Stockholm, Europe Brief News – Internationella Engelska Skolan (IES), also known as International English School, is a Swedish corporation that operates the independent schools of Sweden, and these schools are also known as “free schools.”
However, recently these schools have caused quite a stir around Sweden and have raised many eyebrows.
It all started when an investigative article was published by The Local about what it’s truly like to be a foreign teacher at IES schools.
The very article caused a massive ongoing debate and raised questions yet to be answered.
The Local continues to write that Sweden’s most prominent free school corporation underpays the foreign teachers who are part of their daily faculty at the school.
Local teachers, however, are paid duly and according to the services given. The local provides shreds of evidence on their claims regarding how the school authority continues to pay lower wages to teachers from abroad.
It quotes the words said by the school’s previous foreign teacher in the comment section under the relevant article “low wages and extra work assignments and not getting paid were the main reasons I left.”
They further build up their argument by telling The Local how students were affected by such a sudden turnover of their teaching faculty.
Moreover, this investigation also caused a war of words on Swedish twitter, forcing the chain’s American founder to talk about it, bringing no good to the debate.
He outwardly declared all those claims as “bullshit.” Nevertheless, many teachers continued to blame the school and refused to step back from any claims.
Having said that, the question remains the same, why does the IES story continue to be such a hot topic for Swedish locals?
Maybe because it had stayed in the spotlight even before this on a much more controversial issue, the dress code of the female students.
The Local shares how in an article by Aftonbladet, it wrote that in Täby north of Stockholm, the school authority measured the sizes of skirts worn by the female students and handed out leggings to those wearing short ones.
This brought a negative image of these schools in front of the people.
To conclude, it is essential to say that the school authorities have done nothing, and foreign teachers continue to raise their voices against such unfair treatment.
