ALT dispatch companies are contracted by the Board of Education of the city which looks after the public schools in the city.
To answer your question, yes. They all do.
You could just directly contact each city office and apply yourself. There’s no rule saying you must go through a contracting company. Cities are always looking for new teachers, especially big ones.
Eikaiwa is a business based English teaching where most working hours is after school@in the afternoon to night.
ALT aka Assistant Language Teacher where you ‘assist’ teacher at public school.
Borderlink, Altia, Joytalk, RCS, and Heart Corporation, etc.
Loads! They are all dumpster fires but some suck slightly less than the others
I’ve been doing the same research too! Good luck in your findings.
JET is hand-in-hand with BoE and the schools, they’re about the only organization to do this unless you get hired directly.
Interac and other dispatch companies pay you less and communicating anything between your employers and your schools may be a lot more troublesome.
In no particular order:
JoyTalk
Altia
BrainPower
Heart
NOVA (yes, the eikaiwa company)
ECC Best Career
CityStaff
OWL
RCS
Borderlink
EduCareer
Sagan Speak
British Council
E-staff
ETAS
Pasona (as direct hire)
Direct Hire (you need to check what cities make announcements)
I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I can recall. As for quality, you will need to do your homework, but dispatch companies in general are seen in a negative light aside from JET. Some will accept overseas applicants, and some only domestic.
Seiha is an eikiwa but they also have you do once-a-week teaching at select preschools; no clue if other eikiwas do that.
There are very few ALT jobs that are enjoyable regardless of the company. I worked for Interact and other smaller companies, it was all the same really.
The biggest difference was the Japanese teachers you work with.
If you are convinced other companies are better than interac (which they could be), then I would just go to Gaijin Pot to find other companies.
JET makes people work afternoon and nights?! I had 6 schools to cover each week and never worked differently than like 8 am to 4 pm. Did have one adult class per week around 7pm, but other than that nope.
of course it’s been ages since I did JET, could be totally different now. I had a sweet gig. Free apartment and car, even fuel was paid for. Worked my ass off though, taught all day every day 5 days a week, most people I knew on JET hardly ever taught and just sat around the staff room like a flower pot.
11 comments
ALT dispatch companies are contracted by the Board of Education of the city which looks after the public schools in the city.
To answer your question, yes. They all do.
You could just directly contact each city office and apply yourself. There’s no rule saying you must go through a contracting company. Cities are always looking for new teachers, especially big ones.
The keyword here are [Eikaiwa vs ALT](https://zoomingjapan.com/life-in-japan/teach-english-in-japan-alt-vs-eikaiwa/).
Eikaiwa is a business based English teaching where most working hours is after school@in the afternoon to night.
ALT aka Assistant Language Teacher where you ‘assist’ teacher at public school.
Borderlink, Altia, Joytalk, RCS, and Heart Corporation, etc.
Loads! They are all dumpster fires but some suck slightly less than the others
I’ve been doing the same research too! Good luck in your findings.
JET is hand-in-hand with BoE and the schools, they’re about the only organization to do this unless you get hired directly.
Interac and other dispatch companies pay you less and communicating anything between your employers and your schools may be a lot more troublesome.
In no particular order:
JoyTalk
Altia
BrainPower
Heart
NOVA (yes, the eikaiwa company)
ECC Best Career
CityStaff
OWL
RCS
Borderlink
EduCareer
Sagan Speak
British Council
E-staff
ETAS
Pasona (as direct hire)
Direct Hire (you need to check what cities make announcements)
I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I can recall. As for quality, you will need to do your homework, but dispatch companies in general are seen in a negative light aside from JET. Some will accept overseas applicants, and some only domestic.
Seiha is an eikiwa but they also have you do once-a-week teaching at select preschools; no clue if other eikiwas do that.
There are very few ALT jobs that are enjoyable regardless of the company. I worked for Interact and other smaller companies, it was all the same really.
The biggest difference was the Japanese teachers you work with.
If you are convinced other companies are better than interac (which they could be), then I would just go to Gaijin Pot to find other companies.
JET makes people work afternoon and nights?! I had 6 schools to cover each week and never worked differently than like 8 am to 4 pm. Did have one adult class per week around 7pm, but other than that nope.
of course it’s been ages since I did JET, could be totally different now. I had a sweet gig. Free apartment and car, even fuel was paid for. Worked my ass off though, taught all day every day 5 days a week, most people I knew on JET hardly ever taught and just sat around the staff room like a flower pot.