Top tier hagwon (private academy) listing

[chris24747]

This topic will serve those who want to learn which hagwons are actually not the terrible places that most people make them out to be. Yes, there are many awesome private academies and this can be the place to share your experiences.
When sharing your information please list the city, area and hagwon name (eg Daegu, Seobu, "??" Hagwon). Let's share the information that we have so that others can also work at these good hagwons.

Cheers  ;)

[Driver 8]

This is a great idea.  I'm  a little discouraged that nobody has posted about any great Hagwons yet (especially after the story I just read on another thread). :o

[gilbert.a.h]

I hope some people can post about good hagwons. I'd hate to think that they are all terrible. I know my experience was in the highest catagory for "stay away!"

[elisa.m039]

I work for EPA (English Prep Acedemy) and I love my school!

I'm not saying its easy. As a private school working the work load is heavier. I have to do lesson plans, monthly reviews, weekly, daily, and monthly test, as well as arts and craft projects, but the job is great. I get paid more too, which is nice.

My boss, is really nice, helps out all the time. Is easy to come in and work here

I have 7 kids (age 6) who all speak English well, 3 other coworkers (american) and no co teacher. It's a good job.

[mimster]

Great idea!  I hope many people will post good reputable hagwons.  If I hear of any I will post them up for sure.

[Big Daddy09]

I worked for a hagwon called Junsung Academy which owned a GNB franchise. I stayed there for 2 years and replaced someone who also stayed there for 2 years. Great place to work in my opinion. It was located in Hadan, Busan. The owners (a husband and wife combo) were very good to me. They also were good at balancing the educational vs. business aspect of the industry. I would recommend working there if you are given the opportunity. Big Daddy out.

[hodumaru]

I have had a positive experience for the past 2 and a half years.

I worked for two years at YBM ECC (location hint: shepherd boy), and had a great experience. It was a great social environment where the whole team (7-ish foreigners + 7-ish Koreans) went out often and we all became friends really. It's an up scale area, so mothers can be annoying, but that's rarely your problem. Also, usually works out that you get tons of presents / gift cards for Chuseok and Seollal.

They take care of all visa issues (didn't go to immigration once in two years), provide health insurance, attendance bonuses, and generally help a lot.

Hours are typical (about 6 or 7 forty minute classes), but all books, materials, teacher guides, lesson plans are available to you. It's easy stuff.

[musiclemur]

I worked at Oedae Hagwon in Yangsan for one year.  It was a great experience and I'd do it again.  In fact I was going to go back but the timing didn't work out so I accepted a public school job.

We had 5 foreign teachers and we all worked quite well together.  The Korean teachers were fantastic as well.  We were always paid and if there were any issues our director took care of it (sometimes after a few reminders because she's so overwhelmed with work).

I'd recommend it in a heartbeat.  They have 2 other hagwons in the Busan/Yangsan area.  I can't comment on the other 2 but I'd imagine that they are similar since all three are connected to HUFS in Seoul.

[TO5000]

The SLP franchise is hit or miss but I can attest that Gwangmyeong SLP is a great school. They treat their teachers really well and it's a really good working environment. The head teacher and director are wonderful and will really go out of their ways to help you. The workload and what they expect out of NETs is fair and if any problems arise, they do their best to solve them. Some schools take advantage of their foreign staff but I always felt appreciated here and would recommend it to anyone. I've worked at different academies and would definitely say this one is the best.

[Alphonsus Jr.]

Let's reinvigorate this thread. It could be most valuable.

[ItsMe]

Great thread!

In 8 years or 6 in employment here.  I have had many great schools.

In fact I only had 2 that were bad, but the rest have been amazing.

My current is my favorite, great boss, well paid, great students.

It is a shame more to not praise their jobs here, big respect to original poster.

[ubjustin]

Generally speaking, if you work for a company owned school for a big chain, it should be ok..... right?

[chris24747]

Generally speaking, if you work for a company owned school for a big chain, it should be ok..... right?

Not always. I have heard that (like any franchise) it all depends on the specific school you are interested in. That's one point of this thread - to help people find the hagwon that is right for them. I know that there are SO many GnBs out there, and they can't all be good, or bad.

[i_am_a_toaster]

 ;)   Wouldn't it be a good idea for a mod to sticky this?   I mean wouldn't it be nice to have a area where waygooks don't come to complain? 

[jackdaniels]

;)   Wouldn't it be a good idea for a mod to sticky this?   I mean wouldn't it be nice to have a area where waygooks don't come to complain?

Nope. Even the best hagwons can do 180 in less than a week!

[skippy]

 ::)  Sigh....


Nice idea,  hard to do in reality...

1) Personal preferences - one person will want city, other will love small town or country side.  For some Kindy is good, for others it is hell on Earth.  So if anybody recommended ECC to me.  I would scream. 

2)  Things are always changing.  That great school from 2 years ago may now be closed down or sold.  That great school could also have slowly become bad.  Schools come and go.  Owners and bosses come and go to. 

3)  Perspective.  I have met people from the same school.  One loves it and says the school is good to them.  The other complains and is being cheated and scammed.

4) Human nature and laziness.  A great/white list will fail the same as a black/horrible list.  Most people will not be bothered to write a detail review of a school.  Some people will write, but will likely write a little bit but so skewed by personal perspective.  Only time a black listing is made is when somebody has really been done hard done by. 

5)  A complaint from me personally is this request is a ploy from somebody who is too lazy to do there own leg work.

6) Who says?  This is sort of like perspective.  Anybody can say any school is great.   Who is to verify.  Everytime, I look for a job I get many great schools that want to hire me.  Who says - the recruiter. 

Not to be a complete grump.

Rather then looking for a list great schools.  People should be looking for a list of what makes a great or fair school.

1)  Look for honest and by the book schools rather then this school is great.  Key thing to listen for if a school is dishonest is a hire predominance of but usage.

2) Can you talk to a recent or current teacher.  If there is a no or blocking.  This means a lower chance of greatness.

3) Take every said about school with a grain of salt.  That current teacher talking up his school, may just be doing it to keep school happy and will be nice with last pay and other benefits.  Recruiters will lie, stretch the truth, ignore, forget details to get you to work somewhere to hire you.  Why, because they get their money from the school.  Thus they work for the school.

4) Details!  My school is great!  Be that annoying 5 year old.  Why? Why? Why?  Plus ask detailed questions and smart questions.

5)  Know what you want!  Sit down and think what you want, can do, or will accept.  Just asking yourself what honestly can save more grief in the future.

6) Understand the system, rules, laws, realities, fictions, etc of life of hagwon and ESL teaching.  Understanding and knowing such things about pension, taxes, age categories, methods will allow you to separate the good from the bad.

I could go on, but getting  little to TL:DR.   

[knmb323]

@skippy, thanks for the perspective.  My wife and I were interested in teaching in Korea a few years ago, but she joined the Army instead.  We were delighted to get orders to go to Korea... and saddened when they changed to Washington.  I am now working on a doctorate in education and I am still interested in heading over there to teach when I am finished with my dissertation.  What advice can you give to a future Dr. Burns on selecting a place to teach that will be challenging and rewarding, and will pay enough to support my wife and daughter while I am doing so.

[fezmond]

i'll throw my school into the ring:

JLS - JeongSang Language School

i believe they only hire people in korea and those with experience. they have after school programs too but i don't know about those really, only the usual hagwon gig.

pay starts at 2.3 and raises 0.2 every year until you max out at 3.1. all holidays/benefits are provided.
they offered two options for housing - use theirs or your own. i already have my own place so they pay me 700k a month for housing. it's nice because my rent is only 500k. i also get a bonus for working in two different locations m/t in one place w/t/f in another (500k). after taxes/pension/health i take home over 3m which is a nice sum for me.

the program is not something i'm really used to, having come from little hagwons where i could do whatever i wanted. all the classes have set units - 1 class, 1 unit and you have semesters of 3 months. there is a need to supplement it to really make classes interesting but i've found some lessons completely boring and hard to make interesting. it isn't a bad system though, not too strict - just complete your book on time. easy to make the lessons your own though some units aren't fun - learning about earmuffs or ball point pens.

kids are decent enough, all depends on the k-teachers. had some problems with discipline and they rejected all methods i tried so it ended up with 'just ignore the kid, he can't leave the room.'

there is cctv in some schools but i've never seen anyone watch it or comment on it. pay is on time, always. they offer well paid camps and other ventures. i'd say i have a heavyish workload of about 24 classes a week but it only works out at 18 actual classroom hours.

i'm only a few months in but i would consider re-signing. one negative is that it's extremely hard to get any time off work for any reason.

[aklimkewicz]

Both Reading Town and Avalon in Guri-si, Gyeonggi-do are awesome. Worked for them both from 2007-2011.

[rockiavelli]

This isn't in reference to a specific hagwon experience, but speaks more to the thread itself:

I'm on my fifth year in Korea.  I'm in the 'not an old-timer but not a newb' zone and I've worked at three hagwons (aka private school aka English academy) and two public schools.   I'm not an authority, but I am speaking from experience and I'd say I prefered working at hagwons to teaching at a public school.  That's my experience, given the private and public schools I've taught at and the situations I've found myself in at both. 

Deciding if a hagwon is good depends on three things:

1.  The Boss/Owner/Manager
2.  The Students
3.  The Co-Workers

And I think that's the order of importance.  If you're looking into a hagwon job and want to figure out if it's a good one these are the areas you want to suss out.

1.  The Boss

The size of the hagwon is going to have a big impact on the question of who's the boss.  I loved working at a 'mom-and-pop' hagwon, a school that is one person's small business (mine was a franchise).  You know going in that the boss of the academy is going to be there the entire time you work at the school.  If the teacher you're replacing (ALWAYS talk to the teacher you're replacing!) had a good relationship with the owner, then there's a good chance you'll have a good relationship. 

It's a much harder question at a private school that is corporate or large enough that the owner isn't also the manager/your point of contact.  Several problems can arise from dealing with a manager that isn't the owner of the school.  At corporate schools managers turn over.  A lot.  A successful manager will be moved to a failing, or larger, school often whether or not they want to be moved.  Sometimes the manager will be one of your Korean co-teachers that gets promoted to manager, while still being forced to teach.  Sometimes a wildly unqualified person is hired because they are a friend, relation, or even friend of a friend. 

You may walk into a larger hagwon that has a great manager, only to find out that they are leaving in a month and you're getting a new boss you know nothing about.  And when the new boss comes in that person generally makes arbitrary change just to throw their 'weight' around and make it known that they're now the boss.  This happens in the west, but the Korean version has been particularly unacceptable in my experience.

So, when trying to figure out if the school you're applying to is 'top notch' find out what the boss situation is going to like for the year.  A good boss is the first step to a good experience.

2.  The Students

You don't have much control over the students, but you should find out what sort of students you're going to be teaching.  And I'm not just talking about the obvious stuff like their age and their English proficiency. 

What is the economic level of the area the school services?  In my experience poorer kids have a lower English level, but are better behaved.  Kids from wealthier families might have been in English private schools since they were three or four years old and might have near native level English, and teaching them requires much more preparation and, wait for the K-buzzword, diligence. 

How many students are in your classes, and are they sorted by level or age?  How much input does a mother (that is convinced her little Minsu/Jiweon is great at English because they said hello to a Westerner one time at the Lotte Mart) have on their child's placement?  Does the school conduct placement tests?  Is a native teacher involved in ascertaining the level of the student?

This is one area where large/corporate hagwons shine.  I had little to no issues with students being in the wrong level at the  large schools where I've worked.  At the mom-and-pop school they grouped kids by age and gender, the logic being that the kids were more comfortable that way and would like the school more.  That's great for the school's bottom line, but that sort of organization is anathema to a successfully run ESL classroom.

Finally, how does the school handle discipline?  Are they smacking the students around?  If you have an issue will the manager or one of the Korean teachers help you discipline the student?  Will someone call the parents if there's an issue?  Will the school throw you under the bus if one of the parents complain?

3.  The Co-workers

I would ask about the social dynamic at the school.  Do the native teachers hang out together?  Do the Korean teachers hang out together?  Do the native and Korean teachers hang out together?

This size of the school, and the schedules that the school runs, are going to have a big impact on these questions.  People working a kindie schedule at a large school are going to be on completely different schedules from someone that works with mostly middle school students, and high school students/adults will make those schedules even stranger.  (I always aimed for the second-shift hagwon schedule as I am not a morning person, and if you like the drink or are still in college mode it's the one most conducive to that lifestyle.)  So, let's assume you're asking about the weekend when you're asking those questions unless you know everyone at the school works the same schedule.

You also need to take into account the amount of turnover at hagwons.  People, both Western and Korean, are always coming and going from hagwons.  One of the best ways to tell if the school you're looking at is a good school is to find out how long the native/Korean teachers have been at the school.  If the school has five foreign teachers and most of them have decided to stay for multiple years that is a good sign.  The same goes for the Korean teachers.

Who helps you if you get into a scrape?  Who handles the immigration stuff?  Who deals with your landlord?  Who helps get all that annoying little stuff done that comes with moving to a new country or starting a new job?  It might seem trivial, but it's not.  If the school has a dedicated person for that stuff then that means they are at least aware that a Westerner can't do everything by themselves in Korea.  If they just randomly force a Korean teacher to do it that K teacher might resent the extra work.  Are the K teachers willing to help out with random stuff like doing online orders?  (Westerners can't order from lots of websites in Korea because of issues with ARC number vs. national ID number.)

All these things affect whether or not you'll have a good contract-year at your school.  Ask these questions from the person you're replacing at the school, and try to talk to them when they're not sitting in the school's offices.  If the school won't give you a native teachers contact info, don't take the job.  And if you can't get the replacements info find out from the NT you do talk to why you couldn't talk to them.  You're generally going to get the most accurate input from the person leaving as they'll have a full year of perspective about the experience and no reason to BS you into taking a job that might be less than optimal. 

The exception to this is if you're speaking to the person you're replacing and they're leaving mid-contract.  I've been burned by someone telling me a school was great because the school wasn't going to release them from their contract until they found a sucker to replace themselves.  Ask about that too.  Did the person finish their full year contract?

So, having said all that, are there specific schools I can recommend...

Nope.  Like someone posted earlier a school can turn 180 in a very short period of time.  The best you can do it set yourself up with school with good prospects at the beginning, hope for the best, and roll with the punches.

I can say that I've worked at a few corporate hagwons.  I wouldn't work for another TOPIA again under ANY circumstances.  I would absolutely work at another Reading Town if the conditions listed above were good.  I've also had a good experience at a Maple College, and have had friends who had good experiences at YBM ECC.

Hope that helps.