Irish owned · Founded 2017 · Dungarvan, Co. Waterford
The people who pick up the phone.
We are tefl.ie, the Irish home of The TEFL Institute Group. We train people to teach English, and then we stay with them: through the course, through the paperwork, through the first nervous Monday in a classroom on the other side of the world.
Our mission
To put a properly regulated teaching qualification, and an honest route into a classroom, within reach of anyone with the will to teach. Then to stay beside them until they are standing in front of that class.
That is the whole of it. Not the cheapest certificate, not the quickest. The one that stands up when a school, a ministry or a visa officer looks at it, sold by people who will tell you the truth about what it can and cannot do for you.
Qualify properly
Government regulated, externally verified training rather than a certificate nobody checks. If a qualification cannot be looked up on a public register, it is not one.
Tell the truth
Published editorial standards, sourced figures and claims we can evidence. Where we cannot verify something, we say so on the page instead of guessing.
Stay with people
Tutors during, career support after, lifetime certificate verification, and a phone answered by someone who has done the thing you are about to do.
Our story
The TEFL Institute Limited, registered in Ireland, company number 613324. Part of The TEFL Institute Group.
It started in a classroom, not a boardroom
Our founder, Ian O’Sullivan, has spent more than 25 years in TEFL. He has taught in four countries, written on the industry, and co-created one of the very first online TEFL courses at a time when most people still thought a teaching qualification had to mean a lecture hall and a year out of your life.
tefl.ie was built on a simple frustration: too many people were being sold a certificate and then left alone with it. A PDF lands in your inbox, the provider goes quiet, and you are on your own with a visa application, a contract in a language you cannot read, and a school that wants documents nobody told you about.
So we built the opposite. An Irish company, based in Dungarvan, offering Ofqual regulated Level 5 qualifications online, with a team whose actual job is to answer the awkward questions before you spend a cent.
Integrity and transparency, whatever the consequences. That is the standard we were founded on, and it is still the one we are judged by.
Part of something bigger
We are part of The TEFL Institute Group
tefl.ie is the Irish arm of The TEFL Institute Group, an Ireland-led TEFL education group founded in 2017 and now, by teachers certified, Europe’s largest TEFL trainer. More than 161,000 teachers have qualified with the Group, and our graduates teach in around 80 countries.
Being part of a group that size is the reason a small Waterford team can do what it does. It buys the regulated qualifications, the academic department, the employer relationships and the jobs board. What it does not buy, and what we guard carefully, is the feel of the place: you are still ringing a small Irish office and speaking to someone who knows your name.
tefl.ie
The Irish brand. Irish and European routes, procedure, funding and the Transition Year programme used by schools nationwide.
teflinstitute.com
The global hub. International courses, worldwide destinations, institutional partnerships and the Group jobs board.
tefl.ai
AI in the classroom. Free teaching tools and training for teachers who want to use AI well rather than be replaced by it.
The Hire Wire
Our jobs, salary and deadline publication. Sourced hiring intelligence for teachers, published free and checked against official bodies.
Moonrise Teacher Wellbeing Collective
Teacher wellbeing built in as structure, not as an add-on. Because burnout ends more teaching careers than bad lesson plans.
Employability Department
A dedicated team whose only job is what happens after the certificate: applications, interviews, contracts and placements.
What we have built
Achievements that can be checked, not just claimed
Anyone can print a logo on a certificate. Everything below is verifiable on a public register, a partner’s own website, or our own published standards.
Ofqual regulated Level 5
Our Level 5 TEFL Diploma is regulated by the UK government under qualification number 610/1571/4, and sits at the same regulated framework level as CELTA and Trinity CertTESOL. Recognition in any given country is always the employer’s or authority’s decision.
Referenced to EQF Level 5
Referenced to Level 5 of the European Qualifications Framework, so a school or ministry anywhere in Europe can place our qualification against their own system rather than take our word for it.
161,000+ teachers certified
Across The TEFL Institute Group, more than 161,000 teachers have qualified with us. They are in classrooms from Hanoi to Seville, and a good number of them still email us years later.
Best TEFL Provider 2025
Named a Go Overseas Best TEFL Provider for 2025, an award driven by the reviews of the people who actually took the courses rather than by a panel.
Gaisce Challenge Partner
An approved Challenge Partner for Gaisce, The President’s Award, so Irish students can count their TEFL training towards a national award. We also run the Transition Year programme used by schools across the country.
Guaranteed Irish and CPD registered
A Guaranteed Irish member and a registered provider with the CPD Group. Irish owned, Irish staffed, Irish taxed, and happy to be measured on it.
Student welfare
Your welfare is the product. The certificate is just the paperwork.
Moving abroad to teach is one of the biggest decisions most people make in their twenties, or their fifties. Here is what we hold ourselves to while you make it.
A person, not a ticket number
Before you buy anything, you can talk to a human being about whether this is even right for you. Phone, WhatsApp, email or a callback you book yourself. Nobody on our team is paid to rush you off the phone.
Honest answers, even the expensive ones
We publish our editorial standards and an open explanation of what accreditation actually means. We have removed claims from our own website because we could not stand them up. If a country is a poor fit for you, or if you are not eligible, we will tell you before you pay, not after.
Support that outlives the course
Tutor support while you study, a graduate career centre afterwards, a live jobs board, and free lifetime certificate verification for any employer who asks. Your certificate does not expire, and neither does our inbox.
Duty of care abroad
Visas, police vetting, teacher registers, contracts. Our guides and our Hire Wire briefings are checked against government sources, and where a figure cannot be sourced we say so rather than invent one. We will never point you towards work you are not legally entitled to do.
The team
A small team that behaves like a family, because it is one
We are a compact Irish team based in Dungarvan, working alongside colleagues across the Group in Europe and beyond. Everyone here has either taught abroad, moved abroad, or spent years helping other people do it. That is why the advice sounds like advice and not a script.
Managing Director
Katie Troy
Katie leads the Irish business and the editorial standard everything on this site is held to. She is also the person who insists that a student’s question gets a straight answer, even when the straight answer is “not yet”.
Course advisors
Match you to the right course and tell you when a cheaper one will do.
Academic team
Write and review the courses, and check every country guide we publish.
Student support
Tutors, extensions, resits, technical help, and the small things that derail a week.
Partnerships
Build the school, internship and employer relationships that turn a certificate into a job.
Our core values
Four things we will not trade away
Life changing
Experiences worth the leap
Life long
Friends and teaching community
Quality
Regulated, reviewed education
Responsible
Travel that respects the host
Verified review
“The platform was easy to navigate, and the assessments were fair and aligned with the course material.”
Sundus Anwar · verified graduate review
Giving back
Our partnership with the Hope Foundation
Education changed the lives of the people who built this company, so it would be strange to keep it to ourselves. We partner with the Hope Foundation, an Irish charity working with children living on the streets of Kolkata, supporting education and protection programmes for children who would otherwise have neither.
Find us
We genuinely like talking about TEFL
Call, message or write. If you would rather we ring you, book a callback and we will.
Sales: 01 5563038
General: 058 73135
WhatsApp: 083 040 1500
Mon to Fri, 9am to 5pm
hello@tefl.ie
Corrections and editorial queries welcome.
The TEFL Institute Group
4 Shandon Street,
Dungarvan, Co. Waterford,
X35 A365
Come and be part of the family
Thousands of Irish teachers started exactly where you are now: curious, slightly nervous, and not sure which course is the right one. Let’s work it out together.