Ok, here's the poll- think it's fairly self-explanatory. I'm hoping for this to reflect recent reality on the ground, so please don't respond to the poll if your experience comes from a period of time before the last 3 years.

I got my WP within 10 days of landing a real job. I'm not sure your third poll question is correctly written. Did you mean border runs or visa runs? I never made a visa run, but had to make a border run about a month after I completed my TEFL, and before I was able to secure a WP.

Let's say any run outside Thailand, for the purpose of getting, continuing, or extending one's attempt to work here. Your terminology is probably more correct; I'll change that in the poll.

If it wasn't for the agency, I'd have got my WP in a week as well. As soon as my school noticed my boss hadn't got me a WP, they kicked her ass out and asked me to join them directly. A week later I had my work permit. About 3months later I got my Thai teacher's licence, valid for 5years

According to the poll results Thai schools certainly seem to be performing better than many discussion forums would (mis)lead you to believe.

Indeed, if this small but apparently valid sample is correct, Thai schools have gotten their act together since I first taught in that remote provinmce in 2003. Good.

Well, if you look at the last poll created by PB, which I have finally located, you will see that things have improved considerably and very recently- so if past comments on forums do not reflect reality at this very moment, it is not exactly because any of them were misleading anyone. It is nice to see that there *has* been some improvement, and one can hope that vigilant criticism and warnings to newer teachers helped to shape the more positive current situation.

Or, on a more cynical note, more of the recent teachers with work permits are just working for agencies who can get work permits for anyone....

Kidding!!!

Cheers for putting this up ijustwanna, it certainly looks fairly positive.