Kid Castle Educational Corporation

Safety of the school was terrible. Flooding from above karaoke bar, sparks flying from water hitting live wires in teachers room. Umbrellas over computers. Toilets overflowing was a common occurrence. Outside in Xining city was safe. A lot of police around. The management was very tricky. Changing pay date before leaving so I could get my last months pay. Accused of stealing when the school overpaid. This kind of stupid childish behaviour. School materials old and dirty. Not enough text books to go around. Anyway it goes on and on. Just be careful of private school especially when they are NOT associated with the HEAD OFFICE of whichever cram school you have chosen. Otherwise they can behave in anyway they want. There is nobody to rein them in.

Otherwise Xining during summer was beautiful the locals very friendly. Winter can be grim going down to minus 18 and hardly any snow as it is an arid area.

Best of luck.

I taught 2 years here and it felt like 20. The apartment they gave me was truly awful. I had to move out and find my own. I complained which did not go down well. Told I was not allowed to leave the city and they kept my passport. Always paid late every month. The foreign manager micro managed and had you followed you outside school hours to make sure we’re not teaching privately. Finally they asked will I carry on after 2 yrs I couldn’t stand the place of course so said no. The day before I left the British foreign guy verbally threatened me. Also sent me WeChat message threatening me saying he would make my life difficult. I see now why he did this. Was to stop me going back to Xining so I would not teach at another school and be competition for them. Terrible experience. Be very careful and check to see if the cram school is under the Head Office control otherwise they do what they like and that means abusing teachers.

Kid Castle Sanchong has two branches. I worked at the bigger one. The pay is okay, not great. But when you count how many unpaid activities they want you to do it is terrible. Ten office hours a week! Unpaid meetings! Unpaid trainings! Unpaid events! At times we've been asked to come in early or finish late and they expected it done for free. If you're late they'll fine you, even if you turned up and did work for free.

They will take advantage of you at every opportunity. Pick somewhere else to work.

Short working hours, low expectations, and good students.

The apartment that they put me in when I first moved to the city was a sh*t hole. I was shocked. The bathroom had no curtain, and the shower was broken so that water would spray all over the floor. They had me sleep on a bed with stained sheets. I have been abroad in Asia before, but this was below even my standards.

No holidays. I repeat, no holidays. They will tell you that you have public holidays off, but what they won't tell you is that they will schedule training to make up every single hour you have off. They turn holidays into an inconvenience.

No health insurance, if you can believe it. No benefits at all. The contract is a joke.

Also, the pay is worse than every other school. Don't use a recruiter! Just apply directly to schools through ESL cafe or similar websites.

There is a lot of favoritism. The rules never apply equally to everyone. On that note, they are cheats who do tricky paper work to pay lower taxes and mislead employees about the true pay of their coworkers. I am aware that they have forged documents for people within the company.

The Chinese teachers are so poorly paid and do much of the work that it is a recipe for poor staff relations.

I am writing this not to vent but to suggest teachers look else where. There are a ton of extra unpaid activities, meetings, office hours, etc. The management is untrustworthy and will short you pay if possible.

You have to do kindy and then be willing to work as late as 9:00. It really blows having huge gaps of time between classes. Plus they expect you to sit in the office even if you have nothing school related to get done.

Go to another school!