The International Schools Review Forum

Bonjour mons amis!

I wondered if you knew something about this:
My current school has changed contracts for new starts or re-signs.
It states that even with handing in a 3 month notice period,
the teacher must pay back quite a few fees.
Some of these are visa costs and medicals (I've seen this before).

However, one of the fees is for around 800gbp to advertise for a new teacher.
The other fee which struck me was around 400gbp for cost of initial hotel on arrival.

My thoughts are that if I had to hand my notice in for whatever reason (although it's a great school),
I could be dumped on from a cliff.

Has anyone seen fees like this before?
Airplane and visa type things I understand.

Anyway,

Hope you're well.

Sounds like financial entrapment and therefore needs to be regarded with the contempt it deserves. Lips firmly closed, new job signed and sealed, disappear at the end of your contract.

First, someone ripped off your school. These types of changes are reactionary and are what happens when a school suddenly feels the need to protect themselves. That said any school that does this is not a great school.

They arent uncommon, just not at ISs that are typically associated with upper tier ISs. These types of policies are financial punishment, they are designed to disincentive those intending to break contract or pull a runner. It is very difficult to enforce. You get your pay disbursement, you leave, they keep whatever else they owe you, forcing you to use whatever legal recourse available to you locally to collect any amounts due. Most such policies are violations of regional, local or national labor laws.