Imagine Aoife, an English language teacher who has just completed an intensive 4-week Cambridge CELTA or a Trinity CertTESOL course to become an English Language Teacher. She has just secured her first job in a reputable school of English in Dublin. The ‘full-time’ contract of 30 hours a week she has been offered will be paid at €20 an hour. She has fallen on her feet and got the maximum number of hours a school can offer and an hourly rate which is close to the average in the ELE (English Language Education) sector. She can brag to her group fellow trainee English Language Teachers and her trainer. But is this enough for her to pay her basic living expenses in Dublin in 2025 and live a reasonably comfortable life or will she end up every month ‘in the red’?
Let’s examine the economic situation first.
A look at the job adverts that English language schools in Dublin post when hiring show huge disparities in hourly rates of pay falling between €16-€22 an hour for full time work. Part-time work, for example teaching 2 hours for 2 evenings, is usually paid more. However, for full time work, the average is likely to be closer to €20 an hour.
Based on the information provided in the article ‘What is a good salary to live in Dublin’? (1), it is evident that English language teachers in Dublin earning somewhere between €16 and €22 per hour and working 30 contact hours per week will face significant financial challenges.
Below, I outline how teacher salaries are insufficient to have a decent standard of living in Dublin in 2024.
Many teachers work around 30 contact hours a week i.e. the actual hours spent in ‘contact’ with students teaching in classrooms. While recognising that this is not the case for all teachers, it is assumed in this report that teachers working full-time work 30 contact hours a week or 1560 hours per year.
- Annual income calculation
Lower rate (€16/hour):
• Weekly: €16 * 30 = €480
• Annual: €480 * 52 = €24,960
• Monthly salary: €24,960/12 = €2080
- Comparison with Dublin’s cost of living
According to the article, ‘What is a good salary to live in Dublin?’, a single person should earn at least €50,000 per year before taxes to live comfortably in Dublin (1). This is just slightly above the average industrial salary at €47,000 according to the CSO (2). In this study, we will only look at single people and what they need to earn to live comfortably in Dublin.
Below is a breakdown of the monthly expenses for a single person living in Dublin.
Obviously, everybody’s situation might be different – as they may share an apartment/house with others thus cutting down on their monthly rent; some may live with their parents thereby decreasing their monthly rent/utilities significantly. But in reality, this is often times a consequence of low-pay and not a lifestyle choice; thus, we need to ignore these many scenarios in this report though I acknowledge that they exist. I decided to omit health insurance and emergency funds or savings as it is unrealistic that low-paid teachers can afford health insurance or actually save money.
List of expenses
• Rent: €1,423
• Utilities: €174
• Internet: €60
• Groceries: €270
• Health Insurance: €94
• Transportation: €101
• Taxes: €540 (assuming 26% tax rate on €2080 monthly income)
• Emergency Funds: €500
• Leisure: €480
• Total monthly expenses: €3,048
- Income-expense discrepancy
Lower hourly rate (€16/hour):
• Monthly shortfall: €2,080 – €3,048 = (€968) - Annual income calculation
Hourly rate (€22/hour):
• Weekly: €22 * 30 = €660
• Annual: €660 * 52 = €34,320
• Gross monthly income: €34,320/12 = €2,860
Monthly expenses:
• Rent: €1,423
• Utilities: €174
• Internet: €60
• Groceries: €270
• Transportation: €101
• Taxes: €743
• Leisure: €480
• Total Monthly Expenses: €3,251
Income-expense discrepancy:
• Monthly income: €2,860
• Monthly shortfall: €2860 – €3,251 = (€391)
Even at the upper end, there is a significant shortfall between the monthly income and the estimated cost of living expenses to live comfortably in Dublin, leading to financial stress and the inability for single teachers to cover basic needs without making significant sacrifices such as finding cheaper accommodation, cutting down on food expenditure and/or foregoing nights out with their friends etc.
- Comparison with Average Industrial Salary
According to Glassdoor as outlined in the above article, the average salary in Dublin is €36,279 per annum (€3,023 per month), which is €13,721 below the recommended €50,000 per annum salary needed for a comfortable life for a single person or €11k below the average industrial salary which is around €47,0000.
Even when working the maximum number of teaching hours, teachers do not earn enough money even at €22 an hour! Aoife will earn €31,200 but is still €5k short of the average Dublin salary and will be over 15k short if she only works only 20 hours a week so we can see that part-time hours only suit people who have a busy family life, other job, the semi-retired or those studying as you can’t survive on this as a single person living in Dublin today.
Aoife working 30 hours a week:
• Teacher at €22/hour: €34,320/year, which is €1,959 less than the average Dublin salary.
• Teacher at €20/hour: €31,200/year, which is €5,079 less than the average Dublin salary.
• Teacher at €18/hour: €28,080/year, which is €8,199 less than the average Dublin salary.
• Teacher at €16/hour: €24,960/year, which is €11,319 less than the average Dublin salary.
Aoife working 20 hours a week:
• Teacher at €22/hour: €22,880/year, which is €13,299 less than the average Dublin salary.
• Teacher at €20/hour: €20,800/year, which is €15,479 less than the average Dublin salary.
• Teacher at €18/hour: €18,720/year, which is €17,599 less than the average Dublin salary.
• Teacher at €16/hour: €16,640/year, which is €19,639 less than the average Dublin salary.
- Discussion
Given the high cost of living in Dublin in 2024, English language teachers earning between €16 and €22 per hour and working the maximum number of teacher contact hours a week (30) cannot sustain a reasonable standard of living. Their annual earnings, ranging from €24,960 to €34,320, fall well short of the average Dublin salary and a long way from the €50k estimated in the above report for a comfortable life as a single person living in Dublin which is close to the actual average industrial salary in Ireland (47k); leading to financial hardship for many teachers.
This financial gap underscores the cost of living challenge faced by English language teachers on low wages in Dublin, highlighting again the necessity for providers to pay higher hourly rates. These financial difficulties were also uncovered in a government commissioned-report from Patrick King in 2019 on the commercial English language education sector (3). Its findings echoed the 2020 Unite ELT Branch survey looked at pay and work conditions in the ELT sector during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic (3, 4, 5). Their findings highlighted issues with a) teacher pay, b) lack of a transparent pay scale, c) difficult work conditions in particular the amount of time teachers spend on administrative tasks, and d) no career structure. I will discuss each of these points below.
Low pay
This is not just an issue in the English Language Education industry in Ireland but globally. English language teachers from all over the world have been consistently on low rates of pay. The TEFL Workers’ Union in the UK has been advocating for years for better work conditions in UK English language schools whose teachers suffer the same poor pay and unfair work conditions as outlined in this report. The Unite ELT branch survey in 2019 found that over 76% of the respondents were not satisfied with their pay rate. There are two options for Dublin schools: a) pay a higher hourly rate b) schools could look at offering annual salaries close to the average Dublin salary (€36.5k) to their full-time teachers while paying decent hourly rates to part-time teachers. A person’s job should provide an adequate income to enable them to afford a socially acceptable standard of living. To match the average salary in Dublin an English language teacher would need an hourly rate of €23.50 (30 hours) and around €30 – €32 an hour to match the €50K suggested to be necessary to live well in Dublin as a single person.
No pay scale
Closely connected to low pay is the lack of a transparent pay scale. ELE providers need to introduce a pay scale which takes into account teacher qualifications, work experience and length of time worked in the school. Does Aoife’s school have a transparent pay scale? If she starts on €20 an hour today what will she be earning in 12 months’ time and in 24 months’ time? In QQI’s Code Of Practice document (6) under section 6.6.2 ‘Conditions of employment’, it says ‘Terms and conditions, e.g., remuneration and leave conditions, are commensurate with the qualifications and experience of staff members’. Under QQI Code of Practice ELE providers must have a transparent pay scale if they want to receive the International Education Mark (IEM) recently branded as TrustEd Ireland.
Working conditions
EFL teachers are expected to do a lot of unpaid administrative work such as: planning lessons which involves a lot of time researching relevant resource materials, preparing lesson plans, logging of work completed in class, correcting homework, student feedback, writing student reports, attending teacher meetings, and attending teacher development /CPD classes. This is often quite daunting for teachers but especially so for entry level teachers.
It is worth noting the 2019 Unite ELT survey found that 67% of the respondents did between 4-10 extra hours a week doing admin work with 83% of them saying they were unpaid for this work. Many schools have conveniently subsumed these necessary ‘non-contact’ teaching hours as part of the hourly rate. Even though some schools pay their teaching staff extra for attending weekly meetings and monthly events aimed at facilitating continuous professional development (CPD), surveys have shown that teachers spend somewhere between 25 to 30% of their working hours on non-contact administrative work. So someone on 20 hours a week may do at least 5 or more extra hours on top of the teaching hours while someone on 30 hours might put in anything from 7-10 hours.
These expectations for unpaid work often leads some teachers to ‘cutting corners’ with a consequent negative knock-on effect for the quality of the service offered endorsed by the new TrustEd Ireland quality mark. From workers’ rights and advocacy view, it can lead to burnout as teaching is a job that you can never do enough preparation for and having 30 hours of classes to prepare for every week and the constant supervision by management (class observations/ meetings, CPD’s) in addition to students’ weekly and end of course feedback make it quite challenging and over time many teachers do burnout and leave for this reason too.
If we take into account these non-contact hours worked, it translates to a teacher on €20 an hour getting a real hourly rate of €13-15 an hour dependent on the number of non-contact hours the teacher does. In contrast, the pay-rate in McDonald’s is €12.70 (national minimum age which is predicted to go to at least €13.70 in 2025) per hour for a ‘Fast Food Attendant’ and €15.37 per hour for a ‘Chef’ (the person cooking burgers/ French Fries etc). Right now, a fast food attendant in McDonald’s gets the same rate as an English language teacher on €20 an hour (as real rate is closer to €13-15 by working just 1 extra hour per day while the person preparing the food makes almost €30 more a day!
So if you work 7 hours a day anywhere that pays minimum wage (McDonalds, bars, coffee shops, retail outlets) you will be better off financially than someone working as a teacher at €20 an hour because of all the extra unpaid admin hours teachers are obligated to do.
This is quite stark and it is something that many teachers are not aware of as they only look at the top line hourly rates but in reality they are not earning this rate at all!
If we don’t include the non-contact hours and Aoife was offered 20 teaching hours a week at €20 an hour, then she would earn just over €400 gross which is €100 less than someone working 40 hours a week on minimum wage, say in McDonalds or a cafe as outlined above (40*12.70) = €508. It is no wonder the turnover is so high in the Irish English Language Education industry. Some teachers have to support their employer’s low pay education business by doing extra jobs to make ends meet.
If we assume Aoife spends 5 hours on non-contact work then her real hourly rate is close to €16 an hour (€400/25) and not €20 an hour. Aoife should earn €25 an hour to take into account that she really works a total of 25 hours (20 teaching hours and 5 admin hours) as at €25 an hour this would translate into a real rate of €20.
It is this fact which is not taken into account by most language schools and should be collectively raised and organised against by all involved in the English Language Education industry in Ireland as it is unfair and exploitative and this practice needs to stop.
Additionally most schools don’t pay for teacher breaks either often coming to 2.5 hours a week. Most of the break time is spent either moving between classes or photocopying, changing books etc for the following class so it is not really a break! This is also unfair and exploitative.
Even at €20 an hour, if schools paid for 5 admin hours and 2.5 work break hours, Aoife would earn close to €39k as she would work 30 hours teaching time plus 7.5 hours non-contact = a total of 37.5 hours. If she was paid €22 an hour she’d take home a salary of €43k which is closer to what she needs to live a decent life in Dublin. So, paying a higher hourly rate in addition to paying for her admin work and the teacher breaks during the day would make a huge difference.
No career structure in place
This can lead to a feeling of being trapped which leads to many teachers leaving the industry and many moving into mainstream teaching or even completely different industries. Management could look at staff rotation – offering some teachers work in other departments in the school. Many schools are small and don’t have too many options here but for some teachers there will be opportunities. Aoife needs to ask her manager if there is a career path and what those options are.
- Conclusion
In this report, I focussed primarily on ‘pay’ as this has been found to be the biggest issue why teachers can’t afford to stay very long in the ELE industry. Mention is made of other factors closely linked to pay such as the absence of a transparent pay scale, unpaid non-contact hours & teacher breaks and lastly to a lack of career opportunities.
The economic conditions as outlined in this report make it difficult for teachers to commit to the sector long-term leading to a negative cycle of high turnover/low morale and a lack of qualified teachers especially at post-graduate level in the industry. The consequences will be a teaching staff composed mostly of entry-level teachers who have just completed an initial teacher training course and who will be very dependent on their providers to build on these new skills. Many schools when advertising for EFL teachers add the following: – “experience is not essential. Minimum educational requirements: Degree + 120 hour ELT course”. This allows the schools to pay the lowest rate possible and avoid having to pay for more experienced teachers. It also allows them to lean on the experienced teachers to up-skill newer teachers, with guidance from the Director of Studies or an Assistant Director of Studies.
Interestingly, QQI acknowledge their lack of training and limited skill-set and put the onus on schools to train them. To quote a spokesperson from QQI (appendix 5) ‘For a person who has recently completed one of those courses, providers will be required to offer quite a lot of training that would typically be offered for newly qualified teachers, including lesson observation, peer observation, mentoring systems and continuous professional development in order to ensure they develop as teachers’.
However, some schools neither have the staff nor the structures in place to ‘offer quite a lot of training’ in any substantive way. Cascading, peer observations, ongoing practical CPDs only work if you already have a core group of experienced teachers to help the novice teachers upskill.
This strategy of over-reliance on newly qualified pre-service teachers keeps hourly rates of pay lower than if schools were hiring experienced and qualified teachers who consequently would have to be paid higher rates. Schools need to hire more expert teachers as well as nurture their senior teachers otherwise schools risk losing these teachers for any of the reasons outlined in this report. The industry will suffer as there won’t be the expert teachers to upskill the novice and inexperienced teachers as stipulated by QQI as part of schools being granted the IEM.
Supporting expert teachers by improving their pay rate, making a pay scale mandatory, paying staff for the breaks as well as the admin work would keep the more experienced teachers from leaving and consequently available to train and upskill the new novice teachers.
In the QQI Code Of Practice document (5) under section 6.6.1 ‘Staff recruitment’, it states:
‘The ELE Provider ensures that academic and administrative staff have sufficient expertise and experience to fulfil their designated roles thereby enhancing the teaching and learning environment for learners and staff.’
I hope this report shows school owners and all stakeholders including MEI, PCN, ICOS and QQI that the pay and work issues outlined in this report need to be addressed before the English language education industry can ever really achieve the quality standards the new International Education Mark (IEM) is purportedly aiming to achieve.
I have offered some solutions to the points mentioned above and it is up to all the stakeholders to get together and find solutions so the new quality mark will take into account both the financial and the mental health of teachers going forward.
I wish aspiring, training, and newly-qualified English language teachers like Aoife all the best in their EFL teaching careers in Dublin and hope the English language school she finds will have a) a decent hourly rate, b) a transparent pay scale, c) pay for non-contact hours & teacher breaks and d) present her with career options as she grows and develops into a professional English language teacher. Now, wouldn’t it be great if all ELE providers in Ireland and abroad offered these benefits?
NOTES
- https://www.bestinireland.com/what-is-good-salary-to-live-in-dublin/
- Earnings and Labour Costs Q1 2023 (Final) Q2 2023 (Preliminary Estimates) (2023) CSO. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-elcq/earningsandlabourcostsq12023finalq22023preliminaryestimates/
- Pay and work conditions were highlighted in 2019 by Pat King who was appointed by the Minister of State for Higher Education as a mediator to examine employment related issues on the back of a number of school closures and teachers losing their jobs and students losing the money they invested in their education. A JLC (Joint Labour Committee) was subsequently set up and we are still awaiting the outcome of these negotiations. He met or received written submissions from well over 100 teachers and much of the feedback was negative – highlighting poor pay and the lack of a career ladder. Full report is here: https://eltunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/commercial-english-language-education-sector-report-1.pdf
- Quantitative Survey of English Language Teachers in Ireland during the COVID-19 Pandemic English Language School Closure by Unite’s English Language Teachers’ Branch. https://eltunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/covid-elt-in-ireland-survey-2_-quantitative-june-2020.pdf
- A Unite teacher survey (100 teachers) on work conditions equally highlighted the many difficult issues that teachers face and Roy Willoughby combined the data from both of these sources when doing his thesis for an M.Phil. in 2019 which he called ‘English language teaching in Ireland – Is it a Career?’ Dissertation here: https://eltunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/dissertation-final-4.pdf
- Christopher McLaughlin’s 2014 MA TESOL thesis on the factors that both motivate and demotivate teachers found that the 5 main demotivators were a) low pay, b) no pay scale, c) job insecurity d) excessive admin work and e) a limited career path. Available on request from the author or from UCD.
- Code of Practice for Provision of Programmes of English Language Education to International Learners. (2023) QQI https://www.qqi.ie/sites/default/files/2023-10/iem-02-ele-code-of-practice-october-2023.pdf
ELT Advocacy Ireland 
