM and then generally attend one or more buxibans until about 9:30 at night. They attend Buxibans for exam preparation, computers, abacus, music, math, or English. Nearly 100% of Taiwanese children attend English buxibans. In the face of the recent economic tsunami, Taiwanese families showed the Chinese ethos on education. Families would sooner do without food than pull a kid out of school. Kids will generally attend busghiban from first grade until the start of junior high school. Once they star junior high school, attendance at English buxibans decreases as the kids begin attending buxibans which prepare them for their high school entrance exams.

If you work at a buxiban you will work some set of hours which falls between 4:00 PM and 9:30 PM Monday to Friday. You may or may not be asked to work Saturdays. You may also be asked to do some extra hours during homework time. A lot of kids leave their home in the morning and don’t see their parents again until late at night when they finish buxiban. They go straight form government school to buxiban where they are expected to do their homework until buxiban classes start. Some buxibans pay foreign teachers on a rotating basis to supervise and help with homework time.

Contracts at buxibans vary dramatically. Generally what you can expect is an hourly wage of about 600 NT or $18 dollars per hour. This will vary based on experience and based on the company and a thousand other factors. So if you see a job for $17 that you really like, you should take it. But if you see one for $14, that’s too little. And if you are holding out for $25 it may not happen for you.

Full time work for a teacher is 18 hours per week but 25 is generally considered a full schedule. Most schools will allow you to work more hours if you want to, and if hours are available. But in general you should expect to work about 5 hours per day, Monday to Friday. At some schools, Saturdays are optional or extra hours or they are paid at a higher rate.

Your contract will generally be for full time employment for one year. Most buxibans pay hourly so if there is a typhoon or a federal holiday, you don’t get paid. Other contracts include holiday and even natural disaster pay. If a buxiban doesn’t have enough hours for you, for example they only have 17 hours to give you, you will not have much money to live on. Some contracts will include a minimum, in other words you get paid for 18 hours a week no matter how few hours you have. Some contracts give a contract completion bonus at the end of the year. Some will give you a bonus for singing a second contract. Some give you an automatic pay increase for your second year of employment. Some give extra money for Chinese New Year. Most do not buy your plane ticket in advance, but if you complete the full year, they reimburse you for your ticket. Some give extra pay for Saturdays, overtime, and substitute teaching.

Many buxibans have outside contracts, where they send a teacher to an offsite location, such as a government school or a company. These hours generally pay a higher rate or pay for travel. NOT all of them pay you for this travel time, so ask first.

You need to ask all of these questions when accepting a job or reviewing your contract.

Government Schools

The Taiwan government created literally thousands of jobs for foreign teachers but hasn’t been able to fill even a fraction of the posts. To get an official government school job and contract you must be a certified teacher in your home country. The salary is around 70,000 NT per month and includes a free apartment. The teachers are paid for all holidays, vacations, and typhoon days. You get about six weeks off, with pay in summer. But since Chinese parents are nuts about education, the kids attend summer classes, which you will be asked to teach. instead of a paid holiday, you could stay and work all summer and earn double your normal salary. In Taiwan it is almost mandatory to work on Christmas day, which is terrible, but most schools have a winter break, which you would be paid for. And there is a winter camp which you could work and earn extra money. The government contract also gives you a salary completion bonus and reimbursement on your plane ticket.

Private Schools

There are private and international schools in Taiwan. The jobs are hard to get and the contracts are very similar to the government school jobs. There are some differences however. Although private schools will prefer licensed teachers or teachers with an MA, in a pinch they would hire someone with a lesser qualification. Also, these jobs often require teachers for subjects apart from English, which is good for people burned out on teaching English. These schools need math, science, gym, and foreign language teachers just like schools do back home. These jobs often don’t come up on the job websites so you should do a google search and apply directly. As these jobs are so difficult to get, however, the best case scenario is to come to Taiwan with a buxiban or other job and while in Taiwan apply for these jobs. Being in Taiwan will increase your chances of getting one of these jobs.

I taught at a private bilingual school for three months and then quit. The job paid 54,000 NT plus a free apartment, end of contract bonus equal to one month salary and a reimbursement for my flight. So on the final day of the one year contract I would have received my final months salary, plus a one month salary bonus, plus $1,2000 USD for my flight. That’s a lot of money. And if I signed a second contract I could have got a bonus for that as well.

Why did I quit? When working at a buxiban you are an hourly employee. This has a lot of disadvantages but the good side is, you have almost no duties outside of teaching. I would turn up to work a half hour before my shift and leave when my last class was over. Maybe I was asked to attend two meetings a month and during exams I did some marking on my own time. But at the bilingual school job, I was on contract. I only had to teach 25 hours per week, but I had to be on campus from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM everyday. Then I had to attend parent meetings, plays, concerts, sports days, Christmas and holiday parties, there were so many obligations beyond four o’clock I felt like I was working fifty hours per week and getting paid for 25. I quit this contract and worked at a buxiban, where I earned almost exactly the same money but only put in 23 hours per week.

Certified International School Teachers

If you are a certified school teacher in your home country, and particularly if you are qualified to teach a specific subject, apart from ESL, or to be a general grade teacher, such as a grade 4 teacher, International schools can be an excellent opportunity for you. There are a number of these schools in Taiwan, offering great contracts, with months of paid holiday and free accommodations. These are REAL teacher jobs, so you will be asked to do marking and curriculum planning. You will need to attend parent nights, concerts, graduations, and events, but as a REAL teacher you often get a greater sense of satisfaction than you do as an ESL teacher. International school teacher is a new, up and coming career path for adventurous young people. (I say young, but actually there is much less age-bias in international school teaching than in ESL. In fact, older people are often preferred.) Once you start on the International School tract, you find that there are international schools, all over the world, and they all pay extremely well. After Taiwan, you could work in Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe, anywhere.

Non-Government Public School Jobs

Because it is so hard to fill positions which require licensed teachers, lost of agents and recruiters have found ways to place foreign teachers in Taiwanese public schools. I taught at a public school for two semesters but was employed as “advisor to the English club.” The pay was essentially the same as teaching at a buxiban. The one really good thing about this type of job is that you have zero accountability. You don’t work for the school, so you don’t have to answer to anyone. In fact, in my school, no one spoke English. So I would spend a few minutes every day visiting the teacher’s lounge smiling and speaking Chinese to the other teachers and directors, and they loved me. There were no exams or homework to mark, because it was a club and not a class. There were no requirements for sports day or parties or events. Sometimes I would ask permission to attend these events and the school was very pleased. They asked me to sing in a school performance once and I agreed so the parents could see that their children had a foreign teacher and they would feel proud. This was an extremely easy and fun job. I could do what I wanted. For example we did a lot of handicrafts like tie-dying T-shirts, putting on plays, and singing Britney Spears songs as a way of practicing English, without making the over-worked Taiwanese teenagers do more school work.

Some foreigners who have these kinds of semi-school jobs will be asked to teach baseball or basketball. I was asked to teach Kung Fu and I worked part of my teaching hours teaching Kung Fu, in English, at three of the schools where I worked in Taiwan.

Because these jobs are only skirting legality, they can’t usually issue you a work permit. So you would be working full time at a buxiban and your public school hours would be extra hours. The good thing of course, and this is a pervasive theme throughout your Taiwan employment, public schools and schools in general are good because you can get day time hours. In Taiwan probably 70% or more of English teachers work between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM and it is hard to make additional money because employment options at other times of day are limited.

Kindergartens

Kindergarten is the word Taiwanese use for preschool. Children in Taiwan are at least a year older than America kids when they start school, so some of them attend kindergarten from baby age on up to about age seven.

Technically it is illegal for foreigners to teach at kindergartens, but English language kindergartens have become such a standard that it is almost impossible for a Chinese language kindergarten to attract students.

Every kindergarten has some angle they are working to be able to employ foreign teachers. The work is generally from about 8:00 AM to 11:00 or 11:30, Monday through Friday. As stated above, it is a way of getting extra hours outside of that 4:00 – 7:00 PM time slot. If you like small children this is a good job for you. The kids are cute and they generally love their foreign teacher. I am not suited to teaching small children. Many people aren’t. But people who like doing this kind of work say it is easy. The teaching is not very academic. There are snack times, play times, and arts and crafts built into your three hour shift. Many teachers say, they walk in, teach for a few minutes, sing a song, do a handi craft, eat a snack, play outside, and before they know it, the shift is over.

Tutoring and Home Teaching

A lot of parents will pay a foreign teacher to come to their home and teach their children. I personally don’t like doing home teaching because of the traveling involved. But a lot of teachers do it and they love it. Taiwan parents pay in cash. They never miss a payment and the students almost never miss a day. The mother is usually home when you are teaching, so discipline is not an issue. If you are a good teacher, the mother will tell her sisters and you will wind up teaching two or three cousins at the same time, collecting extra money for the sessions. Or, the family will refer you to other families. Most foreigners who do this kind of work have stories about awkward situations where they had reached their saturation point, and just couldn’t accept another student, but were embarrassed to refuse a referral.