The International Schools Review Forum

If anyone has any real information could you post what you believe to be the best QSI school to work at if given your choice of locations. Please don't base it soley on location, I want to know about best working conditions and school atmosphere. Thanks

Well, I don't know about which one is best, but I can tell you which one to stay away from (for the time being)...

Shekou, China!

The Director there is supposedly a seasoned administrator, yet has very poor management skills. He bullies the staff and this past year QSI - Shekou had its greatest level of teacher turnover in its history...25% to 30%!

Shekou is a great place to live, and if you can avoid contact with the director, the other people there are excellent, but based solely on the director, I would stay away from there.

Best of luck with QSI...they really are a decent company to work for.

:-)

If you were to judge a QSI school strictly by location I don't think many could be Bratislava. The city is wonderful and its proximity to other interesting cities and sights make it hard to beat.

However, if you are judging the school by facilities and function then you might want to look elsewhere. The 3 flights of stairs might not seem like a hinderance at first but by the 10th time up and down in one day you will be cursing them. The fact that the facility is rented is another annoyance, knowing that money put into it won't be recognized if and when the school moves. QSIB is also in the red and budgets are slight and aren't growing. The teaching staff is great but certain members of the admin team leave something to be desired, and reinforce that adage that spouses should never be put together on the same admin team. While QSI honors their committments for the most part there are still plenty of quirky things that will drive you crazy and many of those quirks are out of school control. As for curriculum, anytime curriculum is driven by the textbook redflags should be waving and unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case at QSI as curriculum decisions continue to be driven by the texts. Mastery learning is the name of the game but QSI has forgotten what the rules for Mastery learning are and has instead invented a whole new set of guidelines that really don't work in the long run.

Having said all that lets review the positives: financial committments are honored, Bratislava and Slovakia are wonderful places to live, the teaching staff is great and the chance to move around the world without leaving QSI is always there.