Just a very quick not for all future travellers wishing to embark on an adventure of a life time, I have just returned to the UK after spending 9 months in Southeast China teaching the Chinese English. What an experience all I can say is that I will never forget the wonderful time I spent with the people of Dongguan and their families something I doubt that you will ever be subjected to her in the UK. Everyone was so friendly and helpful it made my time with them such a pleasure and one I will miss terribly.
I would like to thank Michael Cavill and all his staff for making my stay such a memorable one and getting over my apprehension regarding joining his company in China, without this valuable assistance I would have never had such a mega time. Thanks UK Education International you really made 2011 probably the best year of my life so far... I just wished I could have stayed longer.
Ray Benson
Ray Benson, why is there no photo of you or a profile, to prove that you are not Michael Cavill? We have NEVER heard ANY teacher having had any such experience. Chris Proctor, who is a real teacher, is still waiting for his ONE month's wages that were collected from the school and stolen by Michael Cavill of UKEI last year. That is, he worked all month for FREE! Thanks for such an experience Michael Cavill and UKEI for cheating him!
ReplyDeleteI am a former member of the UKEI team and I know for a fact that there was no such person named Ray Benson and this is in fact either Michael Cavill or Malcolm Graham. Whilst I was at the company I was encouraged to create false accounts to combat the large amount of unsatisfied customers and bad reviews. I have emails from Michael Cavill himself to prove it.
ReplyDeleteI would NOT suggest anybody use this company, instead just look on couch surfing as there is many friendly, reliable people who don't want to take your money!
This was compiled by an individual who used one of Cavill fraudulent companies to travel to China… PLEASE FOR YOUR OWN GOOD READ THIS IT WILL SAVE YOU A LOT OF TIME AND MONEY…
ReplyDeleteDo NOT for one second contemplate working for UKEI: ELTIC Global: or now trading as Department of Foreign Education Affairs China:- www.dfeachina.com
I came to China with ELTIC with 4 others in the May 2013 intake. I had an absolutely terrible time with them, not least because they brought me to work in China illegally on a tourist visa, lied about it, took three quarters of the salary the school paid them, and when I arranged an interview with another school, they told me they had revoked my visa and I had to leave China the next day, otherwise I would be in the country illegally.
ReplyDeleteLet me explain.
Before flying to China, ELTIC led me to believe (when confronted on these points the boss claimed never to explicitly made these claims) that I would be given the appropriate visas for working there and I would receive a meaningful TEFL qualification after three months of working there, and I would also be provided with accommodation no more than ten minutes away from my school. On not one of these points did ELTIC deliver.
ELTIC took me to China to work illegally
I had been troubled by the fact that ELTIC had arranged for me to get was a tourist visa and once our intake arrived in China I had the opportunity to ask the boss, Michael, about the legality of working on this.
Well, he pompously explained, there is a difference between working in China and being employed in China. If we were actually ‘employed’ in China, it would be illegal for us to work there, but as ELTIC were technically a UK based company, there was no issue with us working for ELTIC while in China.
Sound suspicious? It should, because as I subsequently found out from the British Embassy and from a lawyer specializing in these matters, everything Michael had said was lies. Working in China without a work visa is illegal. There’s no way around it.
Since July 2013 the Chinese authorities have cracked down on illegal workers so ELTIC may well have been forced to get its teachers work visas before they come to China. Regardless, if you do insist on losing out on lots of money by working with ELTIC, be very, very careful on this point.
TEFL Qualification is not accredited
ELTIC justify your initial 3800RMB salary on the basis that during this time you are working towards your TEFL qualification. There is supposedly a week of training before teachers are sent out to schools. Yet for our intake and the intakes before, this training lasted just one day. Then the day after we were taken to schools for interviews. I met teachers who had come to China with ELTIC months earlier and they showed me their TEFL certificates, which were woefully amateur productions made by ELTIC themselves. Both certificates had completely different designs and were similar only in their shambolic use of MS Word. It would have been quite funny if it weren’t for the fact these teachers had been working for three months, and had lost out on extra money that they had worked for, just for a meaningless scrap of paper.
ELTIC initially pay 3800RMB, then after 3 months, 6000RMB. The average teaching job in Shenzhen pays 12,000RMB. So ELTIC will pocket over 6000RMB of your money each month.
ELTIC’s contract stipulates that its teachers are not to discuss their salaries with anyone at their school, supposedly because Chinese teachers earn substantially less and may be offended by the overwhelming generosity of ELTIC.
ReplyDeleteWell, actually, there’s a slightly different reason for all the hush-hush. It’s because ELTIC don’t want you to realise how little they’re actually paying you.
Upon starting work at my school I met other British teachers who had come to the school on their own, rather than through an agency, and they soon asked how much I was being paid. When I told them it was 3800RMB a month, they looked at me in shock and disgust. That’s because one, who had 6 months teaching experience before he came to China, was earning 15,000RMB a month, whereas the other, who had come fresh out of university, had started on 12,000RMB. This obviously made me wonder why I was worth so much less?
Turns out I wasn’t – the school was paying 12,000RMB for me, but the money was being paid to ELTIC instead. So each month ELTIC were taking 8,200RMB of my salary. Now, it’s true, ELTIC provide accommodation, but I later found adequate accomodation for 2,200RMB a month right in the middle of the city. As it was, ELTIC put me in accommodation not ten minutes away from my school, as they had led me to believe, but 1 hour away from my school.
ELTIC threaten to revoke my visa, meaning I had to leave China the next morning or remain in the country illegally
ReplyDeleteWith all this it’s safe to say I wasn’t best pleased. So I met Michael and told him I wasn’t really happy with my situation and I was contemplating going home. In his great generosity, as he presented it, he offered me 6000RMB from then on. Yet even then ELTIC would still be taking half of my money and I would still be commuting two hours to and from work everyday. Not being that keen to leave China just yet, I contacted some schools myself and arranged some interviews. Just to emphasize how strange later events would prove to be, note that I had kept my job applications between myself and one person I could trust.
I had an interview with a school and was offered a job paying 12,000RMB a month. Now, as I’d been in China for six weeks at this point and ELTIC still hadn’t paid me, I was quite short of cash. As the director of the school was a Welshman who just so happened to have had trouble with ELTIC in the past, the school very helpfully offered to advance me some money so I could put some money on a deposit on my own place and leave ELTIC. Not wanting to leave the school ELTIC had put me in in a difficult situation with classes I was scheduled to teach that day, I went to the school all the same, happy knowing I had an escape.
Yet upon finishing work, I was told the boss, Michael, and his Chinese assistant Coco, were waiting to see me. What happened next was clearly inspired by some KGB interrogation scene. I was taken to a room where Michael insisted on the air conditioning being turned down as low as possible to make me uncomfortable. He asked whether I had considered his offer of the paltry pay rise to 6000RMB. I said I had, and didn’t really think it was going to work for me. Things turned nasty.
Again, I have no idea how he knew about this, since only myself and one person knew I had had an interview with another school, but Michael then told me he knew I had had an interview with another school, described where it was, and then he produced his iPhone and started recording the conversation for legal reasons. He told me that as I had gone “behind his back” in having an interview with another school, he had “revoked” his sponsorship of my visa, meaning that it was no longer valid, and that I had to leave China by the next morning, otherwise I would be in the country illegally. That is, of course, unless I wanted to reconsider their offer, in which case I would have to go to the police station with him the next day while he told them there had been a mistake in his cancellation. Initially I told him I would leave the country, but after five minutes reflection, realised it was much better to find out how much power these people actually had. So for the moment I agreed to stay with them.
The next day in a great panic I contacted an employment lawyer and the British Embassy and both told me that my visa could not be revoked, as it was only a tourist visa anyway, and that the entire time I had been working in China, I had been working there illegally. I contacted the school that offered me the job, but they said as they didn’t want any trouble with ELTIC, they would no longer be able to employ me. It was reassuring that ELTIC
couldn’t have me kicked out of the country just for going to an interview, but it made me equally suspicious of what then would be the purpose of going to the police. Given my lack of mandarin, Michael could have been telling them anything in that situation. As it was, Michael never took me to the station, but still, my experience had made me very anxious about contacting another school for an interview.
ReplyDeleteI found a teaching job myself and my time in China improved massively
After two weeks of continuing to work for ELTIC, I plucked up the courage to contact another school, who offered me a job (15,000RMB), and who advanced me the money to move out into a new apartment. Luckily ELTIC didn’t find out this time, but my experience with them had left me very out of pocket. I left them being owed a whole month’s wage, and lost the £250 deposit on accommodation they insist you pay to Michael before you go to China. I had a month of working with very little money and had to borrow a lot from my parents just to get by, but eventually I was free from ELTIC. I had lost a lot of money, had worked illegally in China and had been threatened with deportation merely for going to an interview, but least I was out.
My advice to people wanting to teach in China
1. Do not use an agency. Schools treat their teachers much, much better than agencies would have you believe, and they pay you at least double. If you use an agency like ELTIC, you are merely giving away your salary for a company that provides only lies and threats.
2. Research schools, but also trust that if you are working in somewhere rich and expensive like Shenzhen, you can expect to be paid upwards of 10,000RMB. There are countless schools and language centres in Guangdong Province who are constantly looking for teachers on a number of websites. Their job descriptions might not look as snazzy as ELTIC’s website, but they most certainly will treat you better.
3. Get a work visa before travelling to China. New visa regulations require foreign workers to return to their home country to get the visa, so it makes much more sense to get this in advance. You can potentially risk working on a tourist visa, but given the crackdown on this, I wouldn’t advise it.
To stop people being scammed my Mr Michael Cavill and his many companies