Secondary School Teachers (ANZSCO 2414): your code, your degree, and what AITSL actually checks

You trained as a teacher somewhere else, and now your whole migration case rests on two things: which ANZSCO code you nominate, and whether the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership accepts your degree against it. Teachers lose time, and sometimes a whole application, by getting either one wrong. This is the long version, so you can get both right.

One number to fix in your mind before anything else: the English bar is high. AITSL wants an IELTS 8.0 in Speaking and Listening (7.0 in Reading and Writing), and for most teachers trained in India, China or the Philippines that 8.0 is the hardest wall of the whole process. We come back to it in detail below, but plan for it from day one.

The code in this group, and the teacher codes next to it

Secondary teaching sits in ANZSCO unit group Secondary School Teachers (2414), at skill level 1. The ABS sets this level at a bachelor degree or higher.

This group is unusual: it holds a single child code, Secondary School Teacher (241411). So the confusion is not between two codes inside the group. It is between this group and the teacher groups sitting right next to it. ANZSCO splits teachers by the age and stage they teach, and all five sit in the same minor group, School Teachers (241):

• Secondary School Teacher (241411): the ABS task is “presenting prescribed curriculum using a range of teaching techniques and materials” to secondary students, alongside marking, discipline, and “supervising student teachers on placement”. This is the subject teacher for the secondary years.
• Early Childhood (Pre-primary School) Teachers (2411): the pre-school stage, before primary.
• Primary School Teachers (2412): a general curriculum across subjects, to primary students.
• Middle School Teachers (2413): the middle years, where a separate middle-school stage exists.
• Special Education Teachers (2415): students with learning difficulties, or with hearing or sight impairment, across stages.

This matters because AITSL assesses you against the stage you are qualified to teach, not the stage you would like to teach. AITSL defines a Secondary School Teacher for migration as someone “degree qualified to teach students between the ages of 13 - 18 years in secondary schools”. If your degree trained you for younger children, nominating Secondary School Teacher does not change what your transcript shows. Pick the code that matches the qualification you actually hold.

The same job has a different name where you trained

If you are placing your own background, the international labels help you find yourself:

• Europe (ISCO-08 / ESCO): secondary subject teachers sit in ISCO-08 unit group 2330, Secondary education teachers. Note that ISCO keeps 2330 separate from 2320, vocational education teachers. The European ESCO database builds its teaching occupations on the same ISCO structure.
• United States (SOC / O*NET): Secondary School Teachers, 25-2031, which O*NET defines as excluding special and career or technical education.
• United Kingdom (SOC 2020): 2313, Secondary education teaching professionals. Primary teaching is a different code, 2314.

The catch: “teacher”, “lecturer” and “instructor” are used loosely across systems, and the school stages do not line up country to country. What one country calls “higher secondary” or “senior secondary” may be school teaching in one place and post-school in another. So describe the students you taught by age, not just the label on your contract.

What AITSL actually checks in your qualification

AITSL is the assessing authority for Secondary School Teacher. Its assessment for migration turns on two criteria, and you must meet both. AITSL’s own checklist puts it plainly: “All applications will be assessed against two (2) criteria. Applications must meet BOTH criteria to obtain a successful outcome.” The first is qualifications. The second is English language proficiency.

Criterion 1: the qualification. AITSL requires “a minimum of four years full-time (or part-time equivalent) higher education (university) level study that results in qualification/s. This must include a relevant initial teacher education qualification and can include other qualifications.” Read that as a stack, not a single degree. Four years of university study in total, and inside that stack an initial teacher education (ITE) qualification.

The ITE piece has its own bar. AITSL states the ITE qualification must be “comparable to the educational level of an Australian Bachelor degree (Australian Qualifications Framework Level 7) or higher”. And it must include two things:

• “at least one year full-time (or part-time equivalent) higher education (university) level study of Secondary School Teacher initial teacher education”; and
• “completion of at least 45 days of supervised teaching practice with students across the 13 to 18 years age range in a secondary school setting.”

Those two figures, the one year of ITE and the 45 days of supervised practice with 13 to 18 year-olds, do most of the rejecting. A practicum done with primary-age children does not count toward a secondary assessment, because AITSL ties the practice to the secondary age range. Any other higher education qualifications you stack into the four years must be “comparable to the educational level of an Australian Advanced Diploma/Associate Degree (Australian Qualifications Framework Level 6) or higher”.

AITSL also names what it will not count: “AITSL does not assess short courses (less than one year full-time study), professional development programs or incomplete qualifications.”

Criterion 2: English. AITSL gives you two ways to meet it, and only two.

The first is a study option. You can satisfy it with “at least four full years of study (or part-time equivalent) in higher education (university) in Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom or the United States of America”, at bachelor level or higher, where the study includes a recognised ITE qualification. The whole ITE qualification, including the supervised teaching practice, must have been completed in one or more of those six countries. One detail catches doctoral graduates: AITSL “will only consider a doctoral degree completed in one of the six listed English speaking countries to be a maximum of two years of full-time study” toward this option.

The second is IELTS. AITSL requires an Academic IELTS “score of at least 7.0 for both Reading and Writing; and a score of at least 8.0 for both Speaking and Listening”. All four scores must sit on a single Test Report Form, taken in “the 24 month period prior to submitting an application”. That 24-month window is not the old rule: AITSL widened it from 12 months to 24 months, effective 22 April 2016. The band scores did not change with it.

Two more rules on the English test are easy to miss. IELTS is the only test AITSL takes: it states it does “NOT accept PTE, PEAT, ISLPR, TOEFL, Cambridge or any other form of English language test”. And it does not accept the IELTS One Skill Retake. Even where you claim the study option, AITSL “reserves the right to ask an applicant to undertake the Academic version of the IELTS test if there is uncertainty” about your English.

One warning on the test report itself: AITSL verifies every IELTS form through the IELTS verification service, and a form found to be non-authentic means it declines to assess, tells the Department of Home Affairs, and “a three-year ban would be imposed on future applications.”

A note on what these criteria are not: AITSL assesses your skills for migration. It does not register you to teach. Teacher registration is run separately by the teacher regulatory authority in the state or territory where you intend to work. Two different gates, both real.

What this means if you trained in…

The criteria above are the same for everyone. What differs is the gap each country’s standard teaching qualification tends to leave against them. The AITSL outcome is always case-by-case, and none of the bodies below state an Australian result, so treat these as context, not a prediction.

India. To teach secondary classes you typically hold a bachelor’s degree in your teaching subject plus a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed), with the minimum qualifications set by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The common friction with AITSL is structural. The traditional route is a three-year bachelor’s degree followed by a separate B.Ed, and where the B.Ed is a stand-alone add-on, the supervised-teaching-practice evidence and the “one year of ITE comparable to AQF Level 7 inside the four years” shape can be hard to evidence as AITSL asks. The newer four-year integrated B.Ed, the Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP), launched in 2023-24 and set to become the minimum teacher qualification by 2030, is a cleaner structural fit for the “four years including ITE comparable to AQF7” rule. Whichever route you hold, the question AITSL will ask is whether your transcript shows the year of ITE and the 45 days of secondary practice.

China. To teach in junior or senior middle school you need a Teacher Qualification Certificate at the relevant level, administered under the Ministry of Education, with a bachelor’s degree as the foundation. The certificate level differs by school stage. The common friction with AITSL is that many Chinese teaching qualifications come from a subject bachelor’s degree plus the national Teacher Qualification Examination, rather than a four-year integrated teacher-education degree with documented supervised practice. So the “45 days of supervised practice with 13 to 18 year-olds” and the “one year of ITE inside a four-year AQF7-comparable degree” are the evidence points to assemble.

Philippines. Secondary teaching is a regulated profession. A graduate of a Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSEd) with a major, or a bachelor’s degree in arts or sciences with at least 18 units of professional education, sits the Licensure Examination for Teachers, administered by the Professional Regulation Commission through the Board for Professional Teachers. The standard BSEd is a four-year degree that includes teaching practice, so it can fit AITSL’s qualification shape. The English step is the one to plan for: the Philippines is not one of AITSL’s six study-option countries, so Philippine study cannot satisfy the English study exemption. Most BSEd graduates meet Criterion 2 through IELTS. And the LET licence is the Philippine registration step, not the AITSL migration assessment, so keep the two apart.

A UK or Ireland reference. If you trained in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, you usually hold Qualified Teacher Status, gained through a first degree with QTS or a degree plus a PGCE. Both countries are on AITSL’s list of six study-option countries, so a four-year (full-time-equivalent) university study including recognised ITE can meet Criterion 2 without an IELTS test, and QTS-bearing initial teacher education with embedded supervised practice generally lines up with the qualification criterion. The outcome is still case-by-case.

On the lists, but is it in shortage?

Two different questions, and worth separating.

List membership is what opens a migration pathway. As at the 2025 Occupation Shortage List data we hold (as of 2026-04-15), Secondary School Teacher (241411) carries a national shortage (S) rating in Australia. New Zealand is a separate system: the NZ Green List, effective 26 March 2025, places Secondary School Teacher in Tier 1, its straight-to-residence tier.

A shortage rating is a point-in-time read, not a guarantee, and it changes between editions. The history we hold shows Secondary School Teacher rated in national shortage on every edition from 2022 to 2025; even so, a rating can change between editions, so check the current rating, for your exact code, on its own page where every fact carries its source and date, before you rely on it.

Find your exact code

Get the code right first, then the degree question, then the practicum and English evidence. If you taught secondary subjects and your qualification trained you for that stage, Secondary School Teacher (241411) is your code. If your training was pre-school, primary, middle-years or special education, the matching code is in a different group inside School Teachers (241), and nominating secondary will not fit your transcript.

If you are sure of the work but not the code, browse the ANZSCO 2022 occupations. If your overseas background does not map neatly, the anzscofinder matcher will show you the closest codes and the reasoning behind each. Information only, never visa advice. For advice on a visa, talk to a registered migration agent.