English 1 reviews

3.9

79% would recommend to a friend

(1,197 total reviews)
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Adele Bai

82% approve of CEO

76% positive business outlook

English 1 has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 1,197 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The English 1 employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Educación industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
4.0
Mar 26, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

EF is a large and experienced company. They are very, very good at helping you through the visa process and helping you settle in China. They put you up in a nice hotel for 2 weeks, reimburse your visa cost and help you with documentation/ opening up a bank account. As for the teaching, they have developed their own curriculum/ resources making it very easy to plan lessons. The EF community is very good as well. My school often has team team bonding events and EF itself offers many different events.

Cons

I believe the biggest con with EF is your work schedule. I remember during the recruitment process I was never explicitly told my schedule/ when my days off were. Right now, I have Monday and Tuesday off; work from 14:00 - 20:00 Wednesday to Friday and 09:00 to 18:00 on Saturday/ Sunday. I find this rather fustrating as all the extra activities I was hoping to do in Shanghai take place during the weekend/ weeknights - the times I work at EF. This kind of puts you out of sync with other expats in Shanghai. Furthermore, the salary at EF isn’t as much as I thought it would be. Things like the flight reimbursement etc. is kind of spilt into a different tax bracket as part of your salary. So yes, the salary and schedule are not that great with EF - but essentially they are very professional and good elsewhere. If have heard horror stories of people leaving EF in their first few months to look for better pay/ work schedule but their visa ends up being rejected or they have to pay a lot of money.

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English 1 Response
8y
Thank you for your honest feedback. We're happy to hear of your positive experiences regarding the visa, onboarding, and training processes. In terms of not being properly informed about your EF work schedule during the recruitment process, we'll inform our recruiters to keep mentioning this to all candidates who apply. Please email us at teacher.feedback@ef.com if you have further comments or suggestions we can help address.
2.0
Mar 26, 2018

It's not what it seems

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's a big company so you meet a lot of nice people along the way. The students are really nice to work with.

Cons

Growth is limited, you would think it is easy to grow in a company which offers "so many" opportunities, but it's just a carrot in front of your nose. Everything is about money and the business, so to work during public holidays is nothing new. Limited annual leave.

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English 1 Response
8y
Thank you for your honest feedback. We're happy to hear of your positive experiences with the people you've encountered and students you've taught. Please email us at teacher.feedback@ef.com if you have further comments or suggestions we can help address.
3.0
Mar 25, 2018

Good to start out in

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great, talented team and free breakfast

Cons

Salary below market rate Office politic is rife

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