Fantastic. Thank you PsyGuy and eion_padraig for the thoughts. Good to have some clarification on the sector. :)

Fantastic. Thank you PsyGuy and eion_padraig for your feedback!

IS, I presume stands for international school, but DS stands for...?

Regarding tiers, though Chinese state schools are not International Schools in anyway, some of these state schools that have international departments/qualifications offered have good packages as a first contract when moving to international teaching - ($50K+ USD pa, accommodation, flights, insurance, PD, etc); where would these fit regarding 'tiers'?

Should I be wary of these schools and instead aim for an actual International school with an international student body, or compromise to get the IB/AP experience?

Apologies for the additional questions. Just trying to get my head around how these schools fit.

Hi all

I'm currently looking for my first international teaching job after four years teaching with a central goal of saving a lot of money and working in an IB school. Getting into a very high school straight out like this without IB experience is very unlikely from what I can see, and I'm trying work out a stepping stone to get there.

There are a lot of Chinese public schools that offer international qualifications to their students (AP, IBDP, Cambridge) and also provide good packages for international teachers to save, such as Beijing National Day School.

I haven't seen much on this specifically regarding working at public/national Chinese schools with 99% local students teaching exclusively AP or IB, but curious what others have heard/seen on this and how this might affect future applications for higher tier international schools?

Many thanks!