SPARK Schools
2,8 out of 5 stars.
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SPARK Schools Employee Reviews

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Location
South Africa38 reviews

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2,5Work-Life Balance
2,6Pay & Benefits
2,7Job Security & Advancement
2,5Management
2,9Culture

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Growth opportunity

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Good if you are looking to grow.Management is very poor.Long working hours that can even take up your weekend time.Too much absenteeism from teachers.

Pros

Sometime free food

Cons

Too much cover for other teachers
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Development opportunities and high pressured

Vibrant and energetic culture. Collaborative environment. High pressured and data driven.It is a very tough environment with many opportunities to pull through.

Pros

Growth and development opportunities. Fun environment

Cons

Long hours and high pressured
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Peaceful working environment and caring

Spark school midrand is a greatest environment they treat people with respect and love they also give support in everything , it's a place where you can tell people about and the leadership are people who can share with them your problems actually everything it's fine I feel like I'm home 😊
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Very stressful, too fast paced for teachers and learners.

Very stressful and fast paced environment. No balance between work and personal life. Too many admin expectations. The curriculum is way too fast paced for the learners

Pros

N/a

Cons

many
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Disrespectful towards teachers

They don't value teacher input have to be a robot for them to acknowledge you.The management is taught to treat people like they don't understand their roles as a teacher

Pros

Getting paid

Cons

Crazy long hours
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Fast-paced work environment

Lots of in-house training opportunities. Job growth possible for all employees regardless of position.Good salary though no pension fund, medical aid, as yet.

Pros

Professional development

Cons

No pension fund
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Fun and Vibrant Workplace

This company is innovative and has sophisticated systems in place to ensure that workers, scholars and parents are catered for.It is a vibrant environment and does enhance people's abilities.
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Draining and unsupportive environment

1.No work life balance2. Add additional work load but you are not compensated for it.3. Teacher turn-over is very high.4. Leadership is too young and lack experience.5. It's all about the numbers and not the people.6. Workload is too high with even higher working hours.7. Constantly refering to the school as a business8.Narrate to you how you should teach

Pros

Have good classroom management ideas in place

Cons

Salary Working hours Benefits
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Extremely Overwhelming

1. Management does not care about their employees.2. Not great for gaining experience. 3. Very toxic work environment for a school.4. Unrealistic and unnecessary working hours.5. No professionalism in terms of planning ahead for school terms. 6. Parents have the upper hand. 7. Greatly underpaid. 8. They do not care about you as an employee.9. They are quick to make you sign a permanent contract thinking you will stay.10. Spark schools is an unhealthy working environment both mentally, emotionally and physically.

Pros

None

Cons

Long hours, payment, environment, professional, leadership and growth
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Overwhelming workload

Spark schools is a good school. Stressful like any other school, however with this one the main stressful thing is not having time to yourself especially during the week. There are lot of expectations but not time to meet them. You should be at work as early as 7 and knock off as late as 16h00.

Pros

Growth

Cons

No benefits and long working hours
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Overworked and underpaid

A business venture masquerading as a school. They enslave their staff by overworking and underpaying them. A definite micky mouse republic!! If you love yourself , save yourself.
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Hard work in a ever changing environment

SPARK is great at marketing themselves to parents and teachers. There are lots of promises made with very little follow through. There is no accountability when things go wrong and blame always gets placed on someone else. It is very difficult to get straight answers and you always get the run around. There is no time for a personal life and family time as you have extremely long working hours and when you are not at school you still have to put in many additional hours in the evening and weekends in order to meet expectations. They use disciplinary threats and policies to get you to abide by their way of doing things. The same rules do not apply to everyone and there are major inconsistencies when it comes to implementing rules. The dress code is extremely strict and unreasonable especially when you are teaching for 8 hours a day. Comfort has no place in a SPARK classroom. There are unrealistic expectations placed on teacher with little valuable support and resources. You are expected to use your own money to meet these expectations. Professional development is offered as a selling point yet is often useless and the time could be used to do the mountains of admin that needs to be completed. The emphasis at SPARK is academic achievement and data not learner centered. Your bonus and increase is based on learners results which often leads to dishonesty and mark adjustments. I would not easily recommend SPARK as an organization to work for and I would never send my child there as the academic pressure is too high for them and does not develop a child holistically.

Pros

A great line manager, nice people that became friends

Cons

Salary, long working hours, unrealistic expectations
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Learning experience

It's a warm environment and the people are welcoming.You can learn new skills and experience a great feeling of belonging. I love that people don't let you fail, there's always someone ready to lend a helping hand.
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Happy

I was very happy to be working there. My co-workers were very informative. I gained alot of experience and skill. It was not stressfull at all for me.
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Money driven establishment rather than learner establishment

Did not have a pleasant experience at Spark. Management do not have open communication with staff. Staff are ALWAYS in the dark. Environement is terrible - and have noticed some Spark schools are container classrooms - looks horrible and not appealing whatsoever. Fees are affordable, but to what end? Spark is fake - but are really good at advertising and hides under a masked education system that does not work. Discipline at schools is attention getting signals - they do not work, and I feel makes the children seem like robots. I do not think this is the way to inspire young children. As a proud South African, I would like to embrace the essence of what makes me a South African - Spark is very neutral and takes on a neutral, somewhat American way of teaching. Teaching hours for children are very long and 7 year olds can't concentrate till 3pm. There is only PE and if kids want to play sport, they have to join a sports club - which is an additional fee to school fees...so is Spark really affordable? The curriculum is faltered - if Spark really wants to impress parents and future teachers, they should have properly qualified curriculum coordinators to create a curriculum worth using, and doesn't change every so often. As a parent myself, I wouldn't enroll my child at Spark because it seems to me that Spark is run more like a business rather than a place of learning.

Pros

None

Cons

Lengthy learning & teaching hours
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Not for the faint hearted

When I first started I was blown away by the professional development that teachers receive as well as the support from management. I didn't have anything like that at my last school so I was impressed. As time has gone on, and I'm in my third year now, I am still doing the exact same professional development sessions as I did when I started out, so it's a bit boring to say the least and time I could be using to do prep for my lessons. Since starting I have no time for my personal life, We work very hard until 16:00 every day with no real prep/admin time during the school day. Our break in Flex (Grade 4-7) is 25 minutes long so I have to breath food down before my group comes back from break. It's not fair the kids either as this is their only break for the whole day. Lessons are very short in Flex (40 minutes) with a lot of content that needs to be covered in a short period of time as well as making sure your struggling learners are being tended to as well. I need to do extra lessons after school just so that we can keep up with the work and so that I can make sure my kids actually understand it.The scripted lesson are a bonus, we don't have to spend time we don't have doing them but it leaves little room for creativity as a teacher. People from SPARK support will come into your class randomly, they don't greet you, they check books and leave and complain about them later because you haven't stuck exactly to the lesson plan or you forgot to put that 1 poster on the wall. Classrooms are expected to look a certain way with certain things that HAVE to be up on the - 
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Fun Work Place

Got Promoted 3 times but salary didnt change personal agendas between the managers and should have focused on on the companies goals and loyal to their staff
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Great working environment

Gained a lot of working experience. Management is very involved in making sure that you are suitable for the position that you are placed in and that you are doing what makes you happy.
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SPARK Schools

Thrown into the deep end when starting the job at SPARK Schools. Management not friendly. Some management not qualified for their positions. Friendly teachers and facility management.
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Excellent

Great company and a lot of work You have to be dedicated in order for you to work in this company, you have to love kids make sure that they are safe at all times.
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Stressful

SPARK Schools is very stressful environment to work in. Teachers are not treated fairly and the hours are too long for the work load. The curriculum changes every year and class sizes keep getting bigger and unmanageable. I would not recommend SPARK Schools to any teacher or parent. Your children will have a better school experience at any other school.
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Overall rating

Based on 38 reviews

Ratings by category

2,5 out of 5 stars for Work/Life Balance
2,6 out of 5 stars for Salary/Benefits
2,7 out of 5 stars for Job Security/Advancement
2,5 out of 5 stars for Management
2,9 out of 5 stars for Culture

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