[esllou]

I am currently in Italy and was thinking of heading over to NZ at the end of the year, but had a few questions.

I am a UK citizen with 15 years experience in teaching English to speakers of other languages, mostly in schools across Europe.

1. Are there opportunities for ESL teachers in NZ at the moment?
2. Would I have any trouble sorting out a job on arrival. I understand I have 6 months as a UK citizen and have a good chance of organising a more permanent stay should I be offered a job once there. Is that about right?
3. Which are the better cities to start a speculative job search of this type in? Better to head to the big 2-3 cities?
4. When is the best time for me to arrive? Ideally, I'd like to arrive just as one academic year is finishing, with plenty of time before the next one starts. When would that be? Dec/Jan?

Thanks a lot for any help you can give me on any of these questions.

esllou

[JandM]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.:)

Ideally, I'd like to arrive just as one academic year is finishing, with plenty of time before the next one starts. When would that be? Dec/Jan?Yes. The long summer holiday is over Christmas and the New Year. The new academic year starts end Jan/beginning Feb. http://www.tapeka.com/schoolholidays.htm But this holiday is a bad time for trying to sort out any formalities of any kind, as things tend to close down, so you can't contact anybody who can tell you any sense.

[IanW99]

...
1. Are there opportunities for ESL teachers in NZ at the moment?
2. Would I have any trouble sorting out a job on arrival. I understand I have 6 months as a UK citizen and have a good chance of organising a more permanent stay should I be offered a job once there. Is that about right?
3. Which are the better cities to start a speculative job search of this type in? Better to head to the big 2-3 cities?
4. When is the best time for me to arrive? Ideally, I'd like to arrive just as one academic year is finishing, with plenty of time before the next one starts. When would that be? Dec/Jan?
...


Hi, and welcome to the forum.

1. For jobs, the first place to look is probably be http://www.seek.co.nz/

2. Yes, it's possible to go to NZ on a holiday visa, secure work and then apply for work permit. Another option may be to apply for a PR now instead of waiting.

3. If you want to teach to students who have don't have english as their first language then your best choice would be Auckland followed by Wellington as these cities have much higher level of immigrants than most other places. But would check on jobs to see if there are any where you would prefer to live.

4. As JandM says, best time to arrive would be December as this is the start of the summer holidays and end of school year. But as already stated, it would be best to sort out a job before this time.

Ian

[esllou]

thanks for the very useful information so far.

As I understand it, organising a teaching job before I head out there is nigh on impossible so it's a bit of a Catch 22 situation...better to sort out a job before you go, but you can't really do that until you get out there! :-)

That may not be the case with regards to state school teaching, but my interest would lie in the private language school sectors: those teaching both immigrants and affluent (mainly Asian) students who go to NZ for weeks/months to learn English.

On the question of timing, if it's not a good idea to arrive bang in the middle of the summer holidays, does that mean getting myself there for early December when the schools are still open? That seems to make the most sense. In the UK, language schools do a lot of their business during the June-September period: is there an equivalent south hemisphere peak period during the summer?

Thanks again to those who have taken their time to reply to my queries.

[JandM]

On the question of timing, if it's not a good idea to arrive bang in the middle of the summer holidays, does that mean getting myself there for early December when the schools are still open? That seems to make the most sense.That sounds like good sense to me, too.

I don't KNOW this, but as you're saying you're interested in the private sector, you might not have quite the same problems with netting a job from afar as the state school teachers do. I've just done this search. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=ESL+schools+Auckland+NZ&btnG=Search It could be worth some emails to see if there are going to be vacancies, or how they recruit - ?

[esllou]

yes, I intend to get in touch with various ESL schools over the next few weeks in the big cities just to get a feel for vacancy levels for when I arrive.

I'll now have a look on this forum for some guidelines, but could someone give me an idea of wage/rent levels to expect. Are there big differences between the various cities?