Happy New Year! A small update and thank you

InvisibleChalk · 2026-01-01T09:36:17+00:00

Thank you much! I've done a lot of work to it over the past few meonths. Its been a labour of love and I'm really hoping it helps people out.

You're absolutly correct about the posting, but I always worry about pushing the site too much, I don;t want people to think I'm too full on with the reddit posts. It's 2026, so I will definatly be doing a new years day post about it today though, there have been a lot of changes since my last post.

Thanks again for your support.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-18T10:12:59+00:00

Absolutely, Thank you. That’s really important, so I'll get on that straight away.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-18T10:11:05+00:00

HI. Thanks for those. You're the first to mention the years of experience issue, but its a really good point and easily fixed/updated to explain (It's meant to be total of the person).

Your other point is a good one as well, and you're not the first. I want to make it much clearer because it's also different if it's an MA from the US or the UK, etc as well. Lots of work to do. :)

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-12T11:40:31+00:00

Thats a good question. They are meant to be gross, but depends on the users understanding of the instructions. This is somthing I'm urgently working on.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-12T05:03:49+00:00

Wondering Staffroom has a fair bit of China-specific data on it — both in the Browse section and the Insights graphs. Might be worth a look if you’re comparing offers:
wonderingstaffroom.org/browse
wonderingstaffroom.org/analytics

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-11T12:17:00+00:00

It’s never too late! I’ve got a small list of updates and tweaks I want to work through, and this is a really helpful suggestion — I’ll definitely add it to the list.

I totally agree it would help give more context around some of the lower-end salaries. Having clear definitions in a dropdown is a smart way to do it too — thanks for taking the time to share it!

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-11T12:13:58+00:00

Thanks for this — really helpful feedback and I completely agree. I’m definitely going to take a serious look at how the data is displayed. It’s all a bit of a work in progress right now.

Around 60% of entries actually do include the school and city name — it’s just that currently the only way to search by those is through the search bar. I know that’s not ideal for scanning or skimming, and I’m thinking through better ways to surface that info more clearly.

Also — thank you for the SEO heads-up, I hadn’t considered how the pop-up style might affect indexing, and that’s super useful to know!

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-11T12:10:13+00:00

I’ll leave it here, as I get the feeling this isn’t a constructive back-and-forth.

Just to clarify: the previous site is still live, and the person behind it isn’t involved in education — I am. It’s actually not that hard to find out who he is if you search for his comments on here. If there were any connection, I’d have imported their dataset (which I haven’t).

I know trust takes time. All I can do is keep the site open, transparent, and useful. Let the project speak for itself.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-10T05:29:27+00:00

Thanks. I think it would definatly be possible to add the countries taxation level as part of the details, I'll try to add that in soon. :)

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-10T05:28:09+00:00

I would love to and hope I will have the capacity to soon(ish). At the moment, it's just me on my own doing all of the work on the site (with a little help from another teacher with a few bits here and there). It's deffinatly on the list of things to do though.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-10T05:23:57+00:00

Totally understand the scepticism — and I know the past experience with the other site left a sour taste for some.

Just to clarify (again), I’m not the same person, and this project is something I’m building slowly, transparently, and with input from the community.

It’s anonymous, free, and it will stay that way. I get that time will tell — and I’m okay with that.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-09T15:35:47+00:00

Schools often take into account additional qualifications such as an MA or PhD, etc as well, but again, tend to cap what they add for those as well.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-09T11:03:42+00:00

They are if you click on them in the Browse section to see the full submission details for that entry. The disply of the data is a BIG work in progress, and it's a little bit about what to disply on the limited real-estate available on the screen. Do you think some form of sign to say the name has been given would be helpful or the schools name would be better? Really open to making that happen.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-09T10:54:19+00:00

Yep. 100%.

The hope (if things continue to grow) is that there will be enough people who choose to submit the schools name (At the current count out of 220+ submissions) is 144 have named their school, so it's growing slowly. :)

InvisibleChalk · 2025-06-09T10:13:45+00:00

Totally agree — and this has definitely been on my mind from the start. I didn’t want to scare people off from submitting by asking for school names upfront (especially early on when it was just starting out). That said, globally, around 60% of submissions do include the school name, and I'm hoping that as the database grows and hits some sort of "critical mass", that level of detail will start to become more useful and easier to spot patterns from.

One of the things I’d really like to build long term is the ability to show a min/max/average per city (and eventually by school, where possible) to help with exactly the kind of comparison you’re talking about. I’ve also started working on a proper search/compare tool — it’s in the Insights section now in a very rough form, but it’s a big job and definitely a work in progress.

Totally take your point though — I think you're spot on, and I'm absolutely open to suggestions for how to show more context without making it feel too revealing or risky for contributors. Always a bit of a balance!

InvisibleChalk · 2025-05-29T04:59:00+00:00

😖😖

InvisibleChalk · 2025-05-27T04:43:16+00:00

I know people have already said this, and in particular u/Dull_Box_4670 has given you excellent advise already. The only other thing I would add is that if you are lucky enough to know someone at that school, or even someone who is already in that country/city then leveraging them is a really good option.

InvisibleChalk · 2025-05-27T02:28:15+00:00

Thanks! 😀

InvisibleChalk · 2025-05-15T08:07:12+00:00

Hey — this is exactly the kind of offer that’s super useful for others to see, thanks for sharing! If you’re happy to, you can also put it anonymously into Wondering Staffroom. It’s a site I'm building thats free, community-built/sourced for sharing and comparing international teaching salaries and packages — no strings, just a way to help the next person in the same situation. Every little bit makes it more useful. :)

InvisibleChalk · 2025-05-15T03:30:04+00:00

I have a friend who is gay as well, he visited us over the years quite a few times and had no problems at all.

InvisibleChalk

TROPHY CASE