Final Days
by Michael Camilleri
I’m really into the death throes here. Sorry. I’m feeling a little morbid at the moment. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m coming to the end of my time at the school or what but whatever it is I’m feeling a little darker. My mood was not improved when I discovered today that I have to deliver a farewell speech in front of the entire school. And this just after I was telling some of the other JETs on Friday how sorry I was they had to do it. O, cruel fate. It was bad enough doing it when I arrived. I’m not sure what my excuse is going to be for my terrible pronunciation this time around.
The good news is that I have almost all of tomorrow to practise (read: write and practise) my speech. I’m thinking of getting one of the teachers to help me write something and then practise it through a few (dozen) times until it hopefully sounds moderately acceptable. I’m not sure what I’m going to say. I could say I had a great time, and I suppose in some ways I did, but I’d feel like that wasn’t being honest. The worst part is knowing that no matter what I say there’s probably going to be at least 20% who aren’t paying any attention whatsoever. But oh well, what can you do? That’s Ichiko for you. (That’s secondary education anywhere for you, I’m sure some are thinking.)
The job situation has become a bit more concrete in the past few days. It now looks like a part-time job which suits me fine since that was my original plan anyway. I still haven’t signed the contract so I don’t want to jinx it by saying I definitely have it but there’s an orientation on Monday where I’ll go down and sign everything. What could go wrong between now and Monday?
Comments
Speaking of Final Days, I hear NOVA is just about to go under…
Wow, really? They’ve had at least two major scandals this year which obviously aren’t very good for business. Did you hear that from a friend or was it in the news somewhere?
Some of the the Japanese-based English-language bloggers are getting first-hand reports that pay was late (and had to be chased), and that Summer bonuses have been delayed indefinitely.
After the Supreme Court ruled in March that their refund practices were illegal (these are probably the scandals of which you heard), things started to go downhill rapidly. It seems their cashflow was little better than that of a pyramid scheme, funded significantly by the illegal practice of retaining more upfront payment when a student left than judged legal.
The official punishment was that they were not allowed to write any new contracts for longer than 1 year (i.e. this limits the potential losses for any individual student, but limits the potential inflow of funds to NOVA).
In addition, I read that another official sanction was to prevent NOVA from receiving any government “retraining program” funding for 5 years. They had received 16 billion yen over the past 7 years already.
So all that’s left to them is to try to attract new students despite their sullied reputation. If they suffer a “run” (i.e. a whole lot of students cancelling), they may not have enough assets to cover the payouts, which would spell bankruptcy doom.
[...] I noted previously, I was to give a farewell speech at the closing assembly in front of all 600 students and teachers. [...]