What is Teaching Abroad Really all About?
Are you dreaming of teaching abroad? If so, there’s a good chance you don’t quite know what it really looks like — and that’s completely understandable. The information out there can be genuinely confusing, and the term “teaching abroad” gets thrown around to mean wildly different things.
After 24 years of teaching overseas across six countries and eight schools, I’ve seen all the versions of this life. In this article, I want to walk you through the three main pathways open to you, explain which one I think is the real dream option, and give you a realistic picture of what that actually looks like day to day.
The Three Ways to Teach Abroad
When most people imagine teaching abroad, they picture one of three scenarios. Let’s break them down.
1. Teaching in a Local School
This is the version most people visualise first. You move to a new country, walk into a local school, and teach — possibly the same subject you’ve always taught, or perhaps something new. You’re working alongside local staff, teaching local students, and getting paid local wages.
It’s a legitimate path, and it can be a genuinely enriching experience. But financially and professionally, it tends to be the most limiting of the three options.
2. Teaching English
Maybe you’ve heard of TEFL or TESL. This path involves teaching English — either in a local school, a private language centre, or to adults preparing for proficiency exams. In many cases, being a native English speaker is enough to get started; formal teaching qualifications aren’t always required.
This option is popular for a reason. It’s accessible, flexible, and can fund a fantastic lifestyle, especially early on. But again, the earning potential and career development tend to have a ceiling.
3. Teaching in an International School
This is my path, and in my view, it’s the one worth aiming for.
So What Actually Is an International School?
When I first considered teaching abroad, I had no idea what an international school was. If you’re in the same position, you’re not alone.
An international school is a school built around an international curriculum. The most well-known is the International Baccalaureate (IB) — every school I’ve worked at over the past 24 years has been an IB school. But international schools can also follow the UK’s A-levels and IGCSEs, the American AP curriculum, the Australian or Singapore curriculum, or various European national curricula. There’s far more variety than most people realise.
What makes these schools distinctive is the community. International schools typically serve a mix of expat students — children of diplomats, multinational executives, and families living abroad for all sorts of reasons — alongside increasingly large numbers of wealthy local students, for whom an international education has become a prestigious and sought-after option.
The student body varies enormously from school to school. When I taught in Singapore, I could have had 12 to 14 different nationalities sitting in the same classroom. In the Philippines, two-thirds to three-quarters of my students were Filipino. In Thailand right now, the picture is similarly mixed. Some schools are exclusively expat communities; others are predominantly local. There’s no single template.
And crucially — the salaries are in a different league entirely.
Why International Schools Are the Dream Option
It’s a Real Career
Let me be direct about this: teaching in an international school is not a lifestyle hack to fund your backpacking adventures. It’s a demanding, serious profession with genuine career pathways.
What’s interesting, though, is that those pathways can open up faster than they would back home. Because teachers move between schools and countries frequently, vacancies arise and opportunities emerge quickly. I became a DP Coordinator at my third school. I’ve seen classroom teachers become Heads of Department within a year, and move into leadership roles — assistant principal, principal — in a timeline that would be almost unthinkable in a domestic school system.
Professional development is taken seriously too. International schools invest significantly in their staff. You’ll likely be sent on workshops and courses, sometimes within your country of residence, often internationally.
The Financial Reality
The salary picture is more nuanced than people expect, but the short version is: in real terms, you’ll almost certainly be better off.
In expensive cities like Singapore or Hong Kong, you might earn a salary that looks impressive even on paper. In places like Thailand or Vietnam, the headline number might look more modest, but the cost of living is low enough that your savings potential far exceeds what you’d manage back home. It’s purchasing power that counts.
Higher earnings mean more financial security, more travel, and the kind of lifestyle flexibility that’s hard to replicate on a domestic teaching salary.
The Travel
Living abroad, in most cases, puts you within easy reach of places you’d otherwise only visit once every few years. A long weekend in Bangkok becomes a trip to Cambodia. Living in Singapore opens up an extraordinary web of short-haul flights. Living in Europe means border crossings that cost almost nothing. The geography of your life changes entirely.
The Community
One of the most underrated aspects of international school life is the staff room. You’re working alongside teachers from the UK, Australia, the US, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and everywhere else. The conversations are richer, the perspectives broader, and the friendships often deeper precisely because everyone is navigating the same adventure.
Who Can Actually Do This?
You don’t need decades of international experience before you can apply. I currently work alongside a teacher in only his third or fourth year who came straight from Australia and landed a position at a good school in Bangkok.
That said, there are non-negotiables:
- You need a recognised teaching qualification. A degree alone won’t cut it. You need a Bachelor of Education, a Diploma of Education, a PGCE, or equivalent. This is the baseline.
- You should ideally have at least a couple of years of classroom experience in your home country before heading abroad. For top-tier schools, more experience — and sometimes prior international experience — will strengthen your application significantly.
The key word there is ideally. Requirements vary enormously between schools, and the right opportunity depends as much on the school, the subject, and the timing as it does on your CV.
Not All International Schools Are Equal — and That Matters
This is one of the most important things to understand before you start applying.
There’s an unofficial tier system in the international school world. The top-tier schools — typically larger, more established, better resourced, with excellent packages and strong reputations — are competitive. You may not get into one straight away, and that’s fine. I certainly didn’t.
My first international school posting was in the Philippines. It wasn’t my dream destination, and it wasn’t a top-tier school. But it got me into the system. It gave me the international experience I needed to eventually move on to schools I really wanted to work at.
Getting your foot in the door matters more than getting it exactly right first time.
One more thing worth saying, and I want to emphasise this: sometimes the school matters more than the country. I’ve seen teachers chase a romantic idea of living in Italy or Japan or wherever, only to end up miserable because the school culture was poor. And I’ve seen teachers end up in places they never expected — and absolutely thrive — because the school was well-run, supportive, and genuinely good to work at.
Don’t let country obsession close your mind to unexpected opportunities.
What It Actually Looks Like: A Glimpse Inside
I recently filmed a short tour of my current school in Bangkok — I came in during a holiday to catch up on some marking (the perks of being a teacher) — and wanted to give people a sense of what the day-to-day environment actually looks like.
My school is on the smaller side. We have a football pitch, two swimming pools, and a new campus at another location that’s considerably larger. The classrooms are modern and well-equipped — mine has a BenQ interactive screen that I’d happily never give up.
In terms of the students: motivated, hardworking, and genuinely respectful. That’s been my consistent experience across Asia. Parents here take education seriously and hold teachers in high regard — a refreshing contrast to the experience many teachers report back home. There can be pressure around grades in some schools, but in my experience, most international schools don’t obsess over them the way some might fear.
Workload is real but manageable. I choose to come in at weekends sometimes. I coach the school football team. Extracurricular involvement is expected when you apply, and it’s worth being honest with yourself about what you’re willing to contribute beyond the classroom.
Where to Go From Here
If any of this resonates with you, the first step is simply learning more. I’ve put together a free International Teaching Starter Guide — you can grab that via the link in the description of the video, or through my website.
If you’re wondering specifically whether you have the right qualifications and experience to apply, that’s exactly what I cover in my next video. It’s worth watching before you start searching job boards.
Teaching abroad changed my life — and not just in the ways I expected. Twenty-four years in, across six countries, I’m still going. I’m heading to Shenzhen, China next. And I’ve never once regretted the decision to take that first leap.
The life is real. The career is real. And the opportunity is more accessible than most people think.
Mark has been teaching in international schools for 24 years across six countries. He writes about international teaching, life abroad, and personal finance at thefootlooseteacher.com.
👉 Download the free International Teaching Starter Guide here