The reason that TBI has recently tried to force confidentiality agreements on innocent teachers is surely because they have so many skeletons in the closet. It is amazing to think that what we, at this blog, know is probably only a small fraction of the true extent of improper conduct at TBI. Until we started this blog, for instance, we had no idea that teachers at TBI Bekasi were being robbed and threatened with arrest and violence. Unlike these teachers, the owner of TBI Semarang is no innocent.

We reported a few months back how this owner used the typical ‘bait and switch’ treatment of promising to get L****, a Canadian national, a work visa, which never materialized. If this owner wouldn’t even get proper work documents for his Academic Team Leader, what chance does anybody have? L***** was angry enough about how the owner had mistreated him to travel all the way to Jakarta to complain. He spoke to Cammy, who then took his concerns to Ashley. Ashley Platts, in a typical blame-the-victim move, got angry and told Cammy that L**** had done the wrong thing for reporting the owner’s broken promises to head office! He told Cammy that it was between L**** and the franchise owner and told Cammy not to mention it again. In short, Platts sold out TBI teachers rather than annoy one of the franchise owners, making a mockery of his claims to be a ‘team player’ and ‘team builder’.

Which brings us to the Luke Preece lock out incident. Once a year Head Office goes out to franchise schools and does a ‘quality control’ audit. However, Luke told us himself that when he arrived in Semarang to conduct the quality control audit, the franchise owner said he was sick and was unable to meet Luke. He said that he would be unable to attend that year’s audit! As Preece tells it, this message was passed on by the Student Adviser. Luke said that that being the case, he would have a look around upstairs, seeing how he had come all the way to Central Java. But by the time he got up to the teacher’s room, the Student Advisor came hurrying upstairs and ordered Luke to leave the building.

Now, when Luke told us this story, he was mocking how unprofessional and downright odd TBI Semarang was. But there is another side to this story surely. Luke left TBI Semarang’s annual audit without speaking to anyone or auditing anything. That means for a 2 year period, a TBI school was using the TBI logo and name without any direct supervision from TBI whatsoever. For two years, no one looked to ensure what policies and procedures were being followed and which were not. This reveals how weak a franchise system TBI has and how low its standards are. They really had no idea what was going on in that school, but they continued allowing them to use the TBI name. Does this sound like a ‘premium’ school to you, or a shabby ‘anything goes’ affair?