About a month ago I put up “A brief survey of working conditions in ELT“. The survey is still live, so if you haven’t contributed and would like to, then feel free!
The initial results of the survey have been played with in Piktochart and integrated into the infographic as below.
I’m interested to know whether this meets with most people’s expectations or experience of the way the industry works – again, if your experience differs, take the survey! Or add your voice in the comments section!
Also, if you’d like to share the survey love then the following shortlink might help: http://bit.ly/MfRNi6.
teflgeek 
Friday 13 July 2012 at 16:42
Wow. I’m surprised that 11 out of 32 hours is suggested as paid prep time. 99% of the time I’ve worked there has been 0 hours defined as paid prep time. You get paid for when you are in class only. End of story. Nice to see this is not always the case.
Friday 13 July 2012 at 16:57
Hi Tyson,
Experiences clearly differ! A lot of the talk on facebook has been similar to your experience and seems to come from “part time” hourly paid teachers. (part time only in the sense they don’t have full time contracts). It would seem the survey respondents have mostly been contracted teachers like myself, who have a contract for a set number of working hours a week, of which a proportion is allocated as classroom time. But the survey results can only reflect the responses of the participants! – It’s still an open survey by the way, so feel free to add your contribution (if you haven’t already) and tell your friends!
All the best,
David
Friday 27 July 2012 at 14:07
Hello,
I work at the University of Sussex Careers Centre and I plabn to l;ink to your blog on our new information page on teaching English. Could I possibly steal that infographic please?
Friday 27 July 2012 at 14:33
Hi Joseph,
yep – absolutely no problem. All I ask is that you cite me (David Petrie) as the author and the website (www.teflgeek.net) as place of publication, with the website given as a hyperlink.
All the best,
David
Monday 3 September 2012 at 07:52
Great survey, and great graphics! It’s similar to my experience, but:
– I’ve always been paid for travel to off-site classes
– I’m really surprised that 60% of people must be ready to jump on a bus and rush in to cover people’s classes, or have people taken it to just mean while you are in the school?
Monday 3 September 2012 at 17:47
Thanks Alex,
Like you, I guess I’ve been fortunate to get paid for travel time. The way I interpreted the cover question (which admittedly might not be the same way that respondents to the survey did) was to mean that if you are “asked” to cover a class at any time, you can’t really say no – that your constant availability is expected by employers. I don’t think it means teachers enjoy having to do it, though we seem to generally be a personable bunch who are ready to help out where possible, so perhaps I’m wrong!
Personally, I prefer to have some limits set on when I’m expected to be available…
Cheers,
David