No eligible overseas teaching qualification: the teacher training in England you can actually enter, and what it costs when nobody funds you

The Department for Education’s guidance says one sentence out loud that most people never reach:

“Many teachers will not meet the requirements for QTS. If you’re not eligible, you may be able to find an alternative route to QTS that better suits your circumstances.”

The alternatives it then names are assessment only QTS and applying for teacher training in England. It does not name a course, a provider or a qualification, and that is where every reader is left standing.

There is no single official page that says “here is what to study”. What follows is what the DfE publishes, assembled in the order the decision is actually made.

First, be sure the recognition route is really closed

The overseas route has two tiers, and people misread the second one as a refusal.

DfE’s list of qualifications it will consider without further conditions covers “Australia, Canada, the European Economic Area (EEA), Guernsey, Hong Kong, Jersey, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ukraine, the USA”.

Then a second group, with a condition attached:

“If you have a teaching qualification from the following countries and are working in a valid teaching role in England, you can apply for QTS if you meet the requirements. Those countries are: Ghana, India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa”

And a third possibility inside that same group:

“If you qualified to teach in one of these countries and are not working in a valid teaching role in England, you may still be able to apply for QTS. You will need to give evidence that you have a subject specialism in mathematics, science or languages and are qualified to teach children who are aged between 11 and 16 years.”

Separately, teachers who qualified in Gibraltar, Northern Ireland or Scotland can apply on their own terms, and anyone who qualified in Wales already holds QTS and “do[es] not need to apply”.

Beyond country, the requirements are stated as absolute — “These requirements are mandatory. You must meet them in full, exactly as set out here” — and include a bachelor’s degree “of the same academic standard as a UK undergraduate degree, as verified by UK ENIC”, “the full professional status needed to be a teacher in the country where you completed training”, a course “of at least the same length as English initial teacher training: one year and full-time equivalent (30 hours per week)”, being “qualified and suitable to teach children aged between 5 and 16 years”, and “at least the equivalent of one school year of experience employed as a teacher in any country after qualifying”.

Two of those conditions eliminate more applicants than the country list does: the five-to-sixteen age range, and the requirement that the qualification carried full professional teaching status where it was awarded.

Note also DfE’s own service standard: “We assess 90% of applications within 12 months.” And the page’s footer: “This information is correct as of February 2026.”

The honest map of what you can enter

DfE publishes four routes to QTS for people who qualified or taught outside the UK. Set aside the recognition service and iQTS for a moment, and the study question comes down to two things: assessment only, or initial teacher training in England.

Assessment only QTS — cheapest, and only for people who are already there

“You can take the assessment only route to QTS if you already meet the standards for qualified teacher status, so do not need any further training.”

It is an assessment, not a course. DfE’s published conditions:

“To apply for assessment only QTS, you do not need a formal teacher training qualification. However, you must have: a minimum of 2 years’ teaching experience, a first (bachelor’s) degree from a UK or non-UK university, an English language qualification that is the same standard as a grade 4 GCSE, a maths qualification that is the same standard as a grade 4 GCSE…”

And the experience must be real teaching, in two places: it must “consist of time spent teaching (as opposed to other responsibilities in a school)” and “have taken place in 2 separate schools (not 2 classes within the same school or 2 school sites within the same organisation)”.

The programme “takes up to 12 weeks”. “Fees range from about £1,500 to £4,000, but vary between provider so it’s best to check with them for more information”, and “Fees may be substantially more than £4,000 if you’re outside the UK.” You do not have to be in the UK: “You do not need to visit the UK to be assessed and gain QTS. However, you’ll need to be assessed at your place of work by an examiner from your teaching training provider.”

DfE publishes the provider list on the Get Into Teaching assessment only page, grouped by English region with a separate group for providers who assess teachers outside the UK — with names, emails and phone numbers. That page is linked above; we are not copying it, because it changes.

One warning DfE prints on the same page, worth internalising before you email anyone: assessment only providers “cannot give you advice about: finding a teaching job in an English school, other routes to QTS, including Apply for QTS in England, applying for a visa to work or study in the UK”.

If you have two years of teaching in two schools and a degree, read this route before any other. It is the only one on this page that costs four figures rather than five.

Initial teacher training in England — the route most people are actually being pointed at

DfE’s blunt statement of eligibility: “All non-UK citizens can apply to train to teach in England.”

What you train towards: “You’ll train towards one of the following qualifications: qualified teacher status (QTS), QTS with a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE).” A PGCE is optional — “You do not need a PGCE to be a qualified teacher in England” — and every course involves “at least 2 school placements over a minimum of 24 weeks”.

Where the courses are: gov.uk runs the official course search, Find teacher training courses in England, and separately publishes the accredited provider list. “Providers can only deliver courses that lead to QTS if they are accredited by the Department for Education (DfE).” That publication was last updated on 1 September 2026 and carries both the list for delivery from September 2026 and a provisional list for September 2027.

Entry requirements, from gov.uk’s own service page:

“Primary and secondary postgraduate teacher training — You’ll need the following or equivalents: a degree, grade 4 (C) or above in English and maths GCSEs, grade 4 (C) or above in GCSE science if you want to teach primary”

“If you do not have GCSE grade 4 (C), you’ll need to show that you can meet an equivalent level. The training provider may ask you to take an equivalence test or show other evidence of your ability.”

For an overseas degree, the assessor is UK ENIC, not the DfE: “To check your qualifications meet the required standard in England you will need a statement of comparability from the UK European Network of Information Centres (UK ENIC).” DfE states the price and the wait: “A statement of comparability costs £69.60. It takes 15 working days to complete your order from the date ENIC receives your qualification documents and payment.” And it publishes a nudge: “Applications which include this are 28% more likely to be successful.”

On degree class, DfE’s own wording is “most providers will accept a minimum degree grade of 2:2, but some may require you to have a 2:1”.

Where the real barriers are — and they are not where people expect

DfE never writes that a route is closed to international applicants. Read the actual sentences and two different barriers appear, neither of which is a blanket ban.

Barrier one: the provider, not the route. “Due to rules about immigration, not all providers can accept international applicants. Check with providers before you apply.” This is a provider-by-provider question and it is the single most important thing to establish before you build a shortlist.

Barrier two: residency, on the apprenticeship routes. For postgraduate teaching apprenticeships, DfE states: “You can normally only do a postgraduate teaching apprenticeship (PGTA) if you have been a resident in the UK for the last 3 years or more.” The teacher degree apprenticeship carries the same condition, and gov.uk repeats it on the course search: “You also need to be: a resident of England for the last 3 years or more.”

That is a residency rule, not an immigration status rule, and it closes the apprenticeship routes to someone who has just arrived regardless of what status they hold.

Salaried routes are open in principle and hard in practice. DfE names them — “The postgraduate salaried courses are: School Direct salaried, postgraduate teaching apprenticeships (PGTA), Teach First teacher training” — and says of non-UK citizens: “You can apply for a salaried teacher training course. However, these courses are limited in number and very competitive. On this type of course you can earn money while you train in a school. Some salaried courses may also charge fees. You will also need a visa or immigration status allowing you to work in the UK.”

We are not an immigration adviser and give no immigration advice on this page. DfE’s own statement of where QTS sits relative to that question is: “It’s important to note that QTS does not lead to a teaching job or visa. You will need to apply for teaching jobs and visas separately. There are a small number of schools in England that sponsor visas.” Everything about visas belongs on gov.uk, and this page links there and stops.

The money, which is the part nobody sets out plainly

Four DfE-published figures, side by side, as they stood on 3 September 2026.

	What DfE publishes
Fee-paying ITT, non-UK applicant	“an average of £15,000”, “a maximum of about £36,000”
Fee-paying ITT, UK applicant	“The maximum tuition fee for postgraduate teacher training for a UK applicant is: £9,790 per year for a full-time course”
Assessment only QTS	“about £1,500 to £4,000”, possibly “substantially more” outside the UK
iQTS	“£7,950 to £9,950 for a 9-month, full-time iQTS course”

And the funding position, in DfE’s words:

“Most non-UK citizens will not be eligible for financial support from the UK government to help with teacher training.”

“Funding like tuition fee loans and maintenance loans are normally only available for UK citizens or non-UK citizens with permission to live permanently in the UK.”

Bursaries do not fill the gap, because of how they are gated: “You must be eligible for student finance to receive a bursary.” So the exclusion from student finance is also an exclusion from the bursary. DfE names the exceptions — settled status or indefinite leave to remain, certain Ukraine and Afghanistan visas, Irish citizens — and notes that those who qualify may also get “a reduction in fees to the home fee rate paid by UK applicants (set at a maximum of £9,790)”.

Two further limits sit on top: “Bursaries and scholarships are not available for: every subject, salaried teacher training.” And the bursary amounts DfE publishes “apply if you’re starting your training between September 2026 and July 2027”, so any figure quoted elsewhere needs its year checked.

DfE also prints an anti-fraud warning on that page, which tells you what is happening in this market: “You do not need to pay an agent or any other third party to access a bursary or scholarship. Any agency or person offering to help you access a bursary may be fraudulent.”

What does not lead to QTS, however it is marketed

This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the area, and DfE lists it explicitly:

“The following courses do not lead to QTS and will not qualify you to teach in English schools where QTS is a legal requirement: Postgraduate Certificate of Education International (PGCEi, sometimes called an International Postgraduate Certificate of Education, or iPGCE), Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), when completed outside the UK, Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE), when completed outside the UK”

“Combined PGCE and QTS teacher training courses are only available if you study in England.”

A PGCE without QTS is also a real product sold inside England, and DfE describes its consequence: “Getting a PGCE without QTS means you will not be qualified to teach in most primary, secondary and special schools in England, although some schools will employ teachers without QTS.” It adds: “If you get a PGCE without QTS you will not be entitled to the same benefits during your training and career as QTS with PGCE.”

Note the pattern. The letters PGCE appear in a course that gives QTS, a course that does not, and a course taken abroad that never can. The letters are not the qualification. The QTS is.

One genuine exception, if you are outside England: iQTS. DfE calls it “the only international teacher training course that leads to QTS (other courses may offer valuable training but do not lead to QTS)”. “Both UK and non-UK citizens can apply for iQTS, but you must be living outside of England.” “Your training provider will award you iQTS when you have successfully passed this assessment process. You will then automatically gain English QTS.” No DfE funding attaches: applicants “are not eligible for loans, bursaries or any other type of financial support from the Department for Education and Student Finance England”.

If England is not the only option you are considering

QTS is an England qualification — the gov.uk guidance carries the banner “Applies to England” — and the other three UK nations register teachers themselves.

• Scotland: “It is a legal requirement for people employed as teachers in Scottish schools to be registered with GTC Scotland.”
• Northern Ireland: “If you want to work as a teacher in a grant-aided school in Northern Ireland you must be registered with GTCNI in accordance with Article 35(3) of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1998.”
• Wales: QTS awarded by the Education Workforce Council after ITT in Wales, and gov.uk states it “is recognised in England”.

Different regulators, different rules, different assessments of the same qualification. Nothing on this page tells you anything about the first two.

What we could not verify

A single official page listing the ITT routes by name. There isn’t one. The salaried route names sit on the salaried-courses page; “university-led” and “school-led” sit on two other pages; “SCITT” appears on the live DfE pages we read only inside provider names, never as a named route. Anyone presenting a tidy numbered list of routes has assembled it themselves, as we have here.

Any DfE statement that a route is closed to international applicants. DfE does not say this of any route. The hard bars it does publish are residency-based, on the apprenticeships, plus the provider-level caveat about immigration rules. We are not going to upgrade “not all providers can accept international applicants” into “closed”.

Which providers accept international fee-paying applicants, and how many. Not published. It has to be asked provider by provider.

Whether an international applicant can enrol on a PGCE-without-QTS course. DfE confirms such courses exist and what they do not confer, and says nothing about international eligibility for them.

Update dates for the Get Into Teaching pages. Unlike gov.uk, those pages carry no published or last-updated line at all. Everything quoted from them is dated only by the day we read it: 3 September 2026.

Any prediction about an application. DfE assesses; UK ENIC compares; providers admit. We do none of those things and forecast none of them.

What to do

1. Re-read the recognition requirements before writing them off, especially the second country group, the maths/science/languages condition for people not currently teaching in England, and the five-to-sixteen age range.
2. Check assessment only first if you have taught for two years in two schools. It is an order of magnitude cheaper than training again and DfE publishes the provider contacts.
3. Order the UK ENIC statement of comparability early. £69.60, fifteen working days from receipt of documents and payment, and DfE says applications that include it do better.
4. Fix the GCSE-equivalent question before you apply. English, maths, and science for primary. Ask providers directly whether they run equivalence tests — DfE says “some teacher training providers will let you sit tests in these subjects.”
5. Build your shortlist from the gov.uk course search and the accredited provider list, then filter by one question: can this provider accept an international applicant for this course? Ask in writing.
6. Assume no funding, then look for the exception. Student finance eligibility gates the bursary, so check that first rather than the bursary tables.
7. Do not buy a PGCEi, an overseas PGCE or an overseas PGDE as a route to teaching in England. DfE names all three as courses that do not lead to QTS.
8. Take every visa question to gov.uk. This page reports what DfE publishes about courses and does not advise on immigration.

We are not the DfE, we do not award QTS and we do not assess qualifications. What this page does is put the routes, the bars and the money on one screen, because DfE publishes all of it and never in the same place — and because the honest answer to “so what do I study” is a course you have to find yourself, from a provider that can take you, under a funding rule that will probably leave you paying for it.