Did you know that there are parents with children who work in mining, oil, and gas, who need their kids to go to school?

Haha, it wasn’t really something I specifically thought about since I’ve always been very pro-recycling, go-green, eco-friendly and many companies in the natural resources industry are not known for this. In fact, I did make a list of green schools I wanted to work for too!

A lot of the schools on this list seem to be in Indonesia; not too far from beaches like this

Of course, if you have been around in the international teaching world for even a few months you will have probably heard of Saudi Aramco Schools (and if you haven’t you can read my Wishful Wednesday post about them), but for some reason, over the course of the past few months, I keep hearing about other tiny schools that are owned by these big natural resource companies.

Since the hiring season is in full swing, I wanted to make a list of these company-sponsored schools that I’ve found in case others were interested in applying.  I’ve also mentioned a few notes about them and where I’ve seen job postings for them.  I’ve used some acronyms to a few different recruiters, so if you want a more comprehensive list you can check out my post about the biggest recruiters- here.

1. Saudi Aramco- When I last looked into this school in 2005 I wrote, “SAES is like a school district and has six schools on various camps (Dhahran, Abqaiq, Ras Tanura, and Udhailiyah) and over 4000 students!” Someone even wrote to me on LinkedIn and said that they have seen single parents teaching at Aramco schools. I’ve heard of people getting jobs with SAES through UNI and Search.
2. Zaagkam– Interviewed with this school a few times one year and think it sounds really great. After talking with some of the teachers who worked there I learned that it is a great place for really independent singles and people who already have families (ie- dating was not great). This was pre-baby for me and I knew I wanted a family, so that was the main reason I turned down the opportunity.  I got interviews with this school by applying on Search.
3. Ambatovy International School is an ISS managed school which serves children of the Ambatovy mining enterprise.
4. Dostyk American International School also managed by ISS – the director of this school reached out to me in 2016 and I had never heard of this place. After doing some research it sounds like a great place!
5. Independent Schools Riau is yet another oil school managed by ISS and sponsored by Chevron Pacific Indonesia.
6. Sekolah Buin Batu – the music teacher for this school happened to sit at the table next to mine while I was in Jakarta for my PYP training in October. This school serves the dependents of employees and contractors of PT Aman Mineral Nusa Tenggara’s vast copper and gold mine.  The guy I talked to said he was hired through Search Associates.
7. There are five Shell Affiliated Schools On their employment website it says, “all Shell and Shell affiliated schools the core curriculum taught is the International Primary Curriculum (IPC)”. It sounds like their employment description is geared toward UK teachers, but I know US teachers who have taught the IPC.  I think you need to apply directly through the site I linked to, but I also saw jobs with Shell listed on TES.

While there are only 7 schools on my list (I’m sure there are more that I haven’t heard of!), if you were to apply to all of these companies it would give you access to at least 16 schools.  I usually advise people to apply to Search if they are only going to use one recruiter, but if you want to apply to all of these schools you would probably need to apply to ISS to get access to their natural resources schools too.

Comment below! Have you worked for any of these schools? Have you heard of other oil and mining company-sponsored schools?