Having worked in Thailand as a TEFL teacher in various guises for nearly two decades and having done pretty much every type of TEFL teaching job out there: from lowly shopping mall language institutes to ‘high flying’ international schools I feel well placed to offer some guidance on salary expectations in Thailand.
I’ve put together a table to give you an idea of salary brackets for different types of schools in Bangkok, Thailand. Outside of Bangkok salaries tend to be towards the bottom of the bracket reflecting lower living costs.
The data in the table is based on recent jobs being advertised on Ajarn.com, and my own experience. You’ll also find a few of my thoughts about what it is like to work at each of these types of schools/educational institutions underneath the tables.
TEFL/English Teacher Salaries and Qualification Requirements In Thailand
| Educational Institution | Average salary (Thai baht/month) | General Requirements |
| Language Schools | 25,000-50,000 | NES |
| Government Schools | 30-45,000 | NES and degrees |
| High End Government Schools | 50-70,000 | NES, degree, TEFL |
| Private Thai Schools | 30-90,000 | NES, degree, TEFL |
| International Schools (Tier 3) | 50-70,000 | Degree, teacher license |
| International Schools (Tier 2) | 80,000-120,000 | Degree, teacher license, experience |
| International Schools (Tier 1) | 120,000-200,000 | Degree, teacher license, experience |
| Universities | 30,000-120,000 | Degree, teacher license, experience |
| Private tutoring | 400-1200b/hour | NA |
Please take the ‘General Requirements’ column with a pinch of salt. Each employer is going to be different and also so are the job requirements.
A Rough Guide To Teaching English In Bangkok
Thailand is a great place for teachers and anyone with a bit of get up and go could come and teach English here. That said, it is getting harder to do so without a degree these days and the days of being able to buy a fake one are well and truly gone.
Below, I have explained in a bit more detail the salary and requirements for each type of educational institution. It’s just a rough guide so please don’t feel offended if your experiences don’t match up with mine. Here goes…
Language Institutes
The top rate of pay you can realistically expect from a language institute is around 50,000 baht per month. Wall Street Language Institute at the time of writing is currently recruiting and is offering 47,500/month. For that they are offering a rather crumby ten days paid holidays per year plus all public holidays.
This isn’t great if you want to see a bit of Thailand whilst you are here but that salary would allow an okay lifestyle for a single person to enjoy Bangkok a little but you are going to be teaching evenings and weekends so you’ll need to factor that into your lifestyle.
I have had friends earn up to 80,000 baht per month in language institutes but these were when they were given extra classes at an hourly rate based on their popularity as an add on to their base salary of 40,000b/month. They were doing around 35 contact hours a week for this amount which is heavy going!
The lowest I ever worked for was 28,500 baht/month for a ‘British American’ language school which I only stayed at a few weeks. Although it was kind of fun and I met some bizarre fellow teachers, this was back in the early 2000s when the teaching landscape was much less professional than it is today. It always used to make me laugh that you could earn an extra 20 baht per hour by wearing a blazer, I couldn’t be bothered but a lot of the guys did.
There are other low payers out there but often there is a base salary with an opportunity to earn more. So, if you are motivated and make a good impression it can be that you can do much better than the advertised salary. Particularly, if you are young and good looking, or have a fun personality – regrettably I don’t qualify for any of those these days!
I should mention though that I have known teacher colleagues who rose into management from being a shop floor teacher. They were on around 80k/month last I heard but there was tremendous pressure to hit sales figures and so on. Good management experience but not for everyone I would imagine.
At this point you might be wondering which TEFL certificates might be worth doing so I have listed TEFL certificates I recommend, here.
Government Schools
The vast majority of government schools are going to have you in front of a class of 40-50 students and expect you to edutain them. This can be fun and a good experience but it can get frustrating if you actually want to develop yourself as a teacher or if there are enthusiastic students that you think you could help more but are always prevented from doing so by the large numbers.
Salaries here tend to be between 30,000-45,000b/month which can be fine depending on what the level of expectation is. For example, one government school I was at just wanted me to teach the same lesson eighteen times to all the English groups in the school. There was very little differentiation required as English levels were very low and I got the impression they were just happy to have a white face to show off to the parents.
What I will say about government schools is that if you are after getting to know the Thai culture then they are a great place to be. You will most likely celebrate every single Thai celebration possible, including some local to your area, have monks wandering around blessing rooms and students at random times, experience the craziness of a four day Thai sports day, see students being caned, get to write on some of the world’s longest chalk boards and work in a classroom with open windows and no air-con.
To be fair, some of my most memorable experiences were from working in a government school. Working with the Thai staff was interesting though as there clearly was some resentment over our massive salaries and the amount of work we did in comparison but so long as you didn’t try to rock the boat they would let you go about your business relatively pain free.
A word of warning though about 10 month contracts. I’ve noticed these being offered more and more recently – run for the hills! It is not fair don’t sign one, unless the school is paying you particularly well for the rest of the year so that you have enough money to get through two months unpaid.
It is not standard practice and some schools even spring this on teachers at the end of the school year when the teacher was expecting to get paid over the holiday.
Whilst I’m handing out warnings be very wary about ‘agents’. They are a middleman and essentially they say to the school ‘let me deal with hirng the foreigners for you and I’ll take a fee for that’. That fee would have basically gone to the teachers if they had not gotten the job through an agent and so salaries can be lower with agents and more importantly it is not unheard of for agents to completely disappear with everyone’s salary!
And what are you going to do about it? Well, you are unlikely to get much joy from the police and the school aren’t going to shell out again so please be very careful when dealing with agents.
‘High End’ Government Schools
I had to include this category as there are a handful of very well known/famous Thai government schools that do advertise for teachers quite regularly. There salary range tends to be from 50-70k/month and they are often looking for subject teachers, i.e. Chemistry teacher.
Generally, you will need a degree in the subject you are applying to teach and some teaching experience plus at least a TEFL certificate, preferably a CELTA. However, this is a decent salary for someone without a full teaching license from their own country.
So, if you get the chance then landing one of these gigs would be a decent catch but you would be under more pressure and probably preparing students for the UK IGCSE, or A Level examinations which is no walk in the park.
Private Thai Schools
These schools are better than Thai government schools but still some way off the standard of even lower tier international schools in general. They have their place in the market though as termly fees are often much more affordable than ‘real’ international schools and some have great tradition and reputation amongst locals.
Unfortunately, that does not mean the teacher salary is going to match their lofty ideals. You often see these advertising for teachers in the 30,000/40,000 baht bracket still after all they exist to make a profit.
International Schools
I currently work in a solid mid tier international school earning more than I was at my last school in the UK, and because the money goes further here I feel much better off. That said, at tier 1 and tier 2 international schools you can expect to be working in much the same way as you would in the UK.
Expectations for examinations success are high and if your teaching or personality isn’t up to it then you can expect to not have your contract renewed regardless of how well settled you are in the country.
Gaining employment at a tier 1 or even a tier 2 international school can be tough. These days a lot of the schools want to recruit direct from the UK and will be looking for masters degrees, teaching experience, and the recruitment process can be tough and involve videos of you teaching, presentations of your teaching philosophy and a good grilling about current best practice in UK schools.
At the end of the rainbow though there are some very well paid jobs with monthly salaries from 120k/month and up.
International schools generally also offer flights annually or biannually for you and your family, medical insurance, annual bonuses, pay increments each year and professional development opportunities and the ability to pick up your career back in the US/UK should you so wish, a pretty neat deal then all things considered.
I’ve left tier three international schools til last as these schools are often nowhere near the standard of the tier 1 and 2 schools. Teachers are not paid as much, some of the benefits aren’t there and to be honest a real teacher from the UK/US would be pretty disappointed if they ended up at one of these schools, in fact, they many even hold your career back in the future.
For some people though, they offer a way to get experience of teaching a national curriculum and perhaps work on their qualifications at the same time, perhaps by doing a PGCEi for example. In subsequent years it is not unheard of for teachers to move up the tiers.
Bear in mind though that lower tier international school may allow a more relaxed lifestyle with a bit more fun to be had in the evenings and be a bit more stress free. I know a lot of people who would be happy for a school like that so that they could enjoy Thailand a bit more and not be worrying about student grades, workloads, inspections and so on.
Thai University Teaching
I consider this one a bit of a dark horse. You don’t often see universities advertising for teachers and when you do the salaries advertised tend to be quite low. However, what they don’t tell you is that that may simply be the base salary for teaching a bare bones schedule.
On top of that there may be very well paid hourly rate classes available. The teachers I know teach all sorts of classes across different faculties, from: English for Law, academic writing classes, English for medicine, IELTS and so on, so it is not really for newbies and does require some flexibility
I have several friends at different universities in Thailand making on average 100k per month. Some months they are crazy busy and can pull in 150-200k per month but in holiday months when the students are on holiday they can drop way back down. They all seem to love it and whilst they are somewhat jealous of the extra perks and career security I have, secretly I think they wouldn’t swap places for the world.
Good luck getting into these places though as it tends to be by word of mouth/recommendation so you would probably need to be in country working somewhere else before you moved onto one of these gigs.
Private Tuition
There is a growing middle class of ambitious families that are willing to shell out for extra lessons. In Thailand students don’t really have their own hobbies and interests as such and sometimes it seems that all they do is study. This means that there is strong demand for private lessons.
Of course, you can charge what you think you can get away with. Personally, I wouldn’t do anything for less than 1,000 baht per hour but I’m sure many people would be happy to teach one on one conversation for 500 baht per hour. Get what you can but of course you can charge more for subject specialisms and exam prep type classes.
There’s never a bad time to brush up on your grammar, so here’s my guide to English verb tenses which you might find of use, here.
Don’t Be Mad!
Now, I realize there may be people reading this who have experienced different rates to those I have given, or who may straight disagree with something I have said. That is fine, this is just from my research and based on my experience.
If you are thinking of teaching in Bangkok then of course you should look into the job requirements and expected salaries in more detail, but I hope this helped by giving you a bit of an overview of how much teachers earn in Bangkok.
What Is A Good Salary In Bangkok?
70,000 baht per month is a good salary in Bangkok which allows you to live in a decent apartment in a downtown area, eat and drink in places foreigners like to go, have enough money to travel during holidays and put money away for future retirement.
However, if you throw in a couple of kids then you might need more like 110,000 baht or more and having two kids of my own, I can vouch for that!
If you are looking to survive on the most minimal amount possible then you could perhaps rent an apartment for 4,000 baht and live on 10, 000 baht for food but that would leave zero room if something went wrong and life would be pretty dull sitting at home staring at your own four walls.
Many teachers seem to ‘get by’ in the 30,000-40,000 baht per month bracket for a while but tend not to stay more than a year or two, it just does not seem to give a decent enough lifestyle. However, doing a bit of online work, private work, or an evening class somewhere could push you up to 60,000 baht per month and now we are talking about a salary that you can have some fun on!
The beauty of Thailand and Bangkok is that there is something to suit all budgets. So, if you want to live in the expat bubble and eat rooftop restaurants every day of the week then you can do so, however, if you want to just cut your cloth and live a simple life in the suburbs of Bangkok and integrate a bit more into Thai society then you can live on much less and still have a good time.
It is largely up to you to shape your lifestyle to what you want to spend. I see so many people here though, get dragged along trying to keep up with the Jones’, i.e. they get involved with a group of friends in a higher pay bracket and they end up racing through their salary by the middle of the month.
Personally, in my single days I lived well and partied hard on just 50k per month but never saved a penny so that wasn’t sustainable and is the main reason I returned to the UK to do a PGCE. However, 70k per month would have been sustainable and so I stick by that number as being a decent salary.
Now, ten years later as a father of two little boys, less than 100k per month would be a squeeze. Finally, on the point of salaries it does depend on the opportunity cost you are leaving behind. For example, if you are living in a small crappy town in the UK flipping burgers then I would much rather come and teach in Bangkok on 30-40,000 baht per month than do that!
However, if you are leaving a decent state or private school and dropping down to a tier 3 international school then I would be concerned for you as you will be earning less and not be able to save much cash and missing out on pension contributions.
How Can I Become An English Teacher In Bangkok?
This is all going to depend on where you intend on working. So, again I have put a table together to show the different ways to become an English/TEFL teacher in Bangkok:
| Educational Institute | General Requirements | Where to apply |
| Language Institutes | NES | Ajarn.com, drop in, teachaway.com |
| Government Schools | NES and degrees | Ajarn.com, drop in, teachaway,com |
| High End Government Schools | NES, degree, TEFL | Ajarn.com |
| Private Thai Schools | NES, degree, TEFL | Ajarn.com |
| International Schools (Tier 3) | Degree, teacher license, | Ajarn.com, direct on website, tieonline.com, thegaurdian.com |
| International Schools (Tier 2) | Degree, teacher license, experience | Tes.co.uk, direct on website, tieonline.com, Search Associates, thegaurdian.com, ISS Schrole |
| International Schools (Tier 1) | Degree, teacher license, experience | Tes.co.uk, direct on website, Search Associates, ISS Schrole |
| Universities | Degree, teacher license, experience | Ajarn.com, word of mouth |
| Private tutoring | NA | Word of mouth, noticeboards, facebook groups |
In a nutshell then, to become an English teacher in Thailand it can be as simple as turning up on an airplane and dropping in at a few language schools, or government schools with a CV in hand and a bit of personality and enthusiasm.
It is far easier to get a work permit with a degree these days unless you fancy crossing a few palms with silver which although more difficult than in the past can be done depending on how well connected your school is.
At the other end of the spectrum, to teach English in international schools you are generally going to need to be recruited from your home country and have a teaching license form your home country.
So, if you are from the UK like me that would mean that you need to have done a PGCE and preferably have hung around to complete an NQT year. Once you have got those nailed down you can then start beginning to apply for jobs via tes.co.uk, Search Associates and ISS.
Where To Find TEFL/English/International School Teaching Jobs In Thailand?
Ajarn.com is by far your best bet for these types of jobs. It is a great platform and known far and wide. Generally, it lists for language schools, government schools, agencies and occasionally lower tier international schools and decent private Thai schools. Always worth keeping an eye on!
Teachaway.com also has a decent range of jobs worldwide which is helpful when comparing opportunities. It lists all types of jobs even occasionally top tier international schools which surprised me when I last looked. There are other similar websites to this such as: Dave’s ESL cafe, and TEFL.com which are all worth checking.
Tieonline.com and guardian school jobs both have international school jobs but these tend to be in the tier 3 and tier 2 type schools. There are some decent jobs on these sites and so I would definitely take a look at these if you are looking to break into international schools in general.
Watch out for agents though, as there seem to be a lot of them on the guardian jobs site in particular. There are good agents out there but personally I prefer to do the leg work myself.
Tes.co.uk is the premium place for international schools of all tiers to advertise jobs and is where I go to look for job openings. It is not cheap to advertise here but all UK teachers know about this site and so it is ideal for employers.
Search Associates and ISS Schrole are basically recruitment agencies for international schools. They arrange job fairs where hundreds of applicants and schools turn up to in effect speed date and see what is out there.
The competition level for schools recruiting through these agencies is generally very high so unless you have a teaching license from your home country and experience you probably won’t be able to get an invitation for which you have to apply for via their websites which take you through a very thorough and time consuming process.
The bottom line is if you want to come and teach in Thailand then the door is always open!
You might also like to read: How Long Does It Take To Become An ESL Teacher?
