I am an American qualified teacher who's been living/teaching in Thailand for 16+ years. I read your comment about who is responsible for paying for work permit and visas. You state that there is no legal answer and I beg to differ on that. My present employer made the mistake of reading the legal requirements in Thai and translating them for me. They state that all costs of employment should be borne by the employer. But of course that part of the document was not translated into English. Funny that. I understand that you are here to give information that is generally the rule in Thailand but I would hope that you could also do something to shed light on the exploitative nature of the education "business" in Thailand.

Another note on that is that the same document states clearly the minimum salaries for teachers, based on their country of origin. These are also not followed as I have seen so many schools paying much much less. Government schools of course.

The same employer stated after reading the requirements carefully that I and all fellow American ex-pats should call our embassy to complain about our abusive treatment at the hands of Thai education officers. I told him that sounds nice, if you are in a movie, but in real life the embassy would never "go to bat" for us on such issues since diplomacy and trade agreements could be at stake.

Oh and, one more thing.. Please try to tone down the mud-slinging at us qualified teachers at International schools. We have our own "row to hoe". I and many like me have been illegally fired simply because the "high quality" schools we worked for didn't want to keep paying us that high salary. Choosing instead to find a fresh recruit or even a volunteer.

The sad fact is that there are very, very few schools in The Kingdom that are not functioning first and foremost as a business, leaving educational excellence as a marketing phrase only. To put it into a very simple phrase, most international schools in Thailand are only international in the name. Every decision, curriculum, business, human resources, are made by Thais, for Thais, and with only one things in mind - profits for them.

Ajarn.com says - I'm not sure of the laws exactly (if they exist of course) but do you mean the employer is liable for the cost of just the visa or the whole 'visa run' itself, because that would be a very difficult thing to put a price on. I would certainly like to hear from any other teachers who have read the same set of rules though. Secondly, I'm not aware of any 'mud-slinging towards international school teachers' on the website. The true international school teachers - those that earn very good salaries with benefits - rarely / never read ajarn.com anyway. Thirdly, as for 'shedding the light on the exploitative nature of the education business in Thailand', I think there are enough postbox entries, articles and comments on the ajarn.com website to give anyone a decent picture of how things are here. But of course - you need to take the time to read through the site.

Kelly