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You can be qualified to teach English before you finish school.
Not a certificate of attendance. A 120 hour qualification that language schools, online platforms and government teaching programmes around the world actually recognise. You study it online, around A levels, at whatever pace you can manage.
The bit most TEFL marketing leaves out.
You will see a lot of pages promising that a TEFL certificate sends you off to teach in Japan. Eventually it might. Not at seventeen, and for most countries not without a degree either. Here is the actual sequence, so you can plan around it rather than be disappointed by it.
What each one asks of you, and what it pays.
Every figure below comes from the programme's own published information. Where something is unpaid or the pay depends entirely on what you find, we say so.
| Route | When | Age | Degree | Pay, as published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tutoring closer to home | Now | No minimum age of its own, though under eighteen you need your school and your parents on side | Not required | The UK minimum wage floor is £8.00 an hour under eighteen and £10.85 at eighteen to twenty, from April 2026 (gov.uk) |
| Teaching English online | At 18 | Cambly requires you to be at least eighteen | Not required | Cambly publishes $0.17 a minute, which is $10.20 an hour, and $12.00 an hour on Cambly Kids (Cambly) |
| British Council English Language Assistant | Gap year | You must be eighteen or over when applications close | Not required. The stated minimum is A level, Scottish Highers or the IB | In Spain the monthly allowance is €800 in most regions, €935 in Extremadura and Galicia and €1,000 in Madrid, for 14 to 16 hours a week (British Council) |
| A structured volunteer placement | Gap year | Project Trust takes volunteers aged seventeen to twenty five | Not required | Unpaid, and fundraising is part of the process (Project Trust) |
| A working holiday visa | Gap year | Australia and New Zealand take UK citizens aged eighteen to thirty five. Japan and Taiwan take eighteen to thirty | Not required for the visa itself | Varies entirely with the work you find (Immigration New Zealand) |
| EPIK, South Korean state schools | After a degree | No general age limit is published | A bachelor's degree is required | Set by the programme by qualification band. A TEFL, TESOL or CELTA of at least 100 hours is required, so our 120 hours clears it (EPIK) |
| Taiwan's government teaching programme | After a degree | No age limit is published for the programme | A bachelor's degree or above is required for both tracks | Foreign English Teachers earn NT$62,720 to NT$91,420 a month and teaching assistants receive an NT$45,000 stipend (TFETP) |
| The JET Programme in Japan | After a degree | No age limit is published | A bachelor's degree or higher is required by the arrival date | Set by the programme (JET) |
| A work permit for China | After a degree | Foreign talents should be sixty or younger | A bachelor's degree or above plus two years of experience in language education | Set by the employer. A TEFL certificate can stand in for the evidence of those two years, but not for the degree (Beijing municipal government) |
Worth knowing before you plan a year around either.
A youth visa for South Korea will not let you teach
The Korean government states that holders of the youth mobility visa are not permitted to work as a foreign language instructor. If you want to teach in South Korea you need the right visa for it, which in practice means a degree and a programme like EPIK. (Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
A TEFL certificate does not replace a degree in China
China asks for a bachelor's degree and two years of experience in language education. A recognised TEFL certificate can substitute for the evidence of those two years. It cannot substitute for the degree, and no course can. (Beijing municipal government)
Something specific to write about.
From 2026 entry the personal statement is three questions inside one 4,000 character limit, with a minimum of 350 characters for each answer. The hardest part is not the length. It is having something concrete to put in it that is not a claim about being hardworking.
Cambridge draws a hard line between super curricular activity, which relates to the subject you are applying for, and extra curricular activity, which it says will not be taken into consideration. So do not file this under hobbies. If you are applying for education, English, languages, linguistics, international relations or psychology, a teaching qualification is directly relevant to your subject, and that is how to write about it.
Sources: UCAS · University of Cambridge
Things you will be able to say
- I planned and sequenced a lesson for learners who did not share my first language
- I learned how English grammar is taught, which is not how it is spoken
- I was assessed on ten modules and had to pass every one
- I know the difference between receptive and productive skills, and why it changes how you teach
- I hold a qualification an employer can independently verify
Ten modules, 120 hours, six months to do it in.
It is online and self paced, so it fits into free periods, the bus and the holidays. Each module ends in a quiz you can retake, which means the point is learning the material rather than surviving one exam.
Hours of study
The recognised international standard. Anything shorter is a taster, and employers know the difference.
Months of access
If your school runs it in a short block, the rest of the course carries on into the holidays with you.
Personal tutor
Plus a weekly live question session and a student community you can ask at any hour.
Questions students actually ask.
Only if you let it. The whole course is 120 hours spread over up to six months, which is roughly four hours a week. That is less than most people spend on one A level subject in a fortnight. The students who struggle are the ones who ignore it for three months and then try to finish it in a fortnight, which is exactly what the progress dashboard exists to stop.
You keep whatever you have completed and you can carry on until your access runs out. The assessment is module by module rather than one exam at the end, so a student who reaches module seven still has seven modules of real work to talk about in an interview or a personal statement. You just will not hold the certificate until all ten are passed.
No. TEFL is taught in English and classrooms abroad are usually run in English on purpose, because the class often does not share one common first language. Having a second language helps you understand what your learners are going through, but it is not a requirement of the course or of most of the jobs.
Yes. The course is externally accredited by the Online Teaching Course Accreditation Committee, a UK based accreditor of online courses, and it carries 120 CPD credits accredited by The CPD Group. Any employer anywhere can write to us and have your certificate confirmed. That verification route matters more than people expect, because it is what separates a qualification from a PDF.
The certificate does not expire. What expires is your access to the course material, which runs for six months from the day you start. If you finish at seventeen and do not use it until you graduate at twenty one, it is still the same qualification.
Online, yes, and modestly. Cambly publishes $0.17 a minute, which works out at $10.20 an hour, and $12.00 an hour on Cambly Kids. Set that against the UK minimum wage of £10.85 for eighteen to twenty year olds from April 2026 and the money is comparable. What is not comparable is that you can do it from a bedroom in a gap year, from abroad, at hours that suit a student.
Ask your school about it.
Schools buy this as a group, which is what makes it affordable, so the person to speak to is whoever runs enrichment or careers in your sixth form. Send them the staff page. It answers the questions they will have before they ask you.
Student quotes go here once we have real ones on file with permission to publish. Nothing invented, so the space stays empty until then.
