I am a beginner and I don't know how long I want to commit myself to my first school.

1) Which kind of schools do ask the least in terms of commitment ?

2) Does one normally have to sign a contract, also for the average (crappy) language school ?

3) If so, what's the usual minimum duration of such a contract ?

4) And if contracts are common, how can there be such a high turn over in the English Teachers branche, with no (?) consequences for the departing teacher ?

What's wrong with me ?

I am a beginner and I don't know how long I want to commit myself to my first school.

1) Which kind of schools do ask the least in terms of commitment ?

2) Does one normally have to sign a contract, also for the average (crappy) language school ?

3) If so, what's the usual minimum duration of such a contract ?

4) And if contracts are common, how can there be such a high turn over in the English Teachers branche, with no (?) consequences for the departing teacher ?

I'm sorry that nobody answered your question right away; somehow it got overlooked.

1) Language schools.

2) Regular schools (govt. and private, full time attendance by students) will ask you to sign, but probably not language schools.

3) One or two semesters. Surely it varies.

4) Hard to say. I saw my first 3 month contract, and never saw the others. I felt free to leave if I wanted, although I knew we had a verbal contract to the end of the academic year. I stayed; most people do. But many teachers feel if they were recruited dishonestly, lied to, and mistreated, they're free to leave by breach of contract. Many schools will dismiss a teacher they don't want, giving little importance to the contract.

That's my opinion; everybody has one. Thanks for asking, and welcome to the forum.

That's exactly what I wanted to know, thanks !

Question: If I left a private language school after one month and just walked out , can they do anything to me besides saying that I owe them 2k baht for the TEFL course? I didnt sigh any contract but they did issued me a Non-B.

As I've said before here, if the school hasn't gone through the formalities to make you a legal employee, then as far as the government is concerned, you never worked there. If the school wants to accuse you of breaking a "contract," they have to admit they were employing you illegally.

If you DO break a contract while having full legal standing, they can make it impossible for you to ever work legally in Thailand again; of course, these days the Thai government is seeing to that for almost all of us.

As far as what else they can do to you (under the table), there's no telling. There are rumours of local/regional blacklists, schools with minor mafia connections, etc. If you're in a small town you'll be more vulnerable in general. But in general they can usually do much less to you than they'll say they can, and they can only fool with you legally if they've played by the rules to begin with.

"Steven"