I looked through the subreddit but couldn’t find the answer I was looking for.
Some background: I am from India and I’ve been living in Japan for the last 10 months on student visa. I have a bachelors degree in education and a masters degree in English literature along with TESOL/TEFL. I also have a government issued teaching certificate (kinda like a license) that’s valid in my home country. I had to take an exam for it.
I recently interviewed with an IB school and they seemed to really like me but they weren’t sure if my teaching certificate would be valid in Japan because they’ve never hired anyone from India. They told me that the Japanese board of education is very strict so I’m kinda scared.
Are they really that strict? My certificate qualifies me to teach at elementary and junior high level. Am I worrying for no reason?
7 comments
One thing I’ve found helpful when moving certifications between countries, is including a (certified) copy of the syllabus, together with my transcript(s) and certificate(s).
Most (All?) reputable universities would have a copy of the syllabus for all the courses that you read for your degree, for the year that you took the class, in their archives.
>weren’t sure if my teaching certificate would be valid in Japan
For public, private and non-accredited “international” schools it would not be valid. However the contracting school can apply for a temporary or special teaching license for you using your certificate to meet the requirement. The process of getting those licenses vary slightly by prefecture.
You are misunderstanding things. The certificate is a qualification that **embassy endorsed** legitimate international schools require. Most IB schools are not recognized by a foreign embassy as an educational institution. Very few IB schools in Japan are legitimate schools. Unless they have 1-12 with high school DP, they are either a very low tier school or a scam.
​
The licensed teacher qualification is for legitimate international schools that service actual expats. Tuition averages 20 million yen a year. Teachers at those schools are exclusively hired from the nation the school represents, not from within Japan.
It depends a lot on the school… how they interpret the rules
I taught at a Japanese private school and now an international school. Don’t have a license from my country. All I have is my B.Ed and experience. nobody seems to care. You mentioned you have a B.Ed. I think that will actually suffice.
They are not strict at all hahaha Schools just like to blame the Ministry Of Education for their random decisions.
I will add on to what Japan_isnt_clean said but for your information, schools with accreditation from WASC, ACSI, CIS or NEASC are recognized by Japan as legitimate schools. Students graduating from such a school will be recognized as having graduated high school and can apply to universities here. I think there are different definitions of what an “international school” is from people in this thread.
When you are applying, check their website for their accreditations. If they do not have one of these accreditations (or a similar accreditation from their respective country), you probably want to avoid them if you are serious about teaching. Honestly, this accreditation is probably more important than IB. All the high level IB schools will also have accreditation from one or more of these organizations. For example, YIS is accredited by NEASC and CIS…as well as being an IB school.
I mention this because these organizations will do checkups every 5 years (5 to 10 people will visit your school for a week) and one of the things they check is to make sure every teacher has a recognized teaching license.