The International Schools Review Forum

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Shanghai American School - fantastic overall package, great saving potential, bonuses, wellness money each year, fantastic housing, 75% of Masters degree paid for.

Jakarta International School (JIS)- Along with a high tax-free salary, you get an annual overseas allowance, a monthly car allowance, and a generous retirement allowance. In addition the cost of living is lower than in most S/E Asian countries, the housing is high-quality, and there are many travel opportunities nearby. Also, for an Asian language, Bahasa Indonesia is probably the easiest to learn (compared to Mandarin, Japanese, etc.) and some expats are almost fluent within a year or 2.

Downside is the pollution and traffic of Jakarta.

American Embassy School in New Delhi - excellent salaries, lots of side benefits, low cost of living - lengthy average stay for teachers attests to quality package and school environment. (also pays into Social Security in US!)

Sorry, Saudi Aramco NOT best package in the world. Worked there and many other places. Several have been better than Saudi.

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I understand the interest in salary, its one of mine as well : ). However, you need to be comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges and simply knowing salary and package numbers won't do it for you. From my experience, and it may be different from others, is that your savings potential in Europe is significantly different from SE Asia and it will be different in other regions.

One of your interview questions should be "What is the savings potential in "country x".

Good advice. I would also see if you and the school are a "good fit" as being at the highest paying school in the world isn't going to mean much if you can't stand working there. Also, let's be honest - we are not talking about earning millions of dollars at the top school. At best you are talking about a few thousand dollars difference between a lot of the schools. Look at which country you would really like to work in, talk with the people at the school to find out how well you can work with your colleagues, and in what way do those children learn best. This varies from culture to culture so find your best fit. Unless - you want to email the school and flat out ask them if they are the highest paying, then they can interview you if they are, But really, we aren't talking about that much money! Good luck! You do know that doctors and lawyers make more money?

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Do you truly expect anybody to know which school has the best package in any particular country? There are dozens of schools in China, who am I to compare my school with others? What constitutes the best package? Are you into salary, housing, transportation, pension, health, relocation allowances, shipping allowances. We were just trying to help focus your question, thank you very much!

Maybe you should ask about a specific country to try to illicit some response from teachers in those countries!

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This information seems fair to ask for - even though I've been teaching over 25 years and much of this is well known to veterans - let's be collegial, share that knowledge. For example, the posting that said the capital city of each country often had the best package is good info - perhaps it's not true 100% of the time, but it gives people an idea. I'm always surprised to hear people still get sucked into the incredibly bad proprietary schools which have excited plenty of commentary on this site - it's sharing information that might prevent someone else from sharing the same mistakes.
While money is never the entire package, it IS why most of us work. Any lotto winners out there? The schools that post their salary schedules online and are honest about their packages always get my respect - none of the pretense that others like to hide behind that professionals shouldn't be concerned about salary. What other professions pretend to buy into that particular fallacy? Registering for a fair, by the way, usually gives you access to most of this information - along with estimations of potential savings, which allows you to compare apples and oranges. UNI does a good job of this if the schools fill out the paperwork properly.