How Teachers Get Paid in China


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March 16th 2012
Published: March 25th 2012
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While this topic may not interest some of my loyal subscribers, I'm writing about it for two reasons:

1. Understanding this will help you understand my post about St Patrick's Day and potentially anything else I write about for March.

2. People who are reading this blog and thinking of moving to China will find it to be useful. And really, this is a travel blog. I'm just traveling in the same place for the past few years. I read quite a few entries before I moved to China and found them to be quite helpful.



Being an English teacher in China has lots of perks. You usually work around 20 hours a week. (If you work more, the pay reflects this.) Not only do you get paid time off for National Day (one week in Oct), but you also get a few paid weeks off for Spring Festival (the Chinese lunar new year). How much time you get off for Spring Festival varies from job to job; schools offer more than training centers, and universities offer more than primary-high schools. At my previous job through CTLC, while I got 5 weeks, I had some friends who got 6 and some friends who were off for only 4. My current university job gives me about 8. I can't complain.

But, we do not get paid in the summer.

Over the years, there have been many teachers who were less upstanding than myself. In some cases, it's possible that the school wasn't a good place to work (late pay, no pay, poor living conditions, school not fulfilling their end of the contract, etc). But in many cases, I'm sure, the teacher just decided that they wanted their Spring Festival to go on much longer. And then they never came back.

As a result of this, schools have adopted a fairly standard practice of withholding money until after the break. CTLC held half of our airfare reimbursement money until we returned; we had to pick it up in person. My current job holds any February PTO until the end of June; any work I do in February is paid for along with my March pay. The trend I notice is that it's the greater amount of the two that's held.

There are many people who either forget that there's no pay at the end of Feb or are poor at planning. Sometimes, life just happens. Some people just plan to have a non-extravagant month. At any rate, the month of March tends to be a bit tight.

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