The International Schools Review Forum

These two schools appear to be next door to each other and share some of the same facilities. The packages seem pretty similar as well. Does anyone have an opinion as to which is the nicer school to work for?

My friend worked at Surabaya for many years and really liked it.

I know people who have worked at these schools and they both seemed very happy. Here's the skivvy from what I've heard:

If you teach at Ciputra, you are basically an English teacher, which means you are like the Spanish or French teacher at a State-side school. Ciputra is probably 95% Indonesian. It is a national plus school, not an international school. It is also IB, but I have heard that they have a very hard time keeping their certification because of the difficulty in students being able to speak/use English properly. Ciputra did have nice housing offered to oversea hires and the salary was very similar to SIS's offerings.

SIS is a true international school with 28+ different nationalities. It has much better facilities. (Ciputra and SIS ONLY share the soccer field). SIS has a huge turnover this year. More than 85% of the teachers left at the end of this year, including the Head of School. Could be a good thing--you never know! Housing is reasonable, but not an independent house like Ciputra offers...however, if you live in teacher housing, you score being hooked up to the generator, which is great for the MANY power outages you will experience. You also are hooked up to the school's Internet, which is much, much faster than the rest of the plebes in Citraland.

I have a question.

What are some essential items to take to Indonesia? Should I take USD or exchange it before I go to rupiah?