A very disappointing experience

I really would not recommend working with sine education in any capacity for a vast number of reasons. I am a qualified and experienced language teacher in my home country and I could not believe some of the things that happened during my experience with this company.

Lessons are provided for you, but you are required to teach the same lesson between 10 - 20 times each week. The lessons are of little educational value to students. The students are just required to chant words/ conversations back to the teacher. There is very little learning for students in a sine classroom. The vocab/scenarios in the lessons are not of interest or relevant to students. It’s not really English they would use in everyday situations. Students get bored of this regime very quickly and it’s hard to blame them. As a teacher I found it terribly boring so I can only imagine how children would find it. The level of English in the classes I taught was shockingly low, some students were unable to communicate with me as their teacher at all. Due to these difficulties students seemed to act out due to their frustrations in class. I noted this with my coordinator in weekly reports every week but I was never once offered support or advice. The situation was ignored. I would say that they are quite unsupportive when it comes to classroom issues. There is no discipline or consequences for any student.

I found management, in particular HR, quite difficult to deal with also. Throughout the application process, namely my online interview, there were a number of verbal guarantees made to me, namely the location I would be placed in, being placed in a school close to the person I was applying with so we could live together and also that I would be teaching older students in a specialized program with approx 12-15 students in the class. Sine did not keep their word on any of these verbal agreements. When I contacted sine regarding this they insisted that there was never a guarantee and that I had “misunderstood”. Personally I find it hard to believe that both myself and the person I applied with both misunderstood these 3 issues in our separate interviews. I did inform HR of these issues and a few other issues, including an instance of late pay, when I handed in my resignation and the reply I received through email was genuinely shocking. It was full of untruths and in all honesty it seemed like an attempt to gas light me. They put any issues I had down to me “not understanding Thai culture”, I found that quite a shocking response as the person I applied with, who is also my partner, is of Thai origin. Sine were well aware of this.

My last pay cheque was also short. Sine education underpaid me by two days.

The Thai teachers in my school were all very welcoming and very polite during any interaction I had with them. Most of the sine teachers were also polite and pleasant however there were some in my office that really contributed to making the sine office a hostile environment. There were a number of instances where mean comments would be made about another member of staff in front of the coordinator and nothing would be done. Just like the students there is no consequences for staff either.

Overall a company that should be avoided. You can get much better pay and conditions at other companies. Also worth noting a portion of the reviews below seem to be from the sine senior management team.