Bangkok

Yantantether
Posts: 168
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:41 am

Re: Reply

Post by Yantantether »

PsyGuy wrote:
> @Yantantether
>
> No its not, Pattaya is second (actually they can argue who the elite school
> is). No NIST pays just under 100K, and in regards to St.S its not solely
> about the salary. To reiterate NIST is tier 2 and St.S is tier 3.

You can reiterate till the cows come home mate! Regents is barely a 2nd tier school and the package at NIST walks all over it. This truly shows you up for what you DON'T know!I know for a fact as I work with and have friends who have worked there (NIST). NOW STOP MISINFORMING PEOPLE AND DOWNRIGHT LYING!
IAMBOG
Posts: 388
Joined: Thu Jul 08, 2010 11:20 pm

Re: Bangkok

Post by IAMBOG »

I think it's a typo. I think he meant to write Patana, not Pattaya. He's not talking about Regents.
Yantantether
Posts: 168
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 12:41 am

Re: Bangkok

Post by Yantantether »

IAMBOG wrote:
> I think it's a typo. I think he meant to write Patana, not Pattaya. He's
> not talking about Regents.


Several posters comment on Regents Pattaya on the thread and he not once corrects them/himself. I think you have hit the nail on the head though in that he has 'heard' Patana is up there yet knows so little in reality of those schools and he's mistaking Pattaya for Patana. Either way, he's misleading people once again and arguing with people who know much more than he does ! It just discredits the whole integrity of the forum and adds fuel to the fire that he is personally connected with it. Otherwise, why would they let him/her damage their business? I fail to see the benefits, people are fatigued with it.
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

My thanks to the board readership for identifying my editing error, my intent was to name Patana, not Regents Pattaya as one of the top tier ISs in Thailand. I corrected and updated the aforementioned post.

@Yantantether

Its not misleading anyone its an editing error.

@Schmedz

An IS even an Elite tier IS is not of measurable superiority over an elite tier domestic independent/private school. You find comparable levels of performance and achievement, and a number of domestic private/independent schools outperform the best ISs. A number of countries have public/open/municipal schools that outperform some of the best ISs, and in a number of regions the preference is to attend a domestic school over an IS, if the students are keen to apply and enroll in local tertiary institutions.
Elite tier ISs run on momentum, their position is status and prestige is very stable, they attract the best students available, so the ISs get to be selective, and its a relatively forgone conclusion that well resourced students with a history of performance success who resolve the conflict of culture shock and motivation remain successful.

Another contributor to the forum and I have had a long running discussion on the role of learning support and SPED (SPED lite) in IE. A great deal of progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go and thats not referring to reaching for western government mandated standards. The current trend is to hire a LS/SEN teacher give them paper with a mandate to do the best they can. Upper tier ISs provide better services and support, but in lower tier ISs its a LS/SEN program that looks nice on the website and brochure, but its little more than priority tutoring.
LS/SEN students hurt ISs, ISs bank on their reputation and that reputation at lower and mid tier schools need to sell their students achievement and LS/SEN lowers their performance scores.

Yes the Elite tier ISs tend to be larger if not among the largest schools in a typical location. They benefit from economy of scale, and they need to be large enough to comfortably accommodate their client base. A 200 capacity IS with an expat client base of 500 thats wait listed is an ownership saying no to revenue.

I dont know of any true for profit (this excludes non-profits that have a "revenue maximizing" business plan) ISs that are upper tier. Non-Profits ask "can we afford it", for-profit ISs ask "is it worth it, whats the ROI". The pursuit of profit seldom makes good company in education.

ISs are very tier stable, they are highly resistant to change. Its why the educator model is so disliked amongst ownership and admins/management. An IS starts at the bottom and then has to rise though the third tier at great expense and resources just to get into second tier, and ownership generally doesnt justify the cost to be in the second tier. Thats a very hard argument to make, so instead those ISs rationalize that buying into something like IB will move them into first tier, etc. The top tier ISs are very difficult to move, JIS (Indonesia) recently had two convicted pedo rapists abusing children on campus, one of them was a junior admin (counselor) and JIS is still a top tier school, if pedo child abusers cant shift your ISs tier status down than nothing short of closing and removing the institution of existence is going to. There is a common discussion when it comes to natural disasters such as Japan, that even if a school was destroyed it could likely rebuild and maintain its upper tier status. When ownership at lower tier ISs understand how resilient top tier ISs are to status shifts it becomes a highly expensive exercise in futility to even try to be comparable. Most lower tiers ISs dont even bother they just self appoint themselves a top tier ISs.

SF, and after the 3 mega/super fairs that describes the majority of scenarios for the premium agency fairs (the exception exists when you have an IT in HK that wants to trade-up to a better IS within HK, in those situations, at those fairs, there is real opportunity).

American styled education programs tend to be very generic. There are 55+ various US approaches to teaching in the States and its Territories, there is little agreement on the specifics and combined become very general, much like taking 50 or so different flavors of ice cream and mixing them up into one flavor which would be described as "sweet, with notes of chocolate", thats a pretty vague and ambiguous description, meaning that an IS with an American curriculum and program can be anything the IS wants it to be, as long as students sit in desks and study/learn classical subjects (science, maths, literature, humanities, and arts).
The benefit to an IS of the American curriculum is that it is not protected. Any institution can call themselves an "American School" and run afoul of no one, or be doing anything wrong, nor is there any metric that defines an American IS, unlike a British IS that 1) Can conclusively say whether they do or dont follow the NC. 2) Offers IGCSE and/or A levels. American ISs cant and dont have to make those claims, since there is no established definition what an American curriculum is, nor is AP a defacto requirement/expectation of an American IS (you can take AP exams regardless whether an IS offers AP courses), further any IS can claim and even offer AP prep courses in its offerings.
JDK
Posts: 21
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 8:41 pm
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Re: Bangkok

Post by JDK »

While I respect the amount of time you've put into providing information on this site, PsyGuy, I have to point out that you're completely wrong about NIST's pay scale. I can say that for certain, as I work there!

Starting salaries - for a teacher with a bachelor's degree, teacher license and no experience - begin around 130,000 per month. However, I don't know of any fresh university hires. Most of our teachers are hired from overseas, are quite experienced and usually start around 180,000 per month. Teachers also receive a settling-in allowance of 50,000, a shipping allowance, a minimum of 42,000 as a housing allowance (which goes up to 64,000 for couples), an annual bonus of one month's pay annually, a re-signing bonus, annual flights (after the first two-year contract), personal professional development allowances, 100% health and dental insurance, a pension plan, a MacBook Air and iPhone, and other miscellaneous perks. Those with any kind of leadership position or additional responsibility, including subject and year level coordinators, receive additional pay beyond this.

If your classification of tiers is based on this, NIST is firmly within tier 1. If it includes other factors such as standardized test scores (in this case the IB exam, for which the NIST Class of 2014 had an average score higher than any other school in Thailand, including ISB and Patana, comparable to other elite IB schools worldwide), and university acceptances and matriculation, it again falls firmly into tier 1: http://www.nist.ac.th/academics/school-performance. If it's based on demographics, it once again should be considered tier 1: http://www.nist.ac.th/community. If it's based on leadership, our Head of School is also the Chair of the IB Asia-Pacific Regional Council and a very well-regarded figure in international education: http://www.ibo.org/en/about-the-ib/the- ... al-council. Most importantly, we are a not-for-profit run by a parent-elected school board.

I'd say all of this makes a pretty good case for being a tier 1 school. Again, I know you put a lot of time into answering questions and trying to help others, and I do agree with you on some points. However, inaccurate information about particular schools is not helping anyone.
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

@JDK

Its not inaccurate, and I grow weary of admin and admin cheerleaders trying to "sell" their IS.
JDK
Posts: 21
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 8:41 pm
Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Re: Reply

Post by JDK »

PsyGuy wrote:
> @JDK
>
> Its not inaccurate, and I grow weary of admin and admin cheerleaders trying
> to "sell" their IS.

Claiming that the salaries of a school are substantially lower than they actually are - as pointed out by someone who works there and separately by someone who has friends who have worked there - IS inaccurate. It's not about selling a school. It's about being factual rather than posting claims that are clearly wrong.

Plenty of NIST teachers are on Twitter, and over 100 are on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC ... _connected. Any of them can easily confirm the pay range; feel free to contact them and ask. Frankly, if you're "weary of admin and admin cheerleaders", be more accurate in your posts.
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