Does anyone currently work or has worked for IES (International Education Services) in Tokyo?

9 comments

1. Sounds sketchy. Kids and adults take two completely different skill sets and I’m not really confident that anyone can do both at the same time.

   Oh, and that pay…… maybe if they have you working from 8 am to 11 pm. Eikaiwa hasn’t paid that much since the 90’s.

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   edit; BIG **BIG** LOL

   [https://career.albany.edu/jobs/international-education-services-business-english-school-teacher-in-tokyo-spring-2023/](https://career.albany.edu/jobs/international-education-services-business-english-school-teacher-in-tokyo-spring-2023/)

   So many conditions…. You will make 2,500 ($17) an hour ONLY for class room time. Prep? unpaid. Have to travel to a business class? unpaid. Realistically the best you can hope for is 6 paid hours a day on the days you actually work. School is in session about 190 days a year, the rest you likely won’t get anything.

2. Any company that doesn’t give you a firm number and has a sketchy “you can make up to…!” promise Is suspect. In any industry in any country

3. They skim off so much of the ALT contract that the salary is shamefully low, so they have to pimp you out for evening business English. You’d be working 8:30 am. You’ll probably finish the ALT job at 3 or 4 pm so you will leave too early to meet with the JTEs.

   Grab dinner, travel to the business work site, work until 9:00 pm. Maybe not every weekday.

   Starting at 2.8 million a year…

4. I worked for them about 15, 20 years ago. If they haven’t changed, then it’s a gyomu itaku contract, which means you won’t have any protection from labor law, and no health insurance or pension contributions, opportunities for advancement, etc. They will tell you the off-time between classes is your “free time” and you can go home, but since the jobs are so far apart, you won’t be able to make it home and back, so that time will become unpaid travel time and sitting-in-cafes time. In other words, you’ll be out all day, 8am to 9pm, but will only get paid for the time you’re actually in the classroom. It’s bordering-on-illegal in terms of labor law, but hey – gyomu itaku is not covered by labor law, so tough titties.

   Back then, they also did almost zero oversight, meaning the quality of the materials is shite and teachers are left to flounder and sink. I honestly didn’t know how they kept it together. I remember I was given a sheet of photocopies from a TOEFL textbook and was asked to teach a busienss English class with it. It was utterly ridiculous. I argued with them to at least provide me with a textbook, and they refused – after that I just left.

   How much you make, i.e., how often they parcel out classes to you, determines your salary. If you’re a brown-noser who does exactly what you are told (i.e., if you don’t complain about being given TOEFL materials to teach business English, like I did) you’ll get more classes and eventually perhaps get on their A-list which would mean more lessons and more money.

   The downside is that pay also depends on lesson availability, so in good times you make bank, and in lean ones you’ll have to dip into your savings They also don’t give a shite about who the good teachers are or the quality of the lessons, so being a good teacher isn’t important; what’s important is taking every assignment they hand out without complaint.

   But this is not anywhere close to a real teaching job, so if you’re wanting to find a company that cares about quality, this ain’t the one.

   Again, this was my experience 15-20 years ago; they may have changed since then, but honestly? I doubt it – this is the typical business model of these dispatch companies.

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6. “Depending on your work ethic”?

   Sketchy as all hell…

7. I worked for them very briefly about 10 years ago.

   It’s basically a dispatch company where they send you to different companies and establishments whenever you’re needed. You’ll usually teach the same class once or twice a week for a set period of a few weeks to few months.

   I’m doing the same kind of thing now but with a different company – with my current company my monthly has ranged from 250,000-500,000 per month depending on the amount of work you do in that particular month.

8. Dodgy as. Avoid unless desperate and/or if you want to break into recruiting and can deal with a few years of feeling like an empty soulless husk while gathering contacts in particular industries.

9. Teaching in Japan isn’t worth the hassle anymore. It provides less income than other positions and in the long run the companies just stick you over.