Teaching English in China requirements: Degrees, visas, & documents

To teach English in China, you need three apostilled documents: your degree, your TEFL certificate and your criminal record check. Get those right, in the right order, and the rest of the process follows. Get one wrong and your work permit stalls for weeks.

This guide covers what you need to qualify, which documents to gather, how the Z visa process works, and where UK applicants most often go wrong.

Here’s what you’ll need before you can legally teach English in China:

Clear these four baseline requirements before you gather any paperwork.

You need a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university. The subject doesn’t matter. A degree in history, business or engineering qualifies as readily as one in English or education. What matters is that the awarding institution is recognised, and the local labour bureau checks that itself. You supply the certificate; they verify the university.

Chinese work-permit guidance treats seven countries as native English sources: the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. A UK passport automatically puts you in that group. Applicants from elsewhere can sometimes qualify with a degree taught entirely in English, but acceptance varies by province and employer.

Most provinces set the age range at 18 to 60, and some cap it at 55 for women. Enforcement has tightened in recent years, so don’t count on an exception. You’ll also need a medical check. Some employers ask for one in the UK before they apply for your Notification Letter; most arrange it at a designated hospital once you arrive. Your employer tells you which.

You need a criminal record certificate showing no disqualifying convictions. For the UK, that’s an ACRO police certificate. Most labour bureaus want it dated within six months of submission, so time the order carefully. If you’ve lived in another country for more than six months in recent years, you may also need a police certificate from there, legalised in that country.

Employers often forget to mention this until the bureau asks.

Once you meet the requirements above, your employer needs these documents for your work permit application.

Here’s what UK applicants typically assemble for a teaching Z visa:

The order matters more than most applicants expect. Get it wrong, and you pay twice.

You’ll want to keep the following in mind:

London Apostille Services Ltd is registered with the FCDO and listed on GOV.UK’s next-day provider list. We handle the full process for teaching applicants: solicitor or notary certification, the FCDO apostille, and returning your documents ready to send to your employer.

We don’t book visa appointments or deal with the visa centre. Once your documents are apostilled, it’s your responsibility. We make sure nothing comes back rejected.

We check every document before it reaches the FCDO. If you apply yourself and the FCDO rejects a document, you lose the fee, the postage and the time. Nothing is refunded. We check certification, signatures and document type before submission, so that doesn’t happen.

Next-day processing. Postal applications to the FCDO take up to 28 working days. As a registered business, we submit under the next-day service, which matters when your employer is waiting to apply for your Notification Letter.

One place for all three documents. Degree, TEFL certificate and ACRO certificate, certified where needed and apostilled together, so you’re not managing a solicitor, a courier and the FCDO separately.

A quote before any work starts. You see the price for each document and approve it before we begin. No surprises after the fact.

Ready to get your documents apostilled before your employer’s deadline? Get a quote for your degree, TEFL certificate and criminal record check.

Get a custom quote today.

Let’s close with answers to the questions UK applicants ask most often about the requirements for teaching English in China: