When it comes to public or full-curriculum schools and private English training schools in China, most teachers swear by either one or the other. Ultimately though, your decision on whether to go public or private rests, or has rested, on many factors:  what type of person are you? What you’re looking for in China?  Why are you teaching in China? How long do you want to be here? And what do you hope to achieve? It also depends on where you have worked in the past.

The following stems from my own years of experiences working and living in China: 

The Public/ Full-Curriculum School Type
Sorry to say it, but people who work for public or full-curriculum schools are usually more educated. They tend to be recent university graduates, legitimate teachers in their home countries, people looking to escape shambled economies or layoffs, or people just looking for a break and something new. Almost all I’ve met have four-year degrees if not post-graduate degrees. They are looking for a relaxing job providing ample free time to work on hobbies, to read, to write, to study and to learn Chinese.

The Private English Training School Type
These, typically, but not always, are people looking to move up a corporate ladder, people that are inexperienced, uneducated (I’ve worked with people who can barely read or write), or just people looking to escape from something (warrants?). Many private training schools are the fast-food joints of education. The long-time employees I’ve met enjoy working overtime, will do anything to gratify their superiors, and usually spend their few hours at home watching Jack Black and friends. Private schools tend to have it in good with the police, allowing them to hire people with no qualifications, then place them on illegal visas, while packing the contract full of loopholes in order to maximize profit and keep the teachers in line. Private schools are businesses and corporations, and they act like it: they are there to maximize profit with as little input as possible. Fancy books and foreign faces are their products; quality is no guarantee.

The Public/Full-Curriculum School Lifestyle
In public schools teachers usually teach anywhere from 15 to 25 classes per week, roughly 40 minutes a class, meaning you work a few hours a day, leaving plenty of free time.  Class sizes can range from 25 to 60+ students. Usually teachers at these schools teach one or two grade levels, allotting them only a couple lessons to prepare each week. Expectations are usually low, as foreigners are usually hired to meet government mandates and present foreign faces. Typically, testing and grading gets left in the hands of the students’ regular teachers, which basically means you go in, cover a grammar point or two and some vocabulary, play games with the younger ones, discuss topics with the older ones, and then go home. Schedules rarely change, and when they do it means you get a day or two off of your already threadbare schedule.

Stress levels are very low, and you have enough free time to experience the culture, go out, travel, and learn Chinese. Usually these schools offer full pay on holidays—including about a month for Chinese New Year. Contracts are 10 months, summers are yours, and some schools offer bonuses and even summer pay if you return to the school.  Requirements are usually a four-year degree in just about anything. A TESOL certification will get you more money. 

Private English Training School Lifestyle
At private schools, contracts are usually one year and you will work every bit of it. You’ll work 20 to 35 hours per week, most of which are on weekends. At one school I taught four, back-to-back two-hour classes Saturday and again on Sunday, every weekend. During the students’ summer and winter vacations you’ll be working overtime every week. During one summer I worked two months straight at forty+ hours a week, with one day a week off. Not much chance to see China that way, or do much of anything else. However, private schools usually offer more training, smaller classes and, depending on the city, a bit more money.

Also, Private schools usually offer DOS positions to their most obedient employees, accompanied by an absurd amount of hours. More upward movement can be found in private training schools but it usually requires a blood oath and premature aging.

A Portrait of a Public /Full-Curriculum School Teacher as a Young Man
Typically, the public school teacher lives a nomadic life, digging through books and notebooks for unfulfilled plans, shuffling from classroom to classroom full of nameless children packed into every crevice—children eagerly and anxiously awaiting the closing of the door, listening for the vanishing of footsteps in the hallway, waiting with an almost convulsive anticipation for the moment when it is safe to explode into an animalistic release of pent up and repressed childhood. You can always tell the classes with the strictest teachers: demons flash in the children’s eyes, devouringly, as you enter the room, eager to begin their exorcism and their catharsis on the sacrificial waijiao. These are the younger ones; high school students are just the opposite: the amiable and eager attitudes they display for their regular teachers fade at the approaching of a foreign teacher, and they become too cool for school.

With any age, however, you have one major card up your sleeve: the stupidest game you know will be a thousand times more fun than their usual repetitive chanting. Have fun, it’s a win/win, and it’ll calm them down or brighten them up.

A Portrait of a Private English Language School Teacher as a Young Man
Typically, the private school teacher lives a life of continuous uncertainty. At private training schools, these are usually some of the perks: preparing endlessly for classes at a wide variety of levels and ages, all progressing at different speeds, all in different places in the books; being constantly scrutinized by parents, who often observe or peer into your classroom; coming under frequent assessment by higher-ups to divulge your ‘worth’; having your schedule changed daily in order to maximize your hours and squeeze in marketing activities; realizing you’ll never be certain of the always elusive and ever changing rules; enduring boring office hours; and suffering the lifestyle of having a class at let’s say ten in the morning, four in the afternoon, and eight at night. My recommendations: don’t have a hobby, and don’t get too close to Winston Smith.
 

Related links
Teaching in China: Tips for First-year Teachers
How to Find the Perfect Teaching Job in China
China English Teaching Horror Stories

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: public school teaching China private school teaching China Public vs. private schools China