EF (Education First) reviews

This company is so horrible. I could go on but everyone else has pretty much said what needed to be said. I am on the verge of losing my job at EF because I have a 4 in the GL. A FOUR!!!! Four our of five stars is not bad...UNLESS YOU WORK AT ENGLISHTOWN. So five students can give you a 4 in a GL with positive comments but that still means you will lose your job? Ridiculous. GL are horrible...you spend most of your time fixing other students technical problems than teaching. It's laughable. If you are lucky, everybody's mics work! The management is horrible. Ever since they added the China server all heck has broke lose. I have gotten low ratings from Chinese students because most of them still prefer a blonde hair, blue eyed or white American teacher. I reported this issue many times only to be told that "no one at EF should discriminate" but how can that be prevented when you are requiring teachers to have a photograph, do mandatory video CP20s, and not looking into classes thoroughly but instead go by ES scores? This company doesn't care about how good of a teacher you are or how many of your students love you. They only care about money and ES scores. They don't wanna have to pay you what you deserve to they make it hard for you to keep your job and/or get a raise. The teachers who have been there for years are either bitter, half-crazy or delusional. The "mentor" assigned to you won't be much of a help at all unless you are just lucky. My mentor was snappy and I did not really care for her. Plus, you earn a 60-hour TEFL (Thank God that I have a REAL 170-hour TEFL) after working a few months but the standard requirement is more than 100 hours. What in the WORLD kind of real EFL work is someone going to get with a 60-hour TEFL? What a joke! They need to just stop altogether! Last but not least, the students---Englishtown doesn't care about their students! They just want their money. Go to Englishtown's Facebook page and look at the hundreds of low ratings and rants in different languages from students that are dissatisfied. The ESL Market is all about money. If you want a real job in the ESL field, get a TEFL or MA in TESOL and get work at a public school or university where you will get real benefits and tenure. Stay away from all of these language schools. They are all about money. Oh yeah, and please get real educators to create lessons! Those lessons are terrible!

Extremely low salary for an incredibly large work load. Employees are generally over worked and have an incredible amount of work for such a low salary. It is expected that you work outside of 40 hours a week and if you don't, management passes judgement via snide comments. Generally there is a bit of gender inequality as upper management is dominant males who clearly connect better with other men. Entry level staff is very female dominant, so it is obvious when upper management only address the few men on the team. Women often feel disregarded and were recently vocal about this in a company survey, however, it is important to note this response was shot down quickly by a male higher-up in a room full of women. The survey was never discussed with a third party or anyone in HR, so there was no safe environment to discuss the responses; this made it clear to all employees that management does not care about their staff's opinions. High turnover and ZERO job security - they are quick to fire. Management leads by intimidation (via gossip and/or lack of communication in genera and by firing your peers) not by example. Upper/middle management is not respected as a result so there is no "role model" and employees don't strive to improve.