How to Teach Abroad: What I Wish I Knew When I Started

Getting Started

When I started out, I had no idea how any of this actually worked.

Twenty-four years and five countries later, it's easy to forget how confusing the starting line looked. There was no clear map, no single place that laid out the options, and a lot of what I found only made sense in hindsight. So this is the piece I wish someone had handed me back then — not the highlight reel version, just what actually happened and what actually worked.

The options I looked at first

Before I knew international schools existed as a category, here's what was actually on my radar.

Supply teaching in London. Flexible, low commitment, easy to pick up. But the pay and the instability of it made it feel like a holding pattern rather than something I could build a career on. This felt like more of a short term thing rather than a part of a career progression. More about the travel experience and just being somewhere else. I tried it briefly, but most jobs were in some pretty tough parts of the city and it was more behaviour management than any real teaching.

English teaching in Japan. A genuinely good entry point for a lot of people, and I don't want to undersell that. But I was looking for something closer to an actual teaching career, using my actual qualification, not an English-conversation gig. At the time, Japan was very expensive and according to a friend of mine who was living in Tokyo my savings would be quite limited on this salary

Singapore government schools. I didn’t get far with this idea but Singapore was certainly appealing to me. I had travelled there once and met some teachers who worked in government schools. Decent salary, well behaved students, but the whole system seemed a little high stress and robotic to me.

The Hong Kong NET scheme. Another real, government-run option and a decent stepping stone into Hong Kong for a lot of teachers. I know a few expat teachers who have done this long term and loved it while also saving quite a lot.

None of these were wrong choices. Plenty of people build entirely good careers and lives on these paths, and if one of them fits you, that's a legitimate route — not a consolation prize. They just weren't quite what I was after.

Then I found international schools

This was the pivot point, though I didn't recognise it as one at the time.

What actually is an international school?

This is where it gets murkier than most people expect going in. In a lot of countries, "international school" isn't a strict legal category — it gets used loosely for anything with an English-medium curriculum and a globally-flavoured name. But in places like China, the term is actually regulated: schools legally permitted to call themselves "international schools" can only enrol students holding foreign passports. Schools serving local, Chinese-passport-holding students are classified separately as bilingual schools — and that bilingual sector is actually the bigger, faster-growing part of the market right now.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because it changes what a job posting is actually offering you. In some countries, such as Singapore, there fewer international schools, mostly very reputable and all students are expats. In others, such as Thailand, there seem to be hundreds using the term ‘international’ with a real range from established, prestigious, high paying schools to newer schools offering much lower salaries. In Thailand a large proportion of students are actually from wealthy Thai families. So the label alone won't tell you what you think it tells you. It's worth digging one layer deeper before you get attached to a listing.

Why it appealed to me: Lots of different reasons — pay, benefits, curriculum, career progression, motivated students and professional, collaborative colleagues are all great selling points. But for me the sense of community that comes from working with people from all around the world is probably the thing that keeps me going after such a long time.

How you actually get a job in one

This is the part most people get wrong going in — they assume it works like applying for a job back home.

Recruitment agencies. Most international school hiring doesn't happen through cold applications straight to a school's website. It happens through agencies who work directly with schools to fill vacancies, often a full year ahead of the school year starting. If you're applying reactively in April for an August start, you're already behind the hiring cycle for most schools. Sometimes you will arrange online interviews, and other times you may attend a recruitment fair.

Recruitment fairs. This is where a lot of the actual hiring happens — schools and candidates in the same room, sometimes with offers made on the spot. We joke that its like speed dating for international schools. I have always used recruitment agencies, but I’ve actually only attended one of their fairs. It was the Search Associates fair in Bangkok in 2011. This was an amazing experience and I was lucky to have several offers. In the end I chose Hong Kong.

Not all agencies organise fairs. The larger ones such as Search and ISS do. But there are also some that provide a more personal service and connect you with schools that they believe fit you best, while pushing your application and following up when appropriate.

This is where an agency like Teacher Horizons comes in — personalised support, transparency with schools, a quality network. If you're serious about making your first move, they're a solid place to start looking.

The shortcut I didn't have

It took me a while to find my way into this world, mostly through trial and error rather than any real guidance. So to help others, I’ve created a few resources based on my own experience. You can check out my free guides here on this website. Or my YouTube videos.

If you want to go deeper on any of this — the practical side of what the move actually looks like, or the different entry points other international teachers have taken, check out my Complete Guide To Landing Your First International Teaching Job or my book that I co-wrote with 12 former colleagues here: Teaching Our Way Around The World: Freedom, Travel and Life as an International Teacher