SABIS Hiring Protocol

When you are in contact with a SABIS HR representative, please keep the following things in mind, and please keep in mind that ALL SABIS HR staff only care about getting your name to fill an open position:

They are not looking for people qualified to teach.

Very few people with actual teaching qualifications work for Choueifat, or at least qualifications relevant to what they’re teaching. This is fine if this is how they choose to run their schools. I just won’t send my kid there.

However, in the PPP Program, this is highly inappropriate. The positions in PPP are not teaching positions as it states in the job posting. It is a teaching/mentoring position. In this position, you are expected to teach classes, but you are also expected to monitor and critique the Ministry of Education teachers. In this case, people who are telling professionals how to improve their teaching standards should without a doubt have some teaching qualifications and experience. This situation was very uncomfortable for me as well as for others who were either completely unqualified or underqualified for the job, sitting there telling teachers with 2, 5, 10, 30 years of experience how to do their job.

This leads into my next point:

They are deliberately misleading in their job postings and offers. *, **

Most of the (western, at least) people in the SABIS PPP program are here because they were lied to at some point during the application process. A good portion of the English teachers were told they would be teaching:

• Economics
• Social Studies
• Political Science
• History
  
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Science
• Physics/Chemistry/Biology
  
• NOT told that they would be teaching in the public schools
• NOT told that they would be responsible for “mentoring” duties, although there is a little blurb in the contract about “other duties” which mentions mentoring. However, this is not written in the letter of intent, and the contract is deliberately misleading in its presentation of the “other” duties.
  

In fairness, most of these people were told they would be teaching their subject “and maybe a few English classes.” However, when these people arrived here, they were told they would be teaching English exclusively.

In addition, the stated locations of these jobs should definitely be called into question.

Some PPP staff are in Al Ain, a border town with Oman, and some were stationed out in Gaithi, which is in the exact center of nowhere. The advertisements may state “a quick drive from Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” but in reality Giathi is more like 4 hours from Abu Dhabi and even further from Dubai. In Al Ain, some of the jobs are in the city, but others are in a town called Al Khazna an hour outside of town. The people who work at these schools ride a bus for an hour each way to get to school. The location is not stated on the letter of intent. Even if it says “Al Ain,” they can try to move you to a different school, such as Al Khazna, if it’s “in the Al Ain region.”

They have little regard for the people once they arrive in the foreign country.

As was mentioned earlier, they don’t care who they get to teach classes as long as there’s a warm body in front of the classroom(for more on this, see the entry for “Shadow Teachers.”) They also know that once you’re there in Abu Dhabi, you’re probably not going to fly off on your own dime.

The accommodation is decent and there is generally little to complain about in that regard to housing while you’re in Al Ain for training. Beyond that, good luck.

Statement of Flexibility

The people who ended up in Giathi were there because they signed something extra called a “flexibility agreement” which said they didn’t mind being moved around to suit the needs of the company. This form was not presented to me, but I believe it was just an oversight on their part. I would not have signed it anyway. THEY are the ones who ended up in the middle of the desert.

* (Listed alphabetically) Posts such as those found on bayt.com, esljobsworld.com, gradireland.com, idealist.org, learnforgood.com, Prospects.ac.uk, monster.ie, monster.com, sabiscareers.com, simplyhired.com, tesall.com, topschooljobs.org, unijobs.org

** SABIS HR also trolls resumes and contacts candidates on sites such as TEFL.com but does not post open positions on these sites.