British Education Korea (Bundang)

This school used to be a decent place to work, but the Bundang location has gone downhill lately.

Current issues:

Management has changed a lot over the past year. For years, teachers have been told the campus would "relocate" to a new building nearby, but it's always "next year." As a result of this anticipated move that never seems to happen, upper management is unwilling to provide proper funding to the Bundang location. The students and teachers have stopped being a priority.

There s a lot of missing or inconsistent information given to both parents and teachers about these changes. This has led to a mass exodus of students, with entire classes leaving the school. I worry that the remaining teachers may resign before the move, and then they ll be scrambling to find replacements. I feel it s prudent to warn other teachers who might be researching this school here's your warning.

[redacted]

As class sizes shrink, teachers are being told they must work at other campuses within the franchise or face being sacked. We're also being told [redacted]. To make matters worse, teachers are expected to commute over an hour to these other campuses.

Funding for events and supplies has been steadily cut back.

Teachers have been pulled from classrooms and told to prepare for new students, only for management to change their minds. Those without a class are left sitting in empty rooms or cleaning out storage.

During a two-week summer break, the school had no ventilation, and mould spread alarmingly throughout the classrooms.

[redacted] We were told that professional cleaning services were hired, but in reality, the maintenance staff just painted over the mould.

I recently saw a blacklist for BEK Bundang-gu and wanted to take a moment to address it and tell you why the school deserves to be green-listed. I've actually wanted to green list my school before but I didn't make an effort because I thought it wasn't necessary as the turnover rate is low here and teachers here are generally hired by word of mouth. [redacted]

No school is without flaws and our school isn't an exception to this in fact they are pro-active about giving teachers opportunities to have their voices heard and issues they may have addressed with real answers. They even have well-being team made up of teachers to address issues that teachers have regarding student and staff well-being. For transparency I will list the issues that have a lot of consensus at our location.

*teachers want more opportunities for professional development and training. It should be noted we do receive opportunities during the year but teachers want more workshops paced throughout the year and during induction training.

*inflation rate considered when issuing a fixed yearly raise to our salary

Positive things at BEK Bundang are resources.

We do crafts almost DAILY at least 3 to 4 times a week with EYFS. We have a large craft room fully dedicated to crafting materials. It's stocked with every colour and size of construction paper you can think of. We have hundreds of bottles of paints containing acrylics/finger paints/water colours/ of every colour. We have coloured chalks, colured pencils. We have fabric markers, various colours of sequens. We have pom poms, glitters of every colour, there are drawers of crafting miscellaneous like pegs, hundreds of stamps, coloured tissue paper, dozens of coloured felt, styrofoam boards, ribbons, yarns of various colours, and so much more. We have drawers and drawers of coloured sands. Modeling clays/play doh/ shaving foams for sensory play. Endless tools and sponges. We have coloured crafting sticks, pipe cleaners and so much more.

[redacted]

In addition our staff room is loaded with boxes of costumes for role-playing for community helpers. Endless supplies to fill and make sensory bins with. We have shelves and shelves of board games , puzzles and a huge selection of library books. In fact this year each classroom got to choose an additional 15 books (teachers choice) to add to our library in addition to our regular yearly library book orders.

Finally if all that isn't enough you have a MONTHLY classroom budget that is exclusive to anything extra you would like for your lessons and anything purchased with your budget belongs to your class exclusively.

At hagwons I was required to decorate many bulletin boards and given ZERO supplies to do so with. It's so nice to have the resources to let my creative side explode. The school also has paid accounts for twinkl if you need/want additional materials for any project though it is encouraged to to leave crafts as open-ended as possible and to not use cookie-cutter crafts via twinkl

Something else that is very nice is we have hired on our staff a permanent housekeeper who is there everyday during school hours. She stays all day and attends to all cleaning needs routine things as well as unexpected. She cleans bathrooms, windows, sorts all the trash mops floors, cleans the lunchroom. In addition their is a cleaning service who comes DAILY after staff and students (and our housekeeper) leaves for the day.

The cleaning service vaccums and mops. The only real cleaning you need to maintain in the school is your own personal space (like your desk in your classroom) or your locker in the staff room. I've never had to take out the trash or clean a window and it's never been dirty. Occasionally there have been plumbing issues (our building is older). So on occasion there was an odour in our bathrooms that is an enitre building issue. We recently had multiple toilets replaced and plumbing worked on which resolved the occasional odour issue.

We have 6 + weeks of paid vacation and 5 paid sick days. In addition there are many red days throughout the year that don't fall on our desginated vacation days. The two week vacations are actually 17 to 18 days if you count the weekends.

*Two full weeks in the summer.

*Two full weeks in the winter.

*One full week in the spring.

*One full week in the fall.

You have a lot of support with your lesson planning and if you don't want to work with a team you don't have to but it's a chance to collaborate with other year groups and group lesson plan making your workload light and more productive.

You will NEVER take work home. [redacted] There is more than enough time to plan and prep lessons.

We have fixed dates for report cards and they are issued 2x a year. We have plenty of time in house provided to complete all deadlines. There are no 11th hour surprise deadlines. All major deadlines for the entire school year are on the school calendar. [redacted] In years past at hagwons I almost always needed to take some portion of report card writing home. I've never needed to do this at BEK.

The school also advocates for the teachers really well. We have opportunities for professional development training throughout the year. Paid courses by the company. We have event budgets in addition to our classroom budgets/craft room. We have a social budget for staff party and events where teachers deciding on the events. There is also a huge yearly Christmas event to end every year with food/games/fabulous prizes/gifts/booze.

I have worked at many hagwons across Korea in 3 provinces over the years and I have zero desire to work at another school in Korea again after working at BEK Bundang. We have extremely comptent management, plenty of time for lesson planning, a plethora of supplies to bring lessons to life. I'm trusted to do my job, I'm not micromanaged. If we want to take our students outside for Literacy to read a book we can. If we want to plan a special field trip. We just need to write it up and tienit to our lesson plan and done. We aren't locked into any single space to teach. If I have a problem or concerns I can go to the "powers that be" knowing they are going to take the time to listen and address my concerns.

I've worked at horrible hagwons before. I've never written a blacklist for them. The schools that I worked for that deserved to be blacklisted were already on the list and most of what I read was accurate and relatable. This time what I read was just so wildly false I knew the time had come to say why this is a great place to work and gently remind teachers who are wise enough to research their school to also check your green listing and don't be afraid to ask to speak with a current teacher (one who has renewed preferably.) Thank you for taking the time to research this school accurately and good luck!