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      First Leap

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      First Leap Reviews

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      3.3

      51% would recommend to a friend

      (180 total reviews)

      Charlie Cao

      59% approve of CEO

      33% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      3.5

      Compensation and benefits

      3.3

      Work/Life balance

      3.1

      Diversity and inclusion

      2.9

      Culture and values

      2.9

      Career opportunities

      2.7

      Senior management

      First Leap has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 180 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The First Leap employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      180 reviews
      1.0
      8 Dec 2016

      horrific

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      i cannot think of any

      Cons

      Mass American corporation that is a money making machine. There is no English teaching here. Foreigners are used as white entertainers, they have no real teacher training. The badly paid overworked Chinese staff to the actual teaching. Most Chinese staff rightly resent the foreigners. Most Chinese staff have an appalling level of English and are not good teachers. The Children's level of language compared to other schools is a joke. They have so many staff coming and going they do not care about individual teachers.They are racist in their hiring strategies. White British/American only. I'm embarrassed to say I worked there. I wish I'd read a review like this before. There are much better teaching opportunities out there.

      avatar
      First Leap Response
      8y
      Thank you for your review. I would like to clarify a couple of points you raised. First Leap is a Chinese corporation. Recently the company merged with a larger corporation, also Chinese, called TAL. TAL is floated on the American Stock Exchange but remains a Chinese company. While there is a difference in pay between international and Chinese staff (which is common across the board with English training schools), Chinese staff are paid the industry market rate in China. Lastly, we currently have a variety of nationalities. While most international employees are British, we also employee around 10 other nationalities, of different ethnicities. I do not know your working location, or whether you worked within the corporate or franchise structure but I feel your experience is an anomaly.
      3.0
      14 May 2020

      Good until recent company policies

      English teacher
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      -Pay is (was) good for a starter English teacher -lessons already planned. still need to prepare but they're all similar - good facilities -although there's cons as mentioned below. I believe if they stop the current changes they could be a good employer.

      Cons

      I won't talk about personal issues rather general cons... Since I started, the company has new people running things... They went from treating staff fairly well to treating them like garbage. Chinese staff are leaving rapidly because of treatment. International staff also unhappy. We no longer receive demo bonus for sign ups, KPI guidelines are much stricter, making it basically impossible to get a 1.5. Whilst pay is going down they want staff to work way more hours "in order to improve efficiency and increase workload" Didn't realise I was a machine in a factory.

      avatar
      First Leap Response
      6y
      Thank you for taking the time to leave a review, we value all feedback from our teachers on how we could enhance the experience of working at First Leap China. We are glad to see you have largely enjoyed your time with us so far and appreciate feedback on the details of why this is. However, we are sorry to hear that you have felt unhappy more recently. We understand that some recent changes will take time to get used to. Our KPI structure has been updated, and this is in order to better reflect performance and thereby ensure that high performance is recognized. During the transition to online classes due to the current pandemic, new courses have meant that there are more classes to teach. However, any additional classes outside of standard working hours remain optional, and those who choose to teach them are compensated for doing so. This means that whilst there are benefits of teaching these additional classes, employees are not required to do so. We understand that there have been a number of changes recently and that these will take some time to get used to, especially for our more experienced teachers who have been with us longer.
      4.0
      27 Sept 2013

      Exciting and expanding company

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - Fun and interesting work - Fast growing company with good opportunities for career progression

      Cons

      - Unsociable hours - Lack of communication between departments

      Viewing 1 - 3 of 180 Reviews
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      ReviewsFirst Leap reviews

      Glassdoor has 201 First Leap reviews submitted anonymously by First Leap employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if First Leap is right for you.