Qualifications and Registration

For New Zealand qualified school and early childhood teachers returning, if you have been teaching while away, you’ll need to have these things sorted before teaching again in New Zealand:

• Confirmation of your registration status. Check your status with the NZ Teachers Council.
• Police clearance from your overseas country where you were last teaching. (It’s much easier to get police clearance before returning to NZ. If you apply for it from NZ, you may experience considerable delays.)
• NZQA assessment if you’ve studied extra qualifications overseas
• For pay purposes, official school letter detailing teaching experience including starting and finishing dates, whether it was full time and continuous, or stating the exact number of days if your teaching was not continuous.

If you are a New Zealand qualified teacher who hasn’t been teaching while overseas, you will need to have these things sorted before teaching again in New Zealand:

• Registration status**
• For pay purposes, recognition of relevant work while overseas

**Once you have been out of teaching for more than three years you will not be able to renew your practising certificate as you will not meet the requirement of teaching two of the previous five years. This means you will need to apply for subject to confirmation registration.