English teacher salaries abroad: the tefl.ie Salary Index

The pay desk

The Salary Index

Every line on the board, in one sortable table. Pay in local currency with euro conversions, checked against official sources and refreshed with every edition.

Updated 22 August 2026: Colombia’s ICETEX round closed on 7 August and is now marked LINE CLOSED. It had still been showing as a live deadline. Hungary’s CETP line has moved off its fixed August arrivals date to the rolling intake, with January as the next clear window.

Updated 3 September 2026: the UAE row carried a FLASH signal against a date, 24 August, that had already passed, which made a closed window read as the most urgent line on the desk. It now reads LIVE WIRE, matching the dispatch board. The Czechia and Mexico rows have moved from “term starts” to “term began” now that 1 September and 31 August are behind us. No pay figure changed, and the check dates above were not moved, because no source was re-read on this sweep.

Updated 17 September 2026: the Hungary row was the top line on this desk, sorted first by pay and tagged LIVE WIRE. Issue 004 read the CETP eligibility list at source on 16 September 2026 and found it limited to citizens of the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom, so the programme is not open to an Irish passport holder. The row now reads LINE CLOSED, carries the citizenship bar and no longer sorts on pay. The answer box above previously called HUF 850,000 “Hungary’s CETP state-school scale”; it is the Hungarian national teacher average, which is what the row itself has always said, and it now says so. The Portugal row now states that the Fulbright ETA award is open to US citizens only, which our dispatch board has recorded since Issue 001. The Türkiye row has moved from “term starts” to “term began” now that 14 September is behind us. No pay figure was changed and no new figure was introduced.

Updated 1 October 2026: four changes. The Spain row was tracking NALCAP, which Issue 005 established is the North American strand of the Spanish programme and not open to an Irish passport at all. The row now tracks the route an Irish reader can actually use, the Ministry’s auxiliares de conversación programme entered through the Department of Education and Youth’s ELA scheme, and carries the finding that there are no new Irish places for 2026/27. The figure moved from €800–1,000 to €800. The Ministry publishes one figure, €800, on its 2025/26 call, for 14 to 16 hours a week; the 1,000 upper bound was not published by the source cited for it, and the 2026/27 BOE announcement caps the award at €5,600 a year. Euro conversions have moved from the European Commission’s August 2026 rates to the European Central Bank reference rates of 30 September 2026, which is the authority our sister title already uses, so one rate now applies across the group. Czechia moves from €1,240–1,450 to €1,228–1,432 and Hungary from €2,349 to €2,321; no local-currency figure changed. And the check dates have been made honest. Only Spain was re-read at source today. The other pay figures were last read on 5 August and are now 57 days old on a desk that promises to correct in place when a source moves, so the footer says so rather than implying a freshness it does not have. Türkiye and Mexico are quoted in euro with no local-currency figure on the page, so neither could be recomputed at the new rate; both are pending.

Updated 8 October 2026: the Portugal row has closed. The Fulbright ETA 2027/28 competition shut on 6 October 2026, but the row was still tagged LIVE WIRE and still sorted as a hiring destination two days after the date had passed, so a window that was over read as one that was open. It now reads LINE CLOSED, no longer sorts under “hiring now first”, and the structured data for the row has been corrected to match. No pay figure was changed and no source was re-read today, so the check dates above stand as written: this was a correction to a window that has passed, not a re-verification.

Updated 16 October 2026: the two rows that could not be recomputed at the last three sweeps now can be. Türkiye and Mexico were quoted in euro with no local-currency figure on the page, so neither could be checked or recomputed when the rate moved. Both have been read at source and now carry the local figure. Türkiye’s national minimum wage for 2026 is TRY 28,075.50 net a month (gross TRY 33,030.00), set by the Asgari Ücret Tespit Komisyonu for 1 January to 31 December 2026 and published by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security; at the ECB rate that is €507, not the €516 this row carried. Mexico’s general minimum wage from 1 January 2026 is MXN 315.04 a day, MXN 9,582.47 a month, per CONASAMI and the Diario Oficial de la Federación resolution of 9 December 2025; that is €462, not the €480 this row carried. Both euro figures had been carried since 5 August and both were too high. Euro conversions across the desk have moved from the ECB reference rates of 30 September 2026 to those of 15 October 2026, so the whole table sits on one rate date: Czechia moves from €1,228–1,432 to €1,232–1,437 and Hungary from €2,321 to €2,338. No local-currency figure changed for either. The answer box has been brought into line, and its range moves from €480–€2,321 to €462–€2,338. The seven remaining pay figures were not re-read today and are now 72 days old; the footer says so.

Updated 22 October 2026, fortnightly sweep: no figure on this desk changed and no source was re-read, so every check date above stands as written. One line was corrected: the footer gave the age of the seven unverified pay figures as a fixed “72 days”, which was true on 16 October and grows wrong on its own, so it now reads in weeks. Separately, the four euro figures this desk corrected on 16 October had not reached The Country Matcher, which was still publishing Türkiye at 516 euro and Mexico at 480 euro; that desk has been brought into line today and carries its own note.

Updated 28 October 2026: three pay figures were re-read at source, three Irish routes were added and the whole desk has moved to one rate date. Czechia was read on the Czech Foreign Ministry’s page for teachers of English, which still gives CZK 30,000–35,000 a month before tax. The AIA register page at dzs.cz states no pay band. Portugal was read on the Fulbright Commission’s own page and still gives €800 a month, or €1,689 with the host contribution. Hungary moves from HUF 850,000, about €2,338, to over HUF 900,000, more than €2,453. The Hungarian Government’s notice of the January 2026 rise puts the average teacher salary above 900,000 forints, so the old figure was out of date. It is still a national average and not a CETP scale. Austria, France and Germany have been added from the 2026/27 ELA terms on gov.ie, which is the Irish route into European state school assistantships: Austria at approximately €2,000 gross for 13 hours a week, France at €1,036.21 gross, about €820 net, for 12 hours and Germany at €1,000 net for 12 hours. All three read LINE CLOSED because the 2026/27 round closed in March and no 2027/28 forms are published. Euro conversions have moved from the ECB reference rates of 15 October 2026 to those of 28 October 2026, read at source today: Czechia moves from €1,232–1,437 to €1,231–1,436 and Türkiye from €507 to €506, while Mexico stays at €462. The answer box now runs from €462 to more than €2,453. UAE, Vietnam, Colombia and Oman publish no pay figure for this desk to read and were not re-read today, so their 5 August check date stands. The Country Matcher and the dispatch board on The Hire Wire carry the same figures from today.

Updated 13 November 2026, fortnightly sweep: Issue 008 read all six ELA country terms at source on 11 November and this desk was carrying only three of them. Belgium / Wallonia-Brussels (€1,617.33 net) and Italy (€850 net) have been added from their own gov.ie terms documents, both read on 11 November, which makes Belgium the best-paid route on this desk that an Irish passport can use when the scheme reopens. The Spain row moves from a single €800 to approximately €800–1,000 net by region: the figure this desk carried came from the Ministry’s 2025/26 call, while the Irish route’s own ELA Spain terms publish a regional band, read on 11 November. The €800 floor and the €5,600 annual cap in the 2026/27 BOE announcement both stand and are still shown. The desk count moves from thirteen destinations to fifteen. No other pay figure changed, no exchange rate moved and no other source was re-read, so every check date above stands as written; the euro conversions remain at the ECB reference rates of 28 October 2026, and none of the three figures added or changed today required a conversion because all are published in euro by the issuing authority.