The TEFL.ie editorial charter
Our Editorial Standards: Who Writes TEFL.ie and How We Check It
Editorial charter
What we promise before you trust a figure on this site
Real names on every guide. Official sources behind every claim. The date we checked it, printed beside it. And a public ledger of everything we have had to correct.
Status
In force
Last reviewed
7 August 2026
Reviewed by
Ian O’Sullivan, Group Founder
Next scheduled review
February 2027
Version
1.1
TEFL.ie began the way a lot of good Irish ideas do: someone went off and did the thing first. In 2002, Ian O’Sullivan taught his first English class in Costa Rica and came home convinced that teaching English abroad could change lives. He was one of the developers of the world’s first online TEFL course, built at a previous employer some years before this company existed. In 2017 he founded The TEFL Institute in Ireland, and it’s still run from Dungarvan, Co. Waterford today. Caroline Keevers, our Strategy Manager, made much the same journey in 2001, heading to Costa Rica with her husband to volunteer as English teachers, and she has spent thirty years in TEFL education since. Between the two of us there has been a fair amount of chalk dust and a lot of long-haul flights. Formally we are The TEFL Institute Limited, registered in Ireland, company number 613324. If you would rather check that than take our word for it, that is precisely the point of this page.
This page answers the questions you should ask of any site telling you how to build a life abroad: who writes this, who checks it, and can you trust it?
Who actually writes TEFL.ie?
Real people, with their names on their work. Our regular writers:
Ian O’Sullivan
Group Founder
Founder of the group behind TEFL.ie, with over two decades in TEFL education. Writes on certification, accreditation and where the industry is heading.
Katie Troy
Managing Director
Holds a degree in education, with classroom experience teaching young learners in Zambia and Abu Dhabi.
Olivia Klimczyk
Marketing Executive
Marketing Executive with a marketing degree. Writes destination guides and student life content, and keeps in touch with our graduates once they head abroad.
Tara Bourke
Marketing Executive
BA in Journalism and an MSc in Management and Marketing. Writes salary guides, country comparisons and job hunting content.
Who checks it before you read it?
The people who assess our students’ actual coursework also check our published guides. That means content about teaching, qualifications and classrooms is reviewed by:
Rachel Hammond
Academic Manager
DELTA qualified with a Master’s in Applied Linguistics, ten plus years teaching in Spain, the UK, Romania, Italy and Switzerland, and a pronunciation specialist who speaks five languages.
Laura Graham
Lead Assessor and Academic Tutor
Over fifteen years teaching in South America, China and Spain, across all ages, levels and Cambridge exams.
Anya Shaw
Assessor
More than twenty years in English language teaching as a teacher, examiner and academic manager. CELTA and DELTA qualified, and a former CELTA and Trinity CertTESOL tutor.
Michelle
Virtual Course Tutor
Twenty plus years in TEFL, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and a Master’s in TESOL from the University of Limerick, with teaching years in Botswana and Tel Aviv.
Job and employer content gets a second pair of eyes from Jessica Jeffery, our Business Development Manager, who taught in Italy and Thailand and works directly with the schools abroad that hire our graduates. And when a guide touches on course choice, we lean on John, a Course Enrolment Advisor with over 35 years in TEFL who has taught in Ireland, the UK, Spain and Portugal and written student materials and training courses himself. You can meet everyone properly at Meet the Team.
How does a guide get from idea to published?
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Start with a real question.
Something our students genuinely ask, like “can I teach in Spain without a degree?” We check what we’ve already published first, so we update rather than repeat ourselves.
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Go to the source.
Government immigration sites, embassies, education ministries, awarding bodies and named employers come before anyone’s blog. Salary figures need two independent sources before they go in a table.
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Write it properly.
The named writer drafts the guide with data tables that say what year the figures are from, and sources linked where the claims are made.
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Get it checked.
One of the academic team above reviews anything factual, especially claims that could affect your legal or financial position.
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Keep it honest.
Visas, salaries and hiring rules change, so those guides are re-reviewed on a schedule. If we update a guide meaningfully, the “last updated” date changes. If we didn’t change anything, neither does the date.
The rules we hold ourselves to
Facts you can check in one click
If we state a fact, a visa rule, a salary range, a qualification requirement, we link the source right where the claim appears, not buried in a list at the end. And because we run live courses over Zoom alongside online study, our teaching advice comes from tutors who are actually in live classrooms with students every week.
Salaries and visas, honestly
We publish salary ranges, with the currency and the year, never a single “you will earn this” number, because earnings depend on the city, the school, your experience and your timing. Visa information is general guidance only: always confirm with the embassy before booking anything. No TEFL provider can guarantee you a job, a salary or a visa, including us.
Reviews stay real
Student reviews quoted on TEFL.ie are taken word for word from independent review platforms. See our verified reviews. We never polish them up, trim out the awkward bits to change their meaning, or write them ourselves. Graduate stories are one person’s experience, and we present them that way.
Our use of AI, upfront
We use AI tools to help with research, drafting and editing, and we’re upfront about it. Every guide is reviewed by a named person before it’s published, facts are checked against real sources rather than taken on an AI’s word, and responsibility for what appears on TEFL.ie always rests with our team.
Who owns TEFL.ie
TEFL.ie is operated by THE TEFL INSTITUTE LIMITED, registered in Ireland (company number 613324), the company behind The TEFL Institute Group. Our sister sites are teflinstitute.com, our international brand, and tefl.ai, our free AI tools platform for English teachers. When we link between these sites, it’s the same company talking, and we’d rather tell you that plainly than have you wonder.
Credentials, with numbers attached
The same rule we apply to a salary figure applies to our own qualifications. Our Level 5 diplomas are regulated by Ofqual and awarded by Highfield Qualifications, and we publish every reference number, the awarding body, the approved centre number and the framework level, so you can check them on a public register instead of taking our word for it. The full record is on our accreditation and regulation page, including what we deliberately do not claim.
Spotted a mistake?
Tell us, genuinely. If something on TEFL.ie is wrong or out of date, let us know through our contact page. We review every report, fix what’s confirmed, and update the guide’s “last updated” date when we do. Confirmed fixes are recorded in the ledger below.
Corrections and updates ledger
A public record of meaningful changes to TEFL.ie’s standing reference content. Small wording tweaks don’t make the list. Factual corrections and structural changes do.
| Date | Where | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug 2026 | TEFL accreditation and regulation | The page was rebuilt as a full regulatory reference: every credential now shown with its identifier and a route to verify it, the European Qualifications Framework explained, and a section setting out what we do not claim. The Level 5 Diploma is stated as Ofqual qualification 610/1571/4. |
| 7 Aug 2026 | This page | Redesigned as a full editorial charter with a status strip and this public ledger. The standards themselves are unchanged. |
| 7 Aug 2026 | The Hire Wire desks | The Paperwork Desk published, and the Salary Index, Online Desk and Visa Desk each moved to a standing page of its own. |
| 5 Aug 2026 | The Hire Wire | The tefl.ie edition of The Hire Wire launched: hub page and Edition 1 published, with every salary and deadline checked at an official source. |
Rows are added when something meaningful changes. If a fortnight passes without a correction, nothing is added, and that’s the honest version.
These standards in practice
The Hire Wire is this charter, applied fortnightly
Every two weeks our jobs briefing puts these rules to work: named authors, salaries in local currency and euros with the year attached, hiring windows checked against official sources, and a named reviewer on every edition. If you want to see how we work rather than read about it, start with the desks.
These standards are set by the team you’ve just met and applied to every guide before it goes live. They cover everything we publish on TEFL.ie, from a two minute FAQ to a full country guide. If you’d like to put faces to the names, visit Meet the Team.
Everything on TEFL.ie is general guidance, not legal, immigration, financial or employment advice. Rules and figures change and depend on your circumstances, so verify the important details with official sources, embassies, government authorities and employers, before acting on them. We’re not responsible for the content or practices of third-party websites we link to.