Neglectful, Incompetent, and Predatory - English Teacher NUMBER 16 SCHOOL Employee Review

Horrible, stress-filled place to work where upper management couldn't care less about the well-being of teachers They have a tendency to promote their incompetent, vapid friends to middle management positions who destroy morale and do nothing to help their teams. When someone competent is given one of these positions, they are overloaded with work and expected to act as a shield to upper management when it comes to complaints from teachers (which are numerous) Shifts are criminal. Sometimes in a literal sense. For example, you may have to work until 9:30pm and be back to work at 8:00am the next morning. This is illegal under Spanish employment law. Any teachers will have to constantly complain about these kinds of shifts in order for them to be chanced. We we're also constantly expected to work awkward split shifts to help cover classes due to being short staffed, and due to the nature of the contracts, no overtime will ever be paid. This brings me to the abject horrors of the 'cuentas system'. This seems like a decent arrangement where you are guaranteed to be paid for a certain amount of hours regardless of how many hours you work. For example, if you are contracted to work 34 hours per week and you only work 25, you will still be paid for 34. On the flip side, if you work 45 hours you'll still get 34. The logic behind this is that you may be overloaded with work in the busy months, but have very little in the quieter months. So you're getting the same pay regardless. Unfortunately, this is not how things work. Number 16 are always intentionally understaffed, meaning teachers are constantly working above their contracted hours. So teachers will have around a 10 - 30 hour surplus. I've seen teachers on part time contracts with surpluses of 80+ hours. This is money you are NEVER getting back. When you decide to had in your notice to leave the company, those hours won't be paid out like unused holidays. Instead they will slash your hours down to almost nothing so your cuentas will be balanced by the time you've honoured your FIVE WEEK notice period. What happens to all those extra hours? They'll be distributed to your colleagues, causing their hours to shoot up. Thus the cycle continues. The lack of leadership is staggering and you will be expected to give a lot of yourself for very little in return. Even asking for holidays is stressful. You could ask for a few days off 6 months in advance only for it to be rejected 4 months later for no reason, leading teachers to call in 'sick', which I never blamed anyone for doing. If you are unfortunate enough to end up working for this company, my advice would be to stand your ground, know your rights as an employee in Spain, carefully read your contract and never give them and inch beyond what's in black and white. They are looking to exploit you. Anyone who's looking to set up a competing academy in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza, or Bilbao, just treat your teachers with basic human decency and you'll give Number 16 a run for their money. They treat teachers as expendable because they are.