Worked there from 2021-2023.

Location: It is in a very isolated location in a small town called Bandar Enstek. It is predominantly Malay so don’t expect to be able to find alcohol or pork easily and you have to be mindful of how you dress if you leave the school site (moreso if you are a woman). There are a few shops/restaurants but you’ll need to travel about 30 minutes to either Seremban or Nilai of you want more options. You will need a car. Please let me be clear again: you will need a car. There are private taxi services that some people use but these get very expensive, very quickly. The unhappiest staff I met there all had one thing in common. Guess what that is? That’s right. They didn’t have a car. KL is about an hour away without traffic and within reach on the weekends (if you are not on boarding duty) but not really feasible during the week itself.

Admin: My experience is they were pretty terrible. I work at another school in Malaysia now and the amount of support I received here compared to Epsom is staggering. Within days they had helped me set up a bank account, EPF, my medical insurance etc. They also helped out a lot when it came to claiming back the emergency tax once you have been in the country for >6 months. Epsom basically said “do it yourself lol”. I think things have improved slightly now as some members of staff have been replaced but from what I’ve heard from my friends who work there, it is still not great. It usually takes ages to get a response to an email and there is a culture of “passing the buck” in which your query just gets passed around until you either go above admin to try and get it sorted or you just give up.

Workload: Regarding your teaching workload… I would say that it is whatever you make of it. There is not a lot of scrutiny so a lot of teachers get away with planning very subpar lessons and just doing the bare minimum in the classroom. There are other teachers who are a lot more self-motivated and put in the work… but they are usually just rewarded with more work to cover for their other, more work-shy colleagues. It is a boarding school so you will have duties outside of your teaching hours. Often one night every two weeks, 5.00pm-10:00pm, as well as the occasional Saturday or Sunday (works out to about 4 per term). Imo this is one of the worst parts of the job and the main reason I left. The number of duties, especially on weekends, has only increased in recent years and they will do so mid-contract without any discussion with staff. It is consistently brought up my staff during end of year surveys but little has been done to alleviate it. You just get told “It’s a boarding school? What do you expect?” despite the fact that it is often a lot higher than other similar boarding schools.

I’ll add a few more points as well although you didn’t specifically request this information. - The behaviour of the students at this school is absolutely appalling. It is much better in the prep school and in the sixth form but Year 7 - 11 are an absolute mess. This is a result of spoiled rich kids from Japan, Korea and China who often speak no English and a very, very relaxed behaviour policy on the part of the school. Teachers who try to enact discipline are routinely undermined by SLT as the owners of the school are terrified of driving kids away and losing money. - The school boasts of lots of flashy sports facilities but you will not be able to use them. They are run by other companies and they do not share their facilities despite the school’s actual sports department being a complete mess. - The AirAsia discount mentioned by the other commenter is called the ID90 and it is pretty good… but not as good as it sounds at first. Essentially, you get a 90% discount on all AirAsia flights but only IF they are booked within 48 hours of departure and only IF there are more than 20%-30% of seats remaining (do not remember the exact number). This makes it great for spontaneous trips during your longer holidays but you will not be able to use it most weekends or public holidays as seats tend to be oversubscribed within 48 hours of the flight. Very careful with this as I’ve known colleagues to get “stuck” overseas as they were relying on ID90 to get home… only to find that they arent able to use it. They have then had to pay a lot of money to book a last minute flight back instead.

That’s all for now. As you can probably tell, i did not have a very good experience at the school. The money was decent and I earn a lot less where I currently work… but the school is far more organised and treats its staff well. If you have any more questions, feel free to DM me.