Hi all. I've been offered a job teaching 7 and 8 years old at a private Bilingual school in Zurich. It would be full-time work, 42 hours a week.

I was wondering if there were any teachers out there who could share the ballpark salary figure I should ask for. The school has asked ME to give them a salary expectation and I told them I'd have to research a bit.

The federal Swiss salary website said that 7,000K CHF a month is the average pay.

I'm 32 year old male with an MBA and many years of teaching at a wide variety of levels.

What do you think I should ask for? I'm terrible at this sorta thing!

Thanks in advance!

Oops, I found the primary school teacher thread...looks like 75K to 100K is the norm.

Thanks!

Please search this Forum: Daily Life, Sticky, Government salaray calculator,

http://www.lohnrechner.bfs.admin.ch/...d.aspx?lang=de

Hmmm, according to that, I'm grossly overpaid for someone living in ZH, let alone TI!

Tom

You cannot be then the average Joe.
Don't worry, that's how I felt after graduating a two year stint in the employment program called "work permit in exchange for an underpaid position" and moved on.

Not in our village...
Here you will be very, very lucky to get above 85k as a primary school teacher. You also wouldn't be working/paid a 42 hour week. 75k is more the norm.

First years have a 20- 22 hour "class time" week, depending on German as a second language classes and religion classes- which the regular teacher doesn't take anyway. They get paid for a 40 hour week (preparation time), even when the "face hours" go up to 25 hours in the kids' 3rd year of school.

HI there,

I worked for a while in a bilingual school in zurich teaching years 3 and 4. From my experience there I found that there is a huge amount of additional work teaching in a bilingual school than a non-bilingual one.

The relationship with the partner teacher was critical. With us we got on well but we spent hours and hours doing the weekly handover, discussing the students, curriculum and we were both there at parents' evenings. Then the policies, curriculum, homework etc all had to be translated and this took hours too.

Not sure what curriculum you are following but mine was basically a Swiss school with half the curriculum delivered in English so I had to teach from maths curriculum and follow other documents I was not familiar with and were obviously in German which was very taxing as my German is poor. I also had to teach new kinds of gym lessons (trapezing and ice skating) and for this I did not really feel comfortable.

Anyway, this is not to be negative about your job but actually a long winded way of saying I was paid 10% more than the cantonal teachers on the official scale and this was to reflect the additional work that working in a bilingual school entails. I thought this was more than fair and is something you could argue for if it isn't already part of what your school offers.

Also the salary would have been going up more each year and the rise was more than I expected. I did not stay to enjoy this rise though as I decided to leave. I think that the levels you have been quoted seem a little high but not overly so.

hth