I’ve taught freelance Business English in Germany since 2009 for three language schools. In none of them was I paid enough to live on. Their contracts were similar. This is my experience of the worst of them.
As a stay-at-home mother I had given private English coaching to school pupils for several years, when my German husband, who was a civil servant, persuaded me to get a job so that we could buy a house. At that time, I knew nothing about German labour laws or contracts.
I have a teaching degree from Cambridge University, so I applied to a language school based in Munich and had a chat with a friendly American, who after 20 minutes, told me I was hired. A face-to-face interview was unnecessary; I must travel at my own expense to Munich for a weekend’s training. Books would be provided.
Pay and Conditions
I gratefully signed the contract. Pay was 15.00 Euros for 45 minutes. This might appear to be a relatively decent wage, but considering the fact that in Germany approximately 40% of a freelancer’s wage is swallowed up by tax, health insurance and pension contributions, it doesn’t amount to much. Travel costs were not usually paid; neither was preparation time. Tests were to be returned to the school at the trainers’ own expense. Printing and costs for extra learning materials were also provided by the trainer.
I relied on the school’s teaching books and as I was no businesswoman, I used the students’ company experience, tailoring lessons to their needs and learning about their work and lives. Over time, I taught employees in telecommunication, manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies, in medical, financial, legal, human resources and sales departments. I was often asked to teach follow-up courses. Gaining experience and learning about the outside world, I enjoyed the independence, but something about the language school was beginning to bother me.
Endless problems
Invoicing was laborious. All the course documents had to be scanned and returned to the school every month for verification, and the school often appeared ignorant of trainers’ schedules. Accounts would send me an invoice which had to be checked. If incorrect, which was often the case, I would inform them. There seemed to be poor communication between Accounts and Central Management. Payment arrived a whole month after a month’s work, but there were sometimes delays, e.g. over the holidays; payment could be as late as 5-6 weeks. Once, my payment arrived so late that I asked to speak to the Accounts Manager, but was informed that this was against company transparency policy.
I wrote suggesting they introduce a system to automatically calculate trainers’ invoices. I was told that this innovation was in the pipeline. Over three years passed, however the system remained unchanged. When I made suggestions, the ladies in Central Management thanked me, but nothing was done. I became aware of the school’s rapid staff turnover. Every six months, new interns arrived and had to learn the ropes, resulting in inevitable mistakes. Interns hinted that communication between management and employees was a problem.
Contact with other trainers was rare, except once a year at a Christmas get-together with a few nice people from lower management. Trainers were thrown in at the deep end with the shallowest of briefings. After offering to onboard new trainers in my town, I realised the few who did join were students, short-term tourists, or people whose girl- or boyfriends lived in Germany. Some but not all had teaching experience. As a German-speaking permanent resident with experience and knowledge of the employees’ companies, I had no shortage of courses, often taking over from trainers who left halfway through.
Student frustration
In this way I realised there was a high level of student frustration, not only with the trainers, but also with the school. One student said that her trainer had often been late for lessons or had cancelled at the last minute. Others said that their trainer had never corrected them and that they hadn’t learnt anything. Some groups were comprised of students at different levels, which made it hard to progress. Trainers often had accents which were hard for the students to understand, or held lessons in which they talked about topics which interested them, but had little relevance to the students.
Communication with the school was difficult. It could take weeks for books to arrive. All kinds of excuses were made. Test certificates were often sent late and were sometimes incorrect. A student told me that when her course certificate arrived, several weeks late, the school had graded her at Level B2.1 instead of B1.2 (not that she minded!)
Not enough to live on
My marriage broke up in 2015. I moved house and started to earn my own living, taking on more courses. After 10 years, I was paid 19.50 Euros per lesson. In comparison, a state school substitute teacher receives 27 Euros per 45 minutes, and he or she only pays 50% of his or her social contributions. A fully qualified teacher is paid 50 Euros per lesson. I had 17 courses per week, but lessons were often cancelled more than 24 hours beforehand, so I received only half the amount at the end of the month. The school however, was paid in full before courses started. The school flattered me, saying that I was the best they had in my town, but my pay rise requests were rejected. I supplemented my income by translating, private English coaching and conducting teacher trainings for regional governments.
I began to question my contract. Although I was freelance, I had to use the school’s materials and attend the courses at the Client Companies, but the school was not obliged to pay my health or pension insurance, holiday benefits or travel costs. I was legally liable to pay my own social contributions and if I didn’t, I would be fined. On the other hand, I had the freedom to stop any course without a reason, and I could choose to refuse a course, or delegate lessons. Although I was freelance, I was not allowed to compete with the language school for the same customer, and if I did so, would be fined 2,000.00 euros. The contract was supposed to refer to the duration of one course, but as courses always overlapped, there was never an end to them. A new contract was only signed when a pay rise was agreed.
Was this an adhesion contract, I asked myself, forcing the trainer to work for the school under certain conditions, like an employer does? It seemed to be a case of fictitious or disguised employment. One thing was certain – the remuneration offered was certainly not enough to live on.
Employee feedback
I looked up the school’s performance in Glassdoor and found that while there were some positive reviews, there were also a large number of negative reviews:
‘It is a company with zero respect for its employees, no management skills and border line arrogant attitude. They are not paying teachers and constantly losing work. It looks like a big money laundering scheme…’
‘The employees are treated like crap. I did an internship there and had to turn to the Federal Labor Office because (language school name) did not want to pay me my minimum wage. Illegal shack…’ (translated).
‘Management’s handling of employees was and still is a disaster. They are butchered in front of colleagues, supervisors and even customers…’ (translated).
Quitting the chaos
Eventually I gave in my notice, and the ladies in Central Management went into panic stations, said that they had no other trainer in my town and they couldn’t manage without me. A few days later, the school’s CEO phoned to ask if there was anything they could do to persuade me to stay. I said that I had already asked for a pay rise but had twice been refused, and she insisted that this was the first she had heard of it. I told her I didn’t want to work in a fictitious employment situation. When I told her that Central Management had informed me that there were no other trainers in my town, she exploded with a profanity, denying that she knew anything about it. Then she asked if I would be interested in a possible position as a fully employed teacher-trainer. If so, she would invite me to discuss it with her at a restaurant in Munich. She would pay for hotel and travel expenses. I should give her two dates. I did so, but received no response. Recently I discovered that the language school had filed for insolvency.
I have since learned that many schools occupy their trainers under similar contractual conditions. Something is clearly rotten in the state of language teaching in Germany.
by Kate Chamberlayne
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Bio: Kate Chamberlayne has lived in Bavaria, Germany for nearly 30 years. She is the author of an English-German vocabulary book for primary schools and a novel for teenagers. She is married and divides her time between her family, language coaching, writing, and giving advanced training to Bavarian teachers. Kate Chamberlayne is a pseudonym.
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