This is a discussion page for individual companies so that potential teachers and actual teachers can leave their comments and talk about a specific company.
Learnship is based in Germany. They specialize in business English, but they also teach 11 other languages, including French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Madarin, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian and Arabic. They pay around €17 per hour or €15 per 45 minute classes. They have recently acquired Global English.
Teachers and students please leave us your comments and reviews of Learnship.
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Thank you everyone for your comments. I am now more informed about this online school. I was attracted to their salary and so I applied. I should have known it was too good to be true. I was rejected after the first step of the application. They even said, " That being said, we are very interested in your profile and, with your permission, would like to keep your information on file and contact you in the future for any programs that fit your qualifications, experience and skills." I don't really care what they do. They need to add more courses to their curriculum like test preaparations to attract more students instead giving their teachers a hard time with cut pays and such. They were very strict with my laptop's hardware, storage, internet connection and such. Again, this is too good to be true.
I applied for a tutor position at Learnship.
After all the hiring processes, they said they would not hire me.
I requested them to pay the training fee that they say they pay to all candidates who
finishes the 'training process.
They ignored my messages and NEVER respond nor do they pay it.
It was quite an uncomfortable experience. I wasted my time and energy a lot.
Whenever you say you will pay but do not pay, people will call you a liar...
I interviewed there and did the training andn mocks and found their platform to be very confusing. The TAs were very friendly although not very quick to reply to questions. I could probably have gone thru it but the second mock invovled teaching advanced grammar which could not be more boring for me to teach let alone helping the student. I saw it as unimportant and a poor choice as a subject for a mock.
First: If you are a Learnship tutor reading this and you would like to join a facebook group of other Learnship tutors, here it is:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/267060327338131
Pros:
-You can accept courses as per your schedule
-The people on the support team are nice and helpful
Cons:
-Students frequently cancel classes soon before the lesson. When this happens, you will only receive 33% of your hourly rate. Prior to Spring 2018, it was 100%. The student cannot re-take the lost lesson; instead, Learnship takes your salary. A long time ago we were told it was going towards their marketing budget, in order to bring us more classes. The problem is that these cancelations happen a lot, which means we have cleared our schedule to work during that time, and instead we end up with no work and just a few euros for our time. It feels like we are not being taken seriously as professionals and as humans who deserve to be able to plan their time and income + enjoy a decent standard of living. At what point is it enough marketing and time to focus on improving conditions for trainers and staff?
-In the past, trainers could ask for a 1 euro raise every year. Now, there is no possibility for a raise, and new trainers start at 15 euro per hour. I have been working for Learnship for almost 5 years and I still only make 17 euro per hour. When I factor in scheduling + cancelations, it's a lot less.
-More and more work having to do with scheduling is being automated and given to trainers. The system does not always work properly. These things = more time, despite the fact that we cannot ever obtain a higher salary.
-There is little to no transparency about company decisions; trainers are treated in a way that feels condescending. We are told about changes that negatively affect our income in emails that are written in a positive tone, as though to try to make us believe these changes are for our benefit. It feels like we are being treated like silly, unsuspecting children.
-Emails about changes in policy are often unclear; they are sent to hundreds of trainers, but the people writing them don't write in English well enough to make the nuances of the policy changes clear for the reader. This is ironic considering that there are many hundreds of English trainers who work for Learnship, who could help.
-There is no way for trainers to contact one another, which means that we cannot compare our working conditions with each other...except for a facebook group that one trainer started: https://www.facebook.com/groups/267060327338131
-Through the facebook group, we discovered that different trainers who started with LEarnship at different times are being paid differently. Trainers who started a long time ago and received 1 euro more every year are making up to 25 euro per hour, while new tutors (who are often just as qualified) receive only 15 with no possibility for advancement. Some newer Learnship products and courses also pay much less (I don’t know the details because I’m not involved with those).
Advice to Management:
As your business grows, don't forget about trainers. We deserve a living wage. You are contributing to lowering the standards in the whole industry with your actions. We are highly qualified teachers adn we deserve better.
I have been working for them quite a while now. Unfortunately the working conditions have worsened a lot since then. The work itself is nice, but the wage is incredibly poor. I get paid 17€ an hour and as I live in Germany as a freelancer I have to deduct taxes, obligatory health insurance (around 19%) and obligatory pension insurance (around 19%). On top, preparation time and follow-up time is not paid, just the plain hour. Recently they have introduced a new policy according to which unattended classes are only paid one third instead of completely as it used to be. They also used to do the administrative work for us, now they have passed this on to students and teachers. They tried to sell this as "more freedom" to us but its basically a whole bunch of new unpaid extra work - great! Thats not how you should run a company!
Pay at Learnship was €15 for a 45-minute lesson and €17 for a one-hour lesson. If the student didn’t come to the lesson or cancelled less than six hours before, trainers were only paid 33% of the hourly rate — so you could end up with less than €6 after setting aside about an hour and a half of your time, if it’s a one-hour lesson. If the student cancels more than six hours before the lesson, trainers are paid nothing.
The platform is user-friendly and there are plenty of materials, which you can adapt and supplement as you like.
The exploitative and unilateral changes in working terms and remuneration implemented by Learnship during a global pandemic are outrageous. While most German companies were doing everything they could to protect their workers (Kurzarbeit / paid furlough, tax-free Corona bonuses, etc.), Learnship ruthless slashed their lowest-paid workers wages. This has included an eye-watering, supposedly temporary, 25% pay cut and moving from 100% payment policy for late cancellations and no-show students to a mere 33%. According to the rumour mill the company still charges the client company the full 100%, simply pocketing the difference. They have refused to comment on this when asked.
Additionally, as an established pure online player, Learnship was perfectly placed to make the most of the crisis – just look at how well other tech and online business have been doing during this tumultuous time. If they haven’t thrived, why not? More pertinently (and likely): Where is all the money going?
The nascent TEFL Workers Union has launched an investigation into Learnship – a positive step for Learnship’s downtrodden teachers as the union recently supported a group of Kaplan teachers in securing fairer redundancy pay and putting an end to Kaplan’s use of rolling fixed-term contracts. Sadly, Learnship doesn’t even offer these to its teachers. Teachers are told they are “entrepreneurs running their own businesses” when they are for all practical purposes low-paid employees without a seat at the table. Learnship’s current rate of 15€ per hour (excluding preparation, onerous training and observation, paperwork and other administration) is less than the going business English rate in Germany in the early 2000s.
Some questions to ponder: Have the members their 9-person “leadership team” taken similar pay cuts? Do they also have precarious pay and work conditions? Thomas Engelbertz, Sushel Bijganath, Kathrin Weiler, Robert Szabó, Oliver Trabert, Chris Cox, Andreas Holch, Irena Jorgensen and Dean Cooper have a lot to answer for.
Are you an online teacher for Learnship (English or any other language)? Do you know anyone who is? If so, please write to tefl@iww.org.uk. The TEFL Workers Union is part of Industrial Workers of the World, an international labour union founded in Chicago over 100 years ago.
This is a terribly managed company to work for, when it comes down to (immediate) teacher support in a situation.
Quite often, I have found myself having to make snap decisions because no one in their (so.called) teacher support department picks up the phone. Instead they prefer to rely solely on email communication with their teachers, which just doesn´t cut the mustard, when one needs an immediate response. Additionally, one get´s the feeling that one is working in virtually complete isolation with this company - there are very few notification updates as to what is going on and/or what´s new within the company. I.e. The social interaction, with admin and teacher and/or line manager is practically zilch.
Their online platform also leaves a lot to be desired, and I find ii most frustrating that there is still not an app, for smartphone access to their platform: despite the fact I was told nearly two years ago (when I first started working with Learnship) that their IT department was working on one.
This company´s management also likes to suddenly "drop in" on an online lesson, without any prior warning, for observation purposes, which I found most disconcerting. I recall that after one such observation, I was told that I would get the feedback a little later. That feedback never, ever came, which I thought was highly unprofessional, at the very least, and totally contemptuous at the very worst.
Moreover, I am extremely disappointed at the almost total lack of communication updates and teacher support, during this Covid-19 pandemic - except for a recent email asking us teachers to accept substantial (see below) pay cuts, of either 25% on a temporary basis, or 30% on a permanent basis
1) You reduce your rate by 25% on temporary basis (time frame limited to Corona virus impact, at the moment no end date confirmed) while maintaining your short-term cancellation policy for sessions cancelled 6 hours or less or No Show at 33% of your hourly rate.
2) You permanently reduce your hourly rate by 30% and change your short-term cancellation policy (of sessions cancelled 6 hours or less or No Show) to 100% compensation of your hourly rate.
In a nutshell...this company is an utter shitshow of inept management personnel - run by people, with little or no inter-personnel and/or conflict management skills,
I worked at Learnship for years and years and regretting it from day one. I now teach kids and am much happier.
It may work for you if you 1) don't need money and 2) don't want to move up in your career in any way.
If you just need to supplement your income and, for some reason, love business English with students who may not want to be there, or have no time to be there let alone do homework, or if you really love spending time with German and French managers who have a strong sense of their own importance and very little of yours (you're the help), then I think you'll do fine. Bear in mind that you'll do an awful lot for free...yes free. 1) Detailed feedback reports after class (which are monitored) for free, 2) exam administration and correction for free, 3) preparation of their highly the detailed business curriculum which is a task to learn in itself and is now quite outdated (they had scanned all the books from the Business Result series 10 years ago and never updated them).
Then there's the company itself which runs on non-paid (as far as I could tell) interns who manage the daily operations with no experience in teaching, no experience in the workforce and certainly no experience in handling actual employees with real issues. They will observe you without your knowledge and you may be put on probation (where you are banned from new classes, until you've been observed again. That could takes weeks!). Every semester this temporary staff vanishes and is replaced. It's breathtaking. You may have to fight with them to get assigned classes or you may get so many that you can't handle them...it's a crap shoot. Student indeed can cancel now and whereas you used to get paid in full, now you'll get a pittance or nothing depending on how far in advance it is. Business students are not students, they work and have to cancel constantly.
I could go on and on. I was there for nearly a decade and saw it all. But, I think you get the picture.
If you don't need to work for Learnship, then Learnship may very well work for you. Then, again, wouldn't a less demanding job that pays the same or better be more appealing? I certainly thought so.
Strick hiring process but they seem like a nice company. I just recently received a job offer from them after an interview, 2 live training, 2 mock lessons and one administration briefing. If you are a professional teacher and good at business English it's a good company to apply for. But note it is not like other online English schools they are very strict about how you teach and insist on quality (their standard) so be aware of this before you apply.
I like their ideals tho because I am a very detailed and organized person so it suits me.
If you need any addtional information you can leave a comment under mind and ask.
Goodluck!
Hi
How does one go about to become a business english instructor, I have recently completed tefl course but my aim is to become a business english teacher. Your guidence will be much appreciated.