In yesterday’s post we discussed the role Mariam’s narcissistic rage had played in the demoralization of TBI staff. With this nasty and self-regarding woman persecuting her detractors and critics and scapegoating her underlings, anyone who worked under Mariam came to fear her moods and tantrums. A lot of capable people left, shaking their heads at…

Most expats who work or have worked for TBI will have only a very superficial knowledge of who Mariam even was. As we said long ago, the business management literature says that one of the surest signs you have a bad CEO or Director is that key personnel go long periods without even seeing her.…

On Nov 30, 2012, at 8:32 AM, Hery Sofiyandy wrote:Hi *******,I am Hery from franchise dept. please let me know your phone number to discuss about your concernsKind Regards,Hery Sofiyandi

It was 2009 when TBI first started to unravel in a noticeable way. It was then that Chris Needham presided over all three Jakarta Group Schools, appointed by the clueless Platts. School numbers were at rock bottom in two out of three schools but Needham thought that having a hundred students enrolled Fatmawati  was such…

The rot spreads far and wide at TBI, doesn’t it? One of the areas in which it is most substandard is the timely delivery of promises. We heard yesterday how Jodi Sheik turned up for the annual whitewash- oh sorry, we mean audit- in April 2012 and somehow found things to be ok at TBI…

Over the past month we have been focussed so much on the shockingly bad reports coming out of TBI Bekasi that I have not offered anything about TBI Kelapa Gading in 2012. In parts 1-4 of this series, which I now resume, we started to examine how Nunu Pratama managed to lose 35-40% of all…

The Indonesian teachers at TBI Bekasi are of a high standard both with qualifications andexperience. The teachers have to take a written test and then an observation. On speakingto the teachers they say that the written test is a fairly unusual request as most schoolsdon’t require an in-house test. Teachers then work part-time with schedules…

 Quality of Resources and Facilities Overall I would say the quality of the EF courses are better for children. EF has ‘practise &play’ an integrated computer learning system where every unit the kids go down to thecomputer room and play language games. In the classroom every class has a computerwhere listening materials from the book…

Hi Sean, When one wants to print anything at TBI Bekasi you have to provide it on a USB drive as they don’t have the computers from the lab linked to the printers. You give the USB to the student advisors on the front office and they don’t use the main printer instead they have…

Binsar seems to have a problem with properly scheduling classes and managing numbers.He assumes that students will keep on doing more and more courses and that any dropoutsare the fault of bad teaching. He’s recently introduced a new student survey after thefirst month and specifically mentioned that teaching was the main issue he was looking…