ISR is aware that various International Schools are reneging on the return-flight home section of their Contracts. Are YOU receiving a ticket back to your home of record, as promised?
Here are some shenanigans as reported to ISR:
My school reneged on their contract. Instead of providing a return ticket, as promised, they gave us a flight allowance. In my case it’s insufficient to cover the cost of a ticket home ... like, by almost $500!
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MY school reinterpreted “home of record” to mean, “closest airport from the point of departure.” This means after touching down in Los Angeles, I’m still 2,000 miles from home (Ohio)! It’s my dime for the U.S. leg of the trip…
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I should have paid closer attention to the phrase in my contract that reads: “Return trip to home of record, if possible, on a school-authorized airline.” Wouldn’t you know it, the school offers a very limited choice of airlines with an even more limited choice of destinations. To get here they did pay for me to fly from my home airport on an airline not on the approved list. Now that they are done with me it’s a different story…
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When I saw, “Cheapest economy flight back to the home-of-record airport” it never occurred to me they would book me on 4 airlines with connections that look impossible to make!
ISR hopes these are isolated cases, with the majority of schools honoring their Contracts and taking teachers’ wallets and sanity into mind when booking flights home. What has YOUR experience been with Contractual flights home?
ISR invites you to Name Your School and Share your return-flight home experience.
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We get a flight allowance, which in many cases is significantly higher than the cheapest return flight. I think they go off the cost of one of the more premium airlines (which we never take!).
We are actually affording to go via two other destinations before we go home, all within the yearly flight allowance.
This is by far the most generous deal we’ve had in the three schools we’ve worked at.
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The Bin School in Vietnam is very dodgy about flights as contracts are meaningless. Spouses and dependent children don’t get any flights to or from the country and they are iffy about reimbursement for certain teachers.. and if you leave, forget it. It all depends what you can push for.
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I am at Casablanca American School in Morocco. Our contract states that you will be provided a round trip ticket home each year. Period. Nothing else. Yet, when it came time to book said tickets, we were told that you had to let the school know by March 20th if you accept the school’s allotted ticket, or if you wanted to book your own ticket, and pay any difference in cost. I was not given a quote for my ticket until 3 days AFTER this deadline. Then, when I told the school that I wanted to only fly home for a couple of weeks in August, not from June 17- Aug. 14. I was told I would have to pay an extra $400 for the difference in flight cost. Upon asking why, I was told that it was because I missed the deadline. WHAT???!!!!
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My contract said I get a certian amount for a flight. I’m not coming back so they said that I get half the amount as it is only one way. This was not written in the contract but they are refusing to budge. Avoid SEK. They put profits over people consistently.
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In about March, my school requests 3 quotes for RT flights to our home of record. We have to present receipts for our tickets, which do not have to be to our home of record. We will be reimbursed up to the amount of the lowest quote. Tickets can be purchased at any time, but reimbursement will not occur until after quotes have been accepted and tickets have been purchased. This allows for people to present tickets used during the previous winter break if they wish.
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Two schools I’ve worked for have offered pitiful flight allowances, paid in February for staff summer hols. The term ‘allowance’ is the giveaway in the contract – not forced to be the full fare. It’s plain sneaky and tells a teacher all they need to know of the school attitude to staff welfare. The payment I received covered one return flight to UK and I had to cover my wife and child’s flights.
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Never had a problem with this in any of the International Schools I’ve worked in. Now that ticket prices have gone up, our HR department did encourage staff to book summer flights early, by Feb, and they capped it. However, the cap was generous enough to still cover the return flights (Thailand- Europe) for me, my husband and our 2 children. No complaints. At a previous school, they just gave each teacher a lump sum based on average return ticket price to chosen home country (could be different to passport country), and that worked out fine too. Never had to pay anything out of pocket.
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My school noticed that flights were expensive this year so last week announced that the flight stipend is going up from $2000 USD to $3000 USD. Very pleasant surprise.
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BISR in Saudi… the give s very generous flight allowance each year… more than enough for flight home snd a couple of holidays. This year they decided to pay circuit in March do staff could take advantage of cheaper flights… no kidding!
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Our school has it written into our contracts that you get a flat allowance per person, and it varies based on where you’re going. They use home of record, which you define when you come to the school. Up until this year, when airfare suddenly shot up for flights between Asia and the U.S., the allowance would cover the cost of the flight, and you were able to book it as you wished. Want business class? Fine, you pay the difference. Want to fly on the wing? OK, you can pocket the difference. During Covid when it was harder and harder to leave the country (South Korea) and return because of the entry permit and testing requirements, and the difficulties with regional travel in East Asia, many teachers stayed and pocketed the money. The school never said a word about it.
Fast forward to this year and the school is sticking to the flight allowance that’s in the contract. Anyone who booked before the sudden fare increases was still fine. Those who booked afterwards, myself included, were on the hook for the difference. For me, it was about $1500 more than the total allowance for my family of four to go to the U.S. I can’t put that on the school. They didn’t raise the fares, and they’re sticking to the contract. Contracts for next year were out before the fares went up too, and so far the school hasn’t bent on altering the allowance, but nobody knows what fares will look like in March 2024. At least we know to plan for that possibility, knowing what we’re given.
But as for whether the school has ever screwed us over on flights, the answer is a resounding no. In fact, in three international schools, I’ve never had an issue with this. I’m sure it happens somewhere, but I’ve been in three very good schools in countries where the law would protect the employee with respect to benefits, so it hasn’t been a worry for me.
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The thing which gets me is when a school digs in and insists on “home of record” being your passport country. I don’t live there, and never travel there as I have a home in a different country – but my school requires me to fly to my passport country.
Thing is, this can also work against the school – I knew someone once who lived in a neighbouring country but their passport was of a country 10,000 miles away. The school refused to get flights to their neighbouring country and insisted on basing the flight payment on the 10,000 mile flight. Needless to say, my friend didn’t complain!
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Beware! I used to work for SMIC School in Shanghai and the evil HR woman, Evie Tao, lied to me about the flight situation. When I flew to China from my previous country, I specifically asked her if it would be OK to take a 1-way flight, since I had no intention of ever returning to that country. She approved. Then at the end of my contract, I was told that the only way I could get a flight home paid for was if I had originally gotten a round trip ticket when I was flown over. I had specifically been told that there was no issue with my flight over, then the same person told me I was up a creek without a hint of remorse or apology. Great school otherwise, but beware of lying, duplicitous or just plain incompetent HR employees like Evie.
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So if your previous school had also been in China then you would only get a domestic flight?
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Yes, presumably, according to her logic, I would have only been able to get a round trip ticket to and from that Chinese city. Utterly ridiculous.
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SAIS Singapore, a Cognita school, will pay a flat reimbursement for flights for teacher, one adult dependent and children. However, it’s about $500-$800 below the going rate, and teenager dependents get a child rate reimbursement, which is even lower. It’s also not
increased since before 2016!
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Atakamul International School in Kuwait did NOT pay my ticket home after completing many years with them with excellent evaluations and no breech of contract or bad behavior on my part in any way, shape, or form. I know of others who received similar treatment. The school had no valid excuses.
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One school charged 35% tax on my flight benefit that came out of my salary.
Most schools don’t mess around with this. It causes too much bad blood. I’ve been in 6 international schools and only 1 screwed me.
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My last school made me pay the ticket change fee of 350 USD the timing of which they organised with their travel agent who always charged the school far more than what was available online. Very suspect practices.
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ISHCMC (a Cognita school), mid-way through the year, has now put a price cap on flights by region. I will be fighting this one. I don’t understand how they get away with changing contracts mid-year.
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Some schools the part of the contract is worth nothing
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Nothing surprises me with Cognita schools
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Canadian School did the same! We randomly got told all flights had to be under $1500, which right now is not even feasible for the US/Canada.
Luckily we negotiated to get them also agree that we can fly to anywhere we want as long as it’s less than that cap (our “home country cost”.)
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I have been one of the lucky ones that I have never had a school renege on return flights and my current school even reevaluated the amount they would pay out to for the flight to home of record because no one was getting enough to cover a decent plane ticket because of rising costs. We are given the money for a flight, calculated by our HR and Finance Dept. using good flights and actually the closest airport to your home – not the closest `hub’. It is part of our package, so they don’t put stipulations on it like if you aren’t flying you don’t get the money. Is it a benefit or not? If so, then pay the benefit. My first school did the booking but it was because in Sudan at the time, you couldn’t use credit cards or reliably book anything online.
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I think the refusal to fly to home airport and insisting that you go to London, LA or wherever, might be a legacy of COVID years. With commercial flights grounded, some schools/chains chartered flights to get staff home and out and of course, these chartered flights couldn’t be to every home airport to suit every member of staff. Unfortunately, since it was accepted then, unscrupulous and penny pinching businesses will now make it the norm.
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from my experience this has been going since well before Covid. Contract would usually state closest airport to your home, but you had to give dates in February or you were given the equivalent of a February flight. Unsure of dates, tough as prices increase nearer school holidays. Many are just giving an allowance particularly if you are further afield or not on a major route
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Our school pays for the ticket, they purchase it directly.
The contract does say that if we choose not to fly we cannot ask for a cash-out, nor transfer it over. Which makes sense.
There is this one teacher, we call him DarkCloud, that is leaving after one year. (Insert Unison Sigh Of Relief Here) And he said he didn’t want to go home, would stay in the country, but wanted to GIFT his ticket.
Sometimes…
ISR, I don’t know if now you’re just making up these stories but how about you make a filter and start classifying the schools in a way. Because if this article is true, shouldn’t you FLAG THESE SCHOOLS?
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My school pays up to 18,000 CNY (about $2567 today) for international flights each year but it doesn’t matter where we go and we have to use their approved travel agent to book it. If we don’t want to fly internationally then we can get up to 12,000 CNY for domestic flights. When I first interviewed, I asked if they provided flights for the whole family, and they said yes, but only up to this amount (which is same total amount for a single teacher). That amount used to be enough for a couple to fly from Shanghai to the US and back, but now anymore. This summer it will cost about $8000 for my family of three to fly to the US and back, but it doesn’t matter since I already used my flight allowance for us to go to Thailand for Chinese New Year vacation.
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I have been in situations where the school expects you to pay for your own ticket and then – eventually – they refund you. In some cases this was only a portion of the cost. One school wanted me on a certain date but only business class was available. Despite their agreement to cover this cost once I arrived I only got a refund equal to economy class and even then I waited over 3 months. As to the OP, I knew someone from Canada who only received air fare from their international airport and nothing for the internal flight to reach that. I also know of schools in China with such low flight allowances you barely reach Hong Kong. Another red flag that such chiseling schools are best avoided.
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