You're looking into teaching English in a city in China and stumbled upon Meten English. Is it legitimate? Do they pay on time? Is it a good job? Here's my review of working one year for Meten in Shenzhen, China.
My Overall Review of Working for Meten
In a nutshell, I generally liked working at Meten, but that was largely because of the students (I worked at an adult center), and the freedom that I was given to do what I would like to do with the students. The hours were often long, with lots of overtime opportunities, and if you haven't taught before, you are largely left to figure things out on your own at Meten. My biggest grievance with Meten, however, was how much worse the company treated their Chinese workers. Because of this, I cannot with a clear conscience recommend them as a company. Please read that section of this article if you're strongly considering to work for Meten--it deserves to be understood. Unfortunately, this treatment is all too common in China, so it may be difficult to not find this. But it still deserves to be stated. Also, if you're looking for an easier, more structured job opportunity as a beginner teacher, I'd recommend teaching at EF English First, where you can read my review here.
Pros and Cons of Working for Meten
An overview
Pros
Cons
In other words
As long as you're either willing to work lots of hours or strong-minded enough to put your foot down, Meten is generally a good place to work as a foreigner. You have decent flexibility over your schedule, have some morning shifts and some afternoon shifts, and can switch days off with other foreign teachers if it aligns better with your holiday schedule and is approved. The largest problem I had was how differently Meten treated its Chinese English teachers, making them work 6 days a week; requiring them to teach more hours per month than foreigners; and placing even more requirements on them, like summer camp, without putting those on foreigners. There was also some under the table illegal things that Meten, as a Chinese company, was doing while I worked there. Keep that in mind; if you have a strong moral compass, this job may not be the best one for you. Unfortunately, many jobs in China treat foreign workers with more privilege than Chinese workers, but I found EF to be much more fair in that regard than Meten.
A picture of street art in Guangzhou, China, a short train ride from Shenzhen, where I worked at Meten
Pre-Arrival Process: Visa and Reimbursements
Since I switched to Meten while working in China, I didn't have to go through the process of getting my first work visa while in the U.S. However, my co-worker did. From what he told me, my understanding is that Meten works almost solely on a reimbursement policy, so you fork out all your costs upfront and then get reimbursed after you arrive. This differs from EF's policy, which pays for a large portion of those items upfront for you. Meten also offers flight reimbursement, and provided me with an 8,000 yuan lump-sum flight payment at the end of my 1-year contract as well.
My visa process with Meten went smoothly, although I have heard problems from other people. Meten was previously known for registering your work visa in the incorrect district, which can create problems with authorities and is illegal to do in China. My visa was issued in the proper district, and while I was working there, Meten was basically going through all their foreigners' work visas in Shenzhen and making sure that they were issued in the proper district. So hopefully this is not a problem moving forward.
I found their visa process was fine, but not nearly as efficient's as EF's. They also hire some foreigners illegally - generally, the foreigner would have a full-time job elsewhere (in China, you are only supposed to work the job that your visa is tied to) and would work nights and/or weekends part-time at Meten. These foreigners would still generally be native English speakers; however, they did also hire some part-time foreign students that were not native English speakers (although still had superb English, so I did not really take issue with this - I take more issue with China's laws). The great part about this is that you work with a much more diverse group of foreigners, which I thought was awesome! The not so good part is that occasionally they'd hire a teacher that got really bad reviews from students, and they would have to stop scheduling him/her.
Expenses: Paid for, but only by reimbursement
Meten provided me with one week at a hotel for reimbursement; flight reimbursement; visa and visa costs reimbursement (like getting a new background check); and other transportation reimbursement for moving expenses, like the taxi from the airport to the hotel. Nothing was paid upfront and it took awhile for me to receive the reimbursements, but I did.
Meten's Teacher Training and Professional Development Review
Okay, here is where Meten doesn't do such a great job. If you're already an experienced teacher (and I was/am), this didn't matter to me; in fact, I was happy about it. "Orientation" consisted of me meeting with my head teacher, signing my contract, and then spending 3 days with the Shenzhen trainer reviewing the curriculum and observing some classes. It was rushed and didn't cover all of the curriculum levels, but it served as a good starter introduction and then I was teaching classes the next week.
In the beginning, I had to put more time into planning my lessons. However, as I got more familiar with the curriculum, this changed. Just keep in mind that if you are an inexperienced and/or nervous teacher, then you may not receive the full support that you'd like at Meten.
As far as professional development, it was largely non-existent. When we got a new head teacher, he attempted to implement more professional development, but they honestly didn't want to take any teaching hours for PD (no money there, right?). I had no issues with the general lack of PD.
Teaching at Meten
I generally really liked teaching here. Working at an adult center, you have smaller sized classes and next to no behavioral issues. The main curriculum was built by National Geographic, and I thought it was largely very well done. Meten practices "flipped" or "backwards" learning, where students study the vocabulary and do listening practice or reading practice prior to the lesson. Then, during the lesson it is largely focused on using the new vocabulary and practicing the grammar structure. I found this incredibly helpful and a great way to teach adults.
There were also a large amount of 1:1, called "VIP", classes. My only issue is that, although I worked at an adult center, Meten would sell to pretty much anyone. So that meant that we would have some 1:1 classes with children as young as 4 years old, and many on the weekend with teenagers (which were generally fine). I didn't like this hybrid mix and felt Meten should've stuck to only adults or only children, but instead the center I worked at chose a hybrid option in order to generate as much revenue as possible.
In addition to your regular classes, you also have 1-2 "Ishows" per week, which are open classes, available even to non-Meten members, and can be the topic of your choice. This can be stressful, and certainly was for me, and required a lot more planning. The plus side was that my most awesome students came to these IShows, including previous students that had a very high level of English and just wanted to continue practicing English.
One of the many hikes I did while living in Shenzhen, China
Meten's Pay and Wage Increases
Meten pays pretty well. My starting pay was 18,000 yuan and I would have received a pay increase to 21,000 yuan if I had stayed on past my first year (this was also during covid, so it was very difficult for them to find new foreigners, so the pay has definitely been upped). Meten only increases your pay annually.
Meten also has ample overtime available. For foreigners, overtime is counted only by your teaching hours (not your admin hours), and starts at 140 yuan for the first 10 hours; increases to 150 yuan for the next 10 hours; and then 160 yuan for any additional hours. The nice part about this is that even if you don't work any additional days or hours, but do more teaching hours in your shift, you can still get overtime. In other words, every month each foreigner is expected to teach 100 hours of teaching time (5 hours per day). So, if you do 6 classes (6 hours) per day then you will receive 1 hour of teaching time each day, which can add up quickly. 6 classes per day still gets you a two hour break for lunch/dinner and planning time. These options were very available at my center, although again this depends on what center you work at. There were some other foreigners at other centers that only pulled in 80-90 hours per month, but to the best of my knowledge their salaries weren't docked.
Meten Work Hours Review
I mentioned this earlier, but the work hours at Meten are going to be long, and they're going to want you to work overtime. It seems like they never have enough foreign teachers for all the classes that they need/want to schedule.
However, as long as you're willing to put your foot down, they cannot force you to work overtime. Don't let them bully you. Sometimes I would get asked the night before, or the day of, to add a class. If they want to add a class after the schedule has been made, they have to ask permission. I was able to largely decide if I wanted to add the class depending on who the student(s) were, which was nice.
Additionally, they have two scheduling times: 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. You have to clock in and out. If you clock in late too many times, they can dock a bit from your pay. How you're scheduled is largely at the discretion of the person scheduling and, more importantly, your student's availabilities. The center I worked at had a lot of retired adults and housewives, so there were a decent amount of morning shifts available. Other centers that relied more on working adults had to mostly work night shifts.
Travel and Time Off at Meten
Meten is going to give you a standard amount of days off, like any company employing foreign teachers in China. It's nothing special but it works. What I loved about Meten was that they allowed a lot more flexibility around your schedule while taking vacation. For example, my usual days off were Wednesday and Thursday. However, if my co-worker, who had Monday and Tuesday off, agreed to switch a week with me, than I could take a 4-day weekend and only request 2 days off. I could also take a 4-day weekend, then take no days off the week after, and not request any days off! I generally didn't do the latter option because I really like my weekly days off, but it's great that that's an option for people that want to travel a lot but don't want to quickly use up their vacation days.
Me and two other English teachers when we took a trip to the Gansu Desert.
Fairness Rating at Meten
This is the other part of Meten that I'm very critical about. Meten is a Chinese company that largely treats their Chinese employees like trash. This was really hard for me, especially because my Chinese counterparts generally worked longer hours and planned for longer amounts of time than me and my foreign coworkers. The difference was solely because they weren't foreigners. And it went beyond just a pay gap - Chinese teachers were required to work 6 days each week, not 7; they were required to meet a baseline number of teaching hours per month that was higher than foreigners; and they were always the ones asked to plan extracurricular events and do different camps, never foreigners. The Chinese teachers clearly and for obvious reasons would get frustrated over this, but they didn't feel like there was anything they could do. They would largely say that they were more disposable than foreigners.
I would sometimes try and make up for these deficits by using my privileged voice to stick up for Chinese teachers when I could. This obviously isn't enough and it left a bad taste in my mouth about Meten. If they would implement fairer work policies for Chinese workers, then I would be more willing to ecommend them. Because of these issues, I can only give them a lukewarm rating and urge you all to fully take this into account before working for them.
Unsure if you want to go with Meten? Read my English First teaching review in China here.
In Conclusion
I wish Meten would re-evaluate and treat their Chinese employees more fairly, otherwise I would recommend them as a company. Because they don't, I can't. The illegal things Meten did, like hiring foreigners off the books, bothered me much less. I will say I loved my Chinese and foreign co-workers and hung out with them outside of work. I also felt like I developed good relationships with my adult students and hung out with some of them outside of work as well. I loved the National Geographic material that was taught to the adult students, and although I felt pressured to work long hours, I often pushed back on that and refused overtime when I felt burnt out. Overall, my personal experience at Meten was more enjoyable than my personal experience at EF.
we worked closely for one year and you didn’t post one photo of the whole SGT crew? you’re as cold as ice. 😄