If you dream of beautiful beaches, craggy cliffs, glorious weather, a lively atmosphere, and good food, perhaps you ought to investigate working in Greece as an EFL teacher. Despite the economic crisis, there’s still quite a huge demand for people to know English to some degree. Because of the great demand, there are some great TEFL opportunities in Greece. Today, despite payments being cut, there’s the possibility to find both regular full-time and part-time TEFL employment if you want it.
Most TEFL jobs in Greece are found on the mainland due to the majority of the islands being tourist islands with the exception of Crete, Corfu and Rhodes.
In Greece there are hundreds of small private language schools called ‘frontistiria.’ The majority of all children in Greece will attend one ‘frontistirio’ for English after their normal school hours. Depending on the school there are sometimes Greek teachers and sometimes native English speaking teachers. These frontistiria are open throughout the regular school period from September until late May, early June. Usually they close up for the summer months; however, there are a few schools that do open during the summer months for short intensive summer courses, so there’s always the opportunity for summer TEFL work in Greece
Greek parents are obsessed with their children obtaining English qualifications and often kids are pushed to enter English proficiency measuring exams much earlier than many other countries. The most popular exams are the Cambridge and Proficiency exams, and actually, Greece is one of the main reasons why Cambridge brought out an FCE for schools due to the high number of young Greek candidates.
EU citizens can find work easily in Greece, however, non-EU citizens will find it more challenging as there’s a lot of paperwork involved in obtaining the right permission to stay, which is why a lot of Greek school owners will avoid hiring non-EU candidates even if they have a lot of qualifications. Officially, it’s required by the state that all teachers need a relevant university degree to teach in a frontistiro, but there are a few schools that would be willing to take the risk in hiring a non-qualified teacher, especially in the islands.
A TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification or a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) will be useful to you, and of course they’ll better your chances of finding an ESL job in Greece. Greeks are grammar obsessed and language school owners often place a lot of emphasis on the teaching of grammar and writing, so it will also help that you brush up on your English grammar skills prior to leaving.
There are always teaching jobs in Greece advertised on the internet and all it takes is a few Google searches to pull up a number of possibilities. TEFL jobs in mainland Greece are also advertised in local Greek newspapers, however, most of the time these adverts are usually all in Greek. The best time to start looking for ESL posts in Greece is towards the end of May.
If you happen to end up working in a language school in Greece, your hours are going to have to coincide with the Greek public school system, so you could expect to work between 3pm-10.30pm at night. Since the crisis, ESL salaries in Greece have been cut with most people earning approximately 10 euros per hour which includes IKA (the Greek national insurance). Most private language schools will either subsidise or pay for your accommodation as well, so if you’re working full-time it’s possible to save money and have a little fun exploring all the wonderful ancient ruins and stunning Greek beaches.
