Not worth it! - Special Education Teacher Babylangues Employee Review

The entire staff was very accommodating and nice. I originally interviewed for them and one other ESL babysitting company and I was much more comfortable with Babylangues. They were very good at keeping my class schedule and my preferred age of children to babysit in mind. The process both applying to and leaving the company was very straightforward and they were more than happy to be my reference for several jobs I ended up applying for after leaving Paris.

I found the training session, which is only half a day, a little redundant and it could have been much shorter but that is the case for a lot of training sessions. The pay is not amazing but it was enough for me to pay for some necessities as well as some other excursions in Europe. I've heard stories of bad experiences other people had with one of the staff members but I've never experienced this personally.

Alright if you can't find anything else and can't speak French, and if you have other sources of income and are doing something else in France like studying or something. It's very easy to get a job here as they seem desperate for teachers and seem to often hire people on the spot during the interview.

It’s just babysitting for minimum wage (though advertised as a 'high' wage), and you can only do part-time hours. Holidays aren’t fully paid, you just accrue 1€/hour to be paid out at school holidays. Only half a day training, which is unpaid and disorganized. I heard that one staff member was aggressive and unprofessional towards another teacher when he wanted to leave which really turned me off working there, and made me reluctant to approach them about anything. You have to give 2 or 3 months notice to get out of the contract (they threaten to press charges if you don't), and it's in French so read it carefully before signing, don't just sign it on the spot without reading it like they ask you to. I got the impression that they have a high turnover rate of babysitters. I found the company to be fairly disorganized, and the same lesson plans seemed to be used for children of different ages and levels, so some of it wasn't relevant. Because all your leave is paid out during school holidays, you can't take any days off during normal working time or you won't get paid. Also they are short on staff so I felt a lot of pressure to not take any days off because it is unlikely that they will be able to get a replacement. I felt like it would be quite difficult to take a sick day at short notice (though luckily I didn't get sick while working there). Also I was told during a job interview at another organisation that experience at this organisation is not highly regarded by proper English teaching schools in France, they just consider it as babysitting, so I wouldn't recommend working here if you want a career in teaching English.