Teacher Visa Costs: Who Legally Pays What (2026)
Every cost in sponsoring an overseas teacher in 2026 — Certificate of Sponsorship, visa fee, Immigration Health Surcharge and Immigration Skills Charge — which ones the school is legally barred from passing to you, and the real rules constraining clawback clauses if you leave early.
Independent guidance, not affiliated with the DfE, Teachers' Pensions or any teaching union.
Short answer
General guidance, not legal or immigration advice
Almost every dispute between an internationally recruited teacher and their school comes down to money that somebody assumed somebody else would pay. It is an avoidable dispute, because the law is unusually clear about which side of the line each cost falls on — clearer, in fact, than in most areas of employment. The problem is that the rules live in Home Office sponsor guidance that teachers never see and that a surprising number of school business managers have not read either.
The Home Office has also moved decisively in teachers' favour over the last two years. Since 31 December 2024 it has been a licence-threatening breach for a sponsor to push its own sponsorship costs onto a Skilled Worker, and since April 2025 that prohibition has been extended and its definition tightened. A great deal of advice written before those changes — including advice still being given by schools — is simply out of date.
This guide goes through every cost in the process with a current figure and a named source, says who is legally liable for it, and then deals properly with the question that generates the most anxiety: what a school can and cannot claw back if you leave early.
The two buckets
Hold this distinction in your head and the rest of the page follows from it.
Sponsorship costs — the school's, by law
The cost of being a sponsor and of sponsoring you specifically: the worker sponsor licence fee, the Certificate of Sponsorship fee, associated administrative costs including priority services and legal advice about the licence or the certificate, and the Immigration Skills Charge. These are prohibited from being recouped from the worker by any means. 'By any means' is doing real work in that sentence — it catches a direct invoice, a salary deduction, a repayment clause and an informal arrangement equally.
Application costs — yours, unless the school agrees otherwise
The cost of your personal immigration application: the visa application fee for you and each dependant, the Immigration Health Surcharge for you and each dependant, any priority or super-priority service you choose, biometric appointment and courier costs, an Ecctis assessment of your degree or a Secure English Language Test, a tuberculosis test certificate, overseas criminal record certificates, document translation, and relocation expenses such as flights and shipping. A school can pay or reimburse any of these, and a clawback clause is legally possible on this bucket.
The reason the line falls where it does is straightforward once stated: the first bucket exists because the employer chose to become a sponsor and to hire from overseas. The second exists because you are applying for permission to be in the UK, which is a personal immigration status you keep, take with you, and which benefits you beyond this job. The Home Office's position is that employers should not be able to make migrants finance the cost of the sponsorship system itself.
Costs the school must pay, and cannot recover
Home Office sponsor guidance sets out the prohibition in Part 1 of the guidance for sponsors, at paragraph L6.17. A sponsor's licence will normally be revoked where it recoups, or attempts to recoup, by any means:
- The Skilled Worker sponsor licence fee — including the fee for adding the Skilled Worker route to an existing licence — where recouped on or after 31 December 2024. For other sponsored routes, the same prohibition bites from 9 April 2025.
- The Certificate of Sponsorship fee for a Skilled Worker, where the certificate was assigned on or after 31 December 2024, and for other routes from 9 April 2025.
- Any associated administrative costs — a defined term, covered below.
- The Immigration Skills Charge, which has its own separate and longer-standing prohibition.
The current fees in that bucket, all verified against the Home Office fee table in force from 8 April 2026:
| Cost | Amount | When it arises |
|---|---|---|
| Worker sponsor licence — small or charitable sponsor | £611 | Once, when the school or trust first applies |
| Worker sponsor licence — medium or large sponsor | £1,682 | Once, when the school or trust first applies |
| Priority service on a licence application | £750 | Optional — decision in 10 working days, limited slots |
| Certificate of Sponsorship | £525 | Per teacher sponsored |
| Immigration Skills Charge — small or charitable sponsor | £480 per 12 months, £240 per further 6 | Per teacher, for the whole sponsorship period, paid up front |
| Immigration Skills Charge — medium or large sponsor | £1,320 per 12 months, £660 per further 6 | Per teacher, for the whole sponsorship period, paid up front |
"Associated administrative costs" is a defined term and it is broader than most people expect. On the published definition, it means any costs incurred by the sponsor to obtain, use or maintain its licence, and includes: fees for premium or priority services in connection with a sponsor licence application, a change of circumstances request, or assigning, requesting or applying for a Certificate of Sponsorship; fees for legal advice relating to applying for, using or maintaining the licence or to the certificate; and immigration advice or immigration services provided by a third party to a sponsored worker where the worker did not have a genuine choice in whether or how to obtain them.
The 'genuine choice' limb catches a common arrangement
One more thing about the drafting: the prohibition is on recouping by any means. There is no carve-out for a contractual term, an agreed repayment, a salary sacrifice, an invoice at the end of employment, or a "voluntary" contribution. A school cannot contract out of it, and a teacher cannot validly agree to it. If your contract contains a clause requiring you to repay the Certificate of Sponsorship fee on early departure, the existence of that clause is itself the problem — the guidance refers to attempting to recoup, not only to succeeding.
The Immigration Skills Charge
The Immigration Skills Charge is the biggest sponsor-side cost by a wide margin and the one most often misunderstood, so it gets its own section.
It is a levy on employers who sponsor workers from overseas, intended to fund domestic skills development. It is paid by the sponsor at the point of assigning the Certificate of Sponsorship, up front, for the entire period of sponsorship. GOV.UK's employer guidance is unambiguous about who bears it: "You must pay the immigration skills charge yourself. Your licence may be revoked if you ask the sponsored worker to pay the fee or any costs linked to your application."
The rates rose by 32% on 16 December 2025, which is why a great deal of currently published material has the wrong figures. A number of well-ranked commercial pages still quote the old £364 and £1,000 rates. The current figures are:
| Sponsor type | First 12 months | Each further 6 months | Cost of a 5-year sponsorship |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small or charitable sponsor | £480 | £240 | £2,400 |
| Medium or large sponsor | £1,320 | £660 | £6,600 |
The small-or-charitable distinction is therefore worth £4,200 to a school over a five-year sponsorship, and it is the reason the definition matters. GOV.UK's employer guidance defines charitable status as including registered charities across the UK nations, excepted charities, exempt charities and ecclesiastical corporations established for charitable purposes; the underlying definition in the Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017 turns on being a charity within the meaning of section 1 of the Charities Act 2011 or its Scottish and Northern Irish equivalents. Academy trusts are exempt charities, and voluntary aided and voluntary controlled school governing bodies generally have charitable status. A local authority sponsoring into its own maintained schools is not a charity and would fall to be assessed on size instead. The sponsor has to declare the status through the Sponsorship Management System before assigning the certificate to get the lower rate.
Where our verification stops
Some sponsored workers are exempt from the charge altogether. The published exemptions include certain science, research and higher education occupation codes — higher education teaching professionals are exempt, school teachers are not — and workers switching into the Skilled Worker route from a Student visa inside the UK. That second exemption is genuinely relevant to schools: an overseas teacher who has just completed a PGCE in the UK and is switching from a Student visa may cost the trust nothing in skills charge at all, which is a real and rarely mentioned argument for recruiting from that pool.
A final point on refunds. Where sponsorship ends early, the Home Office refunds the skills charge for full unstarted periods. That is relevant to the clawback discussion below, because a school claiming to have lost the whole five years of skills charge when a teacher leaves after one year is overstating its loss — and, in any event, cannot recover it from the teacher.
Costs that normally fall to you
Everything on this list is legally yours unless the school volunteers to cover it. All figures verified against gov.uk.
| Cost | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Visa application, from outside the UK, up to 3 years | £819 per person | Same fee for each dependant |
| Visa application, from outside the UK, more than 3 years | £1,618 per person | Same fee for each dependant |
| Visa application, from inside the UK, up to 3 years | £943 per person | Extending, switching or updating |
| Visa application, from inside the UK, more than 3 years | £1,865 per person | Extending, switching or updating |
| Immigration Health Surcharge | £1,035 per adult per year | £776 per year for children under 18; paid up front for the full visa length |
| Maintenance funds | £1,270 plus £285 partner, £315 first child, £200 each further child | Not a fee — money you must show held for 28 days, unless the sponsor certifies maintenance |
| Ecctis degree assessment, SELT, TB test, criminal record certificates, translations | Variable | Depends on nationality, qualifications and country of residence |
Note that teaching occupations are not on the Immigration Salary List, so the reduced application fee of £628 that applies to listed jobs does not apply to teachers — a point covered in full in our salary threshold guide. You pay the standard fee.
What it all adds up to
Two worked examples, both assuming a five-year visa applied for from outside the UK, because that is the most common shape of an international teacher appointment.
A single teacher
One application fee at £1,618, plus five years of health surcharge at £1,035 a year:
£6,793
What a single teacher pays personally for a five-year Skilled Worker visa
Against England's 2026/27 M1 salary of £34,069, that is roughly 20% of a full year's gross pay, payable in a single transaction before you have started the job, before you have paid a deposit on a flat and while you are almost certainly still being paid by an employer in another country. The cash-flow problem, rather than the headline number, is what makes this hard.
A teacher, a partner and two children
Four application fees at £1,618 each is £6,472. Two adults' health surcharge at £1,035 × 5 and two children's at £776 × 5 comes to £18,110.
£24,582
What a family of four pays personally for five-year Skilled Worker visas
That is more than half of an M1 teacher's entire gross annual salary, paid up front, with no instalment option and no refund if the job does not work out. It is the single biggest practical barrier to international teacher recruitment in the UK, and it is why the question of what the school will contribute is not a detail.
And what the school pays
For comparison, sponsoring that same teacher for five years costs the school £525 for the certificate plus £2,400 of skills charge if it is a charitable sponsor — £2,925 — or £7,125 if it is a medium or large sponsor, plus a one-off licence fee spread across every teacher it ever sponsors.
Teacher's unavoidable cost
£6,793 alone, or £24,582 with a partner and two children, all payable up front and none of it recoverable if the appointment ends early. Against an M1 salary of £34,069, the family figure is more than half a year's gross pay.
School's unavoidable cost
£2,925 for a charitable sponsor over five years, or £7,125 for a medium or large one, plus a one-off licence fee of £611 or £1,682 shared across every sponsored appointment. Partially refundable through the skills charge refund if sponsorship ends early.
Setting the two side by side is the most useful thing this page can do, because it reframes the negotiation. The teacher's mandatory outlay is two to seven times the school's, and unlike the school's it is entirely unrecoverable. A school that says it "has already spent a fortune on your visa" has usually spent a fraction of what you have.
Clawback clauses: what immigration law says
Schools that do pay a teacher's visa costs frequently attach a repayment condition — you stay two or three years, or you pay some of it back. The instinct behind it is not unreasonable. Whether the clause works is a different question, and it has to survive two separate bodies of law. Start with immigration.
First: what is being clawed back? A clawback of sponsorship costs is simply prohibited. You cannot validly agree to repay the Certificate of Sponsorship fee, the licence fee, associated administrative costs, or the Immigration Skills Charge, and a school that writes such a clause is attempting to recoup them, which is itself the breach. A clawback of the visa application fee, the health surcharge, relocation flights or shipping is, in principle, permissible — those were your costs, and the school paying them was a benefit it chose to confer.
Second: what does the repayment do to your salary? This is the rule almost nobody knows, and it is dealt with in its own section below because it is the one most likely to invalidate an otherwise sensible arrangement.
A mixed clause does not neatly sever
Clawback clauses: what employment law says
Even a clause limited to legitimately recoverable costs has to be a valid contractual term and has to be enforceable as drafted. Four tests, drawn from general UK employment and contract law rather than from anything teacher-specific:
It must be genuinely contractual
A clawback needs the ordinary hallmarks of a contract: offer, acceptance and certainty. It should be either a clause in your contract of employment or a separate written agreement that you have signed. A repayment expectation that lives only in a staff handbook, an HR policy, an email, or something said at interview is very unlikely to be enforceable. Practically: if nobody can show you a document you signed that sets out the amount and the trigger, ask on what basis the money is said to be owed.
It must not be a penalty
English law will not enforce a contractual term that imposes a detriment out of all proportion to the employer's legitimate interest in performance. A clause requiring repayment of the full amount however long you stay, or repayment of more than was actually spent, or repayment of costs the employer has recovered elsewhere — such as a refunded skills charge — invites exactly that challenge. The amount repayable should be proportionate to the loss the employer actually suffers.
It must not be an unreasonable restraint of trade
A clause so onerous that it effectively prevents you from resigning at all can be struck down as a restraint of trade. This is a real risk with sponsored workers specifically, because the practical pressure is so much greater: a teacher facing a five-figure repayment and the loss of their immigration status is not freely choosing whether to stay. The longer the tie-in and the larger the sum, the weaker the clause.
Any deduction from wages must be separately authorised
Recovering the money is a different act from being owed it. Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 an employer may not deduct from wages unless the deduction is required by statute, authorised by a written contractual term of which you were given a copy before the deduction was made, or agreed to by you in writing in advance. And separately, a deduction must not take your pay below the National Minimum Wage for the relevant pay reference period. A deduction with no proper basis is an unlawful deduction from wages, which is a straightforward employment tribunal claim.
Two further points that come up constantly. A clause that bites when you leave for reasons that are not your choice — redundancy, dismissal, ill-health retirement, the school losing its licence, or the non-renewal of a fixed-term contract — is much more vulnerable to challenge than one limited to voluntary resignation, and it is entirely reasonable to ask for those carve-outs before signing. And a clause that does not reduce over time is far weaker than a sliding scale: a teacher who stays 23 months of a 24-month tie-in has delivered almost all of the benefit the school was paying for.
The salary trap hidden inside a clawback
This is the most consequential thing on this page and it is almost never mentioned, including by schools that mean well.
For Certificates of Sponsorship assigned on or after 9 April 2025, the Immigration Rules provide that money paid by the applicant to the sponsor — or to an organisation related to the sponsor — is subtracted from the salary used to test the immigration salary thresholds, averaged over the length of time the applicant is being sponsored for. The subtraction covers deductions from salary, loan repayments and investments, and it expressly includes repayments relating to immigration costs such as the visa application fee and the Immigration Health Surcharge. The only exception is a payment for an additional benefit the applicant had a genuine choice whether to take up, such as a salary sacrifice arrangement.
Read that again with a clawback clause in mind. If a school pays your £6,793 of visa costs and you agree to repay them over the sponsorship period, the Home Office treats your salary as being lower by that amount, spread across the sponsorship. On a five-year sponsorship that is roughly £1,359 a year coming off your immigration salary figure.
£32,710
An M1 teacher's £34,069 salary, as the Rules would see it, after a £6,793 clawback averaged over five years
On the published teaching going rate of £31,650 for England outside London, an M1 teacher at £34,069 would still clear it after that subtraction — there is enough headroom to absorb it. But the margin is not large, and it disappears entirely in several realistic situations: a family-sized repayment rather than a single one, a shorter sponsorship period over which to average, a teacher on the unqualified scale, a part-time fraction, or a future revision of the going rate table, which is currently well behind the actual pay scale and due an uplift.
Why this matters to you and not just to the school
What a fair clause actually looks like
Plenty of schools handle this well. If you want a benchmark to measure an offer against, a defensible clause generally has these features:
- It itemises what is repayable, with actual figures — visa application fee, health surcharge, flights, shipping — and states explicitly that sponsorship costs are excluded.
- It is limited to voluntary resignation and to dismissal for gross misconduct, with express carve-outs for redundancy, ill-health, the school losing or surrendering its licence, and the end of a fixed term.
- It tapers on a sliding scale — for example 100% in the first six months reducing to nil at 24 months — rather than being an all-or-nothing cliff edge.
- It has a short tie-in. Two years is common and defensible for a five-figure relocation package; anything approaching five years starts to look like a restraint on your ability to leave at all.
- It separates the debt from the deduction, and any authority to deduct from final pay is given by you in writing in advance and is expressly capped so that it cannot take your pay below the National Minimum Wage.
- It was given to you before you accepted, not produced with the contract pack after you had resigned from your job abroad.
- It says what happens if the school ends the sponsorship — the answer should be that nothing is repayable.
And the things that should stop you signing without advice: any reference to repaying the Certificate of Sponsorship, the licence fee, the Immigration Skills Charge, or "all costs associated with your sponsorship"; a flat repayment figure that does not correspond to money actually spent; a tie-in longer than the initial visa; and any suggestion that your immigration status depends on the repayment. It does not, and a school suggesting otherwise has crossed a line worth documenting.
If you think you have been charged wrongly
This is a genuinely difficult situation, because the person you would complain about also controls your sponsorship, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But the options are real and it is worth knowing them in order of escalation.
Get it in writing, calmly
Ask the school, by email, to set out exactly what you are being asked to pay, which cost it relates to, and under what contractual term. Most of the time this resolves things without a dispute — a great many of these charges arise from a business manager applying a pre-2024 template rather than from bad faith, and a polite email asking for the breakdown is often enough to prompt someone to check the current guidance.
Take it to your union
Every major teaching union provides members with legal advice on contracts and pay, and several have caseworkers with direct experience of sponsored members. This is the single most useful step available to you, it costs nothing beyond your subscription, and union involvement changes the dynamic without you having to confront your employer personally. If you are not yet a member, join before the dispute rather than during it.
Get regulated immigration advice
An OISC-regulated adviser or an immigration solicitor can tell you whether what is being asked is a prohibited recoupment, and what the practical consequences of the school's position would be for your own status — including the salary-subtraction problem above. That second question is the one that matters most to you, and it is not one your union's employment specialists will necessarily cover.
Understand the enforcement routes, and their trade-offs
An unlawful deduction from wages is a claim to an employment tribunal, ordinarily within three months less one day of the deduction — a short deadline that catches people out. Separately, sponsor breaches can be reported to UK Visas and Immigration. Be clear-eyed about the second route: if a licence is revoked, every sponsored worker at that school has their permission curtailed, including you. That is a reason to take advice on timing and sequencing rather than a reason never to report, but it is a real consideration that generic advice pages tend to skip.
Keep the paper trail from day one
Questions to ask before you sign
- Which costs will the school pay, and which will I pay? Ask for it itemised in writing before you accept, not in the contract pack afterwards.
- Is there any repayment or clawback clause? If yes, ask for the wording immediately — not the summary of it.
- Does the clause include any sponsorship costs? The Certificate of Sponsorship fee, the licence fee, associated administrative costs and the Immigration Skills Charge must not be in there.
- How does the repayment taper, and what triggers it? A sliding scale limited to voluntary resignation is defensible; a flat figure on any departure is not.
- Has anyone checked what the repayment does to my sponsored salary? Repayments are subtracted from salary for threshold purposes, averaged over the sponsorship period.
- What visa length will the Certificate of Sponsorship cover? It drives both the application fee and the total health surcharge you pay up front.
- Will the sponsor certify maintenance on the certificate? If so you do not need to hold £1,270 plus dependant amounts for 28 days.
- Is the school a small or charitable sponsor? Not your cost, but it tells you whether the school understands its own obligations — and a school that has not worked out its skills charge rate may not have worked out much else.
- What happens if I need to reduce my hours later? Part-time fractions interact badly with the flat £25,000 floor, and it is better to know before you need it.
Sources and accuracy
Visa application fees, the Certificate of Sponsorship fee and sponsor licence fees are taken from the Home Office immigration and nationality fees table in force from 8 April 2026, cross-checked against gov.uk's Skilled Worker visa: how much it costs page. The Immigration Health Surcharge rates are from gov.uk's healthcare surcharge guidance. The Immigration Skills Charge rates, the prohibition on passing it to the worker and the exemptions come from gov.uk's UK visa sponsorship for employers: immigration skills charge page, and the small-or-charitable definition from the Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017 and gov.uk's licence application guidance.
The prohibition on recouping licence and Certificate of Sponsorship fees and associated administrative costs, and the consequence of normal licence revocation, are from Part 1 of the Home Office's Workers and Temporary Workers: guidance for sponsors, at paragraph L6.17, with the definition of associated administrative costs from the same guidance. The rule subtracting payments made to the sponsor from salary for threshold purposes is in the Immigration Rules Appendix Skilled Worker and applies to certificates assigned on or after 9 April 2025. The employment law points — contractual validity, penalties, restraint of trade, deductions from wages under the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the National Minimum Wage interaction — are general principles of UK law rather than anything sector-specific, and are the area where individual advice matters most.
Two honest limitations. We have quoted the sponsor guidance paragraph reference as published, but sponsor guidance is renumbered from version to version, so check the current numbering if you are citing it in a dispute. And whether academy trusts qualify as charitable sponsors is a conclusion drawn from the published definitions rather than from a Home Office statement naming schools, as flagged in the text above.
Immigration fees change several times a year — the skills charge rose 32% on 16 December 2025 and the fee table was reissued in April 2026 — so verify any figure against gov.uk on the day you rely on it, including the figures on this page. The teacher pay figures used for comparison are the confirmed 2026/27 STPCD values for England that took effect on 1 September 2026. This page is independent guidance, not regulated immigration advice or legal advice on your contract, and TeacherPay is not affiliated with the Home Office, UKVI, the DfE, any school or trust, or any union.
Frequently asked questions
Can a school make me pay for my Certificate of Sponsorship? +
No. Home Office sponsor guidance prohibits a sponsor from recouping, or attempting to recoup, by any means, the £525 Certificate of Sponsorship fee, the Skilled Worker sponsor licence fee, or any associated administrative costs from the sponsored worker, for certificates assigned on or after 31 December 2024. The guidance states that the Home Office will normally revoke the licence of a sponsor that does. This is not a matter of negotiation or of what your contract says — a contractual term requiring you to pay it does not make it lawful, and the consequence falls on the school.
Who pays the Immigration Skills Charge? +
The school, always, and it cannot be passed to you. GOV.UK's employer guidance says directly that you must pay the immigration skills charge yourself and that your licence may be revoked if you ask the sponsored worker to pay the fee. The rates from 16 December 2025 are £480 for each 12 months of sponsorship for a small or charitable sponsor and £1,320 for a medium or large one, with £240 and £660 respectively for each additional six months. Most academy trusts should fall into the charitable category, which makes a five-year sponsorship cost the trust £2,400 rather than £6,600.
Does the school have to pay my visa fee and health surcharge? +
No. The prohibition covers sponsorship costs — the licence, the certificate and the skills charge — not your personal immigration application. The visa application fee and the Immigration Health Surcharge are legally yours, and a school is entitled to leave you to pay them. Many schools choose to pay or reimburse them as a recruitment incentive, particularly in shortage subjects, and if yours does, that is a genuine benefit worth several thousand pounds. But it is a benefit, not an entitlement, and it is the part most likely to come with a repayment clause attached.
Is a clawback clause for visa costs legal? +
A properly drafted one can be, but only for costs that were legitimately yours in the first place — realistically the visa application fee, the health surcharge and relocation expenses. A clause purporting to claw back the Certificate of Sponsorship fee, the licence fee, associated administrative costs or the Immigration Skills Charge is an attempt to recoup prohibited costs and puts the school's licence at risk. Beyond that, ordinary employment law applies: the clause must be genuinely contractual and signed, it must not operate as a penalty, it must not amount to an unreasonable restraint of trade, and any deduction from wages must be authorised in writing in advance and must not take your pay below the National Minimum Wage.
Can they take the money straight out of my final payslip? +
Only if you have given prior written consent to that specific deduction, and only to the extent it does not breach the National Minimum Wage rules. Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 an employer cannot deduct from wages unless the deduction is required by statute, authorised by a written term of the contract you were given a copy of before the deduction, or agreed to in writing in advance. Even with consent, a deduction that drags your pay below the minimum wage for the relevant pay reference period is a separate breach. If a deduction appears without that basis, it is an unlawful deduction from wages and there is a tribunal claim for it.
What happens to my visa if I resign before the clawback period ends? +
Two separate things happen and it is important not to confuse them. On the immigration side, your sponsorship ends, the school must report it, and your permission will normally be curtailed — typically leaving around 60 days to find a new sponsor, switch route, or leave the UK. On the employment side, whether you owe money depends entirely on whether the clawback clause is enforceable and what it actually says. Neither outcome depends on the other: a school cannot lawfully hold your visa hostage to a repayment, and repaying does not extend your leave.
Is it worth negotiating on visa costs before I accept? +
Yes, and it is a far more normal conversation than most candidates assume. A school that has already paid a licence fee, a £525 certificate and up to £6,600 of skills charge has made a real investment in hiring you and generally wants the appointment to work. Asking whether it will contribute to the application fee and health surcharge — and, if it will, asking for the repayment terms in writing before you accept rather than in a contract pack afterwards — is entirely reasonable. For a family application running to £20,000 or more, it is the single highest-value negotiation available to you.
Does the DfE still pay £10,000 towards relocation for overseas teachers? +
No. The International Relocation Payment, worth £10,000 in two £5,000 instalments and explicitly designed to cover visa costs, the Immigration Health Surcharge and other relocation expenses for non-UK physics and languages teachers, was a pilot. DfE guidance confirms it has ended and is not continuing into 2026/27; the final application window, which closed on 30 June 2026, was for second instalments to teachers already in the scheme. Anything you read suggesting a new applicant can claim it is out of date, and you should not budget for it.
Related guides
Teacher Visa Sponsorship Explained
The whole process end to end — sponsor licences, Certificates of Sponsorship, QTS, English at B2 and dependants.
Skilled Worker Salary Threshold for Teachers
Why £41,700 doesn't apply, what the real going rates are, and how a clawback can push you under them.
Teacher Take-Home Pay Calculator
Model what a sponsored salary actually pays after tax, National Insurance and Teachers' Pension contributions.
Teacher Pay Scales 2026/27
The confirmed England figures your Certificate of Sponsorship salary will be measured against.