In 2013 we alerted readers to the fact that TBI Kelapa Gading had made an astonishing choice for their next School Manager. Indeed, it struck us as so ridiculous that we openly mocked the choice from the start. This was a case where caution was not required. Anyone with a lick of common sense would…
This interview, with a former manager of TBI Kelapa Gading, covers the early history of TBI Kelapa Gading and explores why it lost most its early customers within 2 years. What can you tell us about the establishment of TBI Kelapa Gading? The school was opened in 2006 as a Franchise school. It was sold…
This interview with a former teacher and then manager from TBI Kelapa Gading reveals that some of their franchise schools have been havens of tax avoidance and other murky practices. In your experience did TBI Kelapa Gading comply with Indonesian tax law? That’s a resounding no. They did not comply with tax laws in any…
In this post we will examine 6 seemingly random events across a number of years at TBI and show how they are really connected, and what this connection reveals about TBI. None of these stories are new of themselves, but they nicely illustrate what TBI really thinks of its teachers. Event #1 Immigration raids TBI…
Part 4. Where Did All the Children Go, Nunu? We have been slowly exploring how Nunu Pratama could have lost 35% of classes within three months between March and May 2012. So far we have touched on a few reasons for this dismal performance: Nunu lied to the teachers he had a CELTA and…
There is one episode which occurred around this time which we have not reported for 8 months: Immigration conducted a raid on TBI Kelapa Gading in March 2012. Why did we wait so long to report on this incident? The basic answer is because we need to protect the confidentiality of our sources. While we…
In this series we are examining how Nunu Pratama, the new School Manager of Kelapa Gading, managed to lose 35% of classes from the schedule in just 3 months. We will be showing you the teaching schedule at the end of May, which was provided to us by a disgruntled casual teacher. But before we reach…
One of the more puzzling things (for Cameron) about the whole story of Kelapa Gading was why Luke Preece promised A*** and St**** that they could get visas at TBI Kelapa Gading when they didn’t have an English degree. As Cameron said to me when I asked him about this this morning: Luke (Preece) is…
One of the very difficult things about Kelapa Gading was the fact that I had to work very hard to get the owners to accept Indonesian teachers. Kelapa Gading is a high-income part of the city and about 75% of our students were Chinese Indonesian. Many of the Chinese-Indonesians would come in and say outrageous…
In recent days we have shown the emails which proved that the owner said he regretted I had left Kelapa Gading and the casual teachers saying they were shocked we had left, all from just a day or two after the event. We have shown Lipi’s testimonial which confirms independently that we resigned. I have…
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