It's inevitable. Way back when, UK teachers could work for two years in Saudi and come back and buy a nice house outright with their savings. I imagine it was pretty much the same for US teachers. Those days didn't last and then.....

The lure of teaching overseas used to be for the more adventurous. Living far from home, with little or no TV in English, no Internet, no cell phones and just expensive long distance phone calls and post that could take weeks for keeping in touch with loved ones back home. Packages had to be good to lure the (slightly) less adventurous so that schools could fill their posts with "native" speakers who were going to educate the local students to get to UK and US universities.

Nowadays, the world is far more liveable for an expat with home comforts in reach to even the lowly (relative to oil boys, bankers etc) paid expat teacher. The less adventurous, who have had enough of the education system in their own stumbling democracy and the (perceived or otherwise) deteriorating quality of life, are lining up to go overseas. Add to that the non native speakers with native fluency levels from the rest of the world (where English is a 2nd or 3rd language with at least pseudo-official status in almost every nation under the sun) who want some of those expat bucks in the new schools that have "global" faculties and it's inevitable that rising supply will lead to lower (in real terms) salaries than those of days gone by.

Oh, and the rise of "for profit" schools.....don't get me started.......

Still, the handful of "elite" or "tier one" schools are keeping up but yes it is harder to get your foot in the door.

Not NIST. Must be ISB then. Congrats.

Also, remember that a lot of the recruiters at the fair know each other very well. They talk to each other in the bar (which isn't necessarily the same one that the candidates go to) to catch up, whine about the board and the quality of teachers these days, and to spend their expenses). They might really want to employ you but they have to, for practical reasons, offer the position to half of a good but not amazing teaching couple - their best recruitment fair bar buddy might be walking away from the fair without a good teacher of xxxxxx and that could be you.

as shadowjack says, 4k isn't that amazing. You could get that in China at many half decent schools. You can get much more in many good schools in Europe (and paying high taxes is those countries would be preferable to working for ADEC if you ask me). Across the Middle East all the good American, British or "International" schools pay at the very least close to 4k and often considerably more, all tax free plus the usual benefits. But money isn't everything - there are many decent schools around the world where you take home 2-3k. The average westerner, living in his or her home country and cleaning their own home, doing their own washing, ironing their own shirts would even then be delighted to have 2-3k DISPOSABLE income.

You've just been offered a job with 4k US tax free plus all the benefits and you are worrying about losing £500 and a few (already booked?) days off school to network with other teachers, interview with schools who you might be interested in after your Abu Dhabi stint, and you just might be offered a comparable deal in a more interesting place?

The money can't be that important or you wouldn't be asking the question.