In this part we focus on the ugliest of all the new kids on the block, our old nemesis, Rumah Bahasa. This hideous brainchild of sociopathic con-man Frendy Horas was surely the nastiest excuse for a language school to have appeared in Indonesia in the past decade. Nothing more than a elaborate con, Rumah Bahasa…
Well, even for jaded, cynical TBI observers such as ourselves, we are surprised by just how low their fortunes have sunk. In recent weeks they have started once again advertising or teachers on online jobs websites, notably Dave’s ESL Cafe. There are now two successive teachers who have come onto the discussion forum and revealed…
Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 5:47 am Post subject: UPDATE: Just did the interview! Concerning the KITAS, he echoed almost exactly what you said here. He said the Indonesian government has greatly reduced the number of visas they issue, and because the process itself takes months, other schools (he mentioned a couple by name) have…
Since 2013 there have been a number of high-profile newcomers to the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) scene in Indonesia. Many of these have attracted large bodies of students, showing that there is ever more money to be made from offering English courses to Indonesia’s young population. We will focus on four language…
As we made clear in Parts 1 and 2, TBI (The British Institute) has long blamed its recruitment woes on the Education Ministry regulation that English teachers in Indonesia need to have a degree in English or Applied Linguistics or a Masters of TESOL. They have long portrayed themselves as the victims of unfair and…
Language and Beyond in Bintaro is not a serious or reputable language school, as the customer comment below indicates. Actually, it is closely related to Rumah Bahasa, which has closed its doors at multiple locations, cheating customers out of millions and millions of rupiah. The customer below makes allegations we have heard time and again:…
A few days ago we requested inside information about Global Language Centre, a language school chain which has suddenly collapsed, leaving thousands of students out of pocket. One former teacher has kindly responded, offering a fairly bleak view of a mismanaged, rather desperate school. Here is what she had to say about the latest language…
This situation reminds me of NOVA in Japan in October 26, 2007 when NOVA closed its doors to 1,000 schools without warning, throwing 5,000 English teachers on the street and hundreds of millions dollars in pre-paid tuition was gone. I worked for the doomed English school at that time and after years of bad publicity…
In early April 2015 Rumah Bahasa Cinere Mall suddenly closed down just 2 months after opening. Between 300 and 400 students were cheated out of their course payments. Some of them lost up to $1000, scammed by Frendy Horas, Rumah Bahasa’s con-artist mastermind. This was Horas’s seventh and final school to close in Jakarta, and…
In this week’s installment, we look at an important word for any Westerner in Indonesia. This is a word which has attained a rather dubious prominence in recent discussions about expat life in Indonesia. It is also very prominent in discussions about social trends in broader Indonesian society. That word is the verb melarang, which…
tbilanguageschool 