In this final part of this four part series of posts on TBI’s organizational structure- one which we have shown has been plagued by rent-seeking practices which have sapped the energy and competitiveness of the company from the start- we look at the real reasons for Mariam’s ouster in late 2015. Why was the TBI…
What did you make of the decision to appoint Nunu Pratama as manager at TBI Kelapa Gading in 2012? You had previously been his manager at TBI Kuningan. Well, I thought it was a highly risky decision because he had said to be many times, “I am lazy. I just want to be teach my…
In this post, I interview again a former TBI Kuningan manager who was instrumental in revealing TBI’s long history of illegal labor scams and also Luke Preece’s history of rigging interview panels and job appointments in favor of his cronies. In this interview, I ask him about his views on latest developments at TBI and…
A few days ago we announced the pleasing news that The British Council, already in Medan, will be opening schools in Jakarta and Surabaya too, opening around March 2015. This will provide another respected, reliable alternative to unscrupulous local operators such as TBI (PT. Titian Buama Ilmu) or (even worse), Rumah Bahasa, a rogue school…
One of the issues we have raised in recent weeks is the rampant age discrimination which is evident in TBI job ads, and even on the TBI website itself. Worryingly, their very own website stated that they were only interested in interviewing managers who were 35 years or younger. When it comes to service staff,…
There’s a new dance craze sweeping the TEFL world of Jakarta: it’s known by some as the TBI Flip Flop; others prefer to call it the TBI Knee-Jerk Reaction; but here on this blog, we call it the TBI Backflip, because every time someone points out how immoral, greedy and unprincipled they are on a…
I was teaching Business English the other day to a Pre-Intermediate class and I came across a reading passage on ‘The Quality Circle’. This is a common term which is thrown around in business books these days and no doubt it is already last decade’s news on the corporate training circuit. But like most of…
I knew RD personally- he was a very good man, very family oriented and a professional in his field. I know when he was in TBI Bogor he hired some great teachers and removed some not so good ones. The student numbers were constantly rising and his fellow teachers praised him a lot for his…
Ashley Platts directly intervened at TBI Kelapa Gading just as he did at TBI Bogor, arguing that expat managers were too expensive and that I ought to be replaced by an Indonesian. (By late 2011 I was the last expat franchise school manager in the entire company. According to Platts, it was such an outrage…
I resigned as manager of TBI Kelapa Gading on February 29th, 2012, after a week in which the owners had lied to me many times and back-flipped on half a dozen promises (especially about making TBI Kelapa Gading finances more transparent). This was the culmination of a long struggle to get them to “go straight” and register…
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