Hire English teachers in Vietnam through an EOR

Most companies searching for how to hire English teachers in Vietnam are a foreign education business rather than a school already on the ground — an online-English platform, an ed-tech company, or a company that trains its own people. An employer of record (EOR) lets them put a teacher on a compliant Vietnamese labour contract and, for foreign teachers, run the work permit, while they direct the teaching. What an EOR cannot do is give you the right to teach the public — that is a licensing question, and it is where this page starts.

Who is this for?

This page is for foreign organisations that want to employ English-teaching staff in Vietnam without their own local company. The EOR model fits three profiles cleanly: online-English and ed-tech platforms whose teachers work remotely; companies that employ an in-house trainer for their own staff; and operators who want to hire and build a team, or test the market, before they hold their own education licence. In each case a Vietnam-registered entity is the legal employer, so you need no branch or subsidiary of your own — the same model covered for hiring developers in Vietnam, applied to teaching.

One split matters from the start. Most English teachers in Vietnam are foreign nationals, so the central task is the work permit and residence card. A smaller group — Vietnamese-national teachers, bilingual teaching assistants and local academic staff — need no permit and are employed on an ordinary Vietnamese contract. The two are priced differently, as the pricing section below sets out.

Can an EOR license you to teach in Vietnam?

No. An EOR can employ and payroll a teacher, but it cannot give you the right to run teaching activities open to the public. A language centre or school must hold its own education licence — a decision to establish it, and a separate licence for educational activity issued by the Department of Education and Training — under Decree 125/2024/ND-CP, in force since 20 November 2024.2

An EOR is a general employer, not a licensed education provider, so it cannot stand in for that licence; for a classroom role at a centre, the work-permit sponsor is normally the licensed institution itself, which must hold the establishment decision and the operating licence and carry education-sector business lines.2 That is why the EOR route fits the cases where you are not running a public centre yourself: online or corporate language trainers, staff who train your own employees, and a team you employ while you apply for your own licence. If your plan is a public-facing centre or school, you need your own licensed education entity or a licensed local partner; the EOR can then employ and payroll the teachers, but the licence stays with the licensed institution.

What a foreign English teacher needs for a work permit

A foreign English teacher generally needs a Vietnamese work permit, governed by Decree 219/2025/ND-CP, in force since 7 August 2025.1 It rests on a recognised bachelor’s degree, a teaching certificate, a clean criminal record, a medical check and properly legalised documents. The dossier is a valid passport, a health certificate issued within the last 12 months, a criminal-record certificate issued within the last 6 months, and proof of qualifications (Decree 219/2025, Art. 18).1 Obtaining the police check is covered under background checks in Vietnam; the 120-hour teaching certificate and the English-test expectation below are education-sector and employer practice, not lines in the decree.

Why documents need consular legalisation, not an apostille

A common and costly mistake is to apostille a teacher’s degree and criminal-record check. Vietnam is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so it does not accept apostilles; foreign documents in the dossier must be consular-legalised and translated into Vietnamese, unless a treaty or reciprocity arrangement exempts them.13 Build the extra legalisation time into the start date, because the certificate and degree both pass through an embassy or consulate before filing.

Treat the familiar “120-hour TEFL” line as the market standard rather than the law: as of October 2026 no Vietnamese instrument sets a minimum number of TEFL, TESOL or CELTA hours, but employers and language centres use the 120-hour certificate as the de-facto bar.3

Do non-native English teachers need IELTS?

Not by law, but in practice often yes. For teachers from countries where English is not an official language, employers and language centres commonly ask for proof of English proficiency — typically IELTS 6.5 or higher, or TOEFL iBT 100 or higher, or a degree that was taught in English.5 As of October 2026 this is an employer and sector expectation applied mainly to applicants from non-English-official countries; it is not a line in the work-permit decree itself.

That distinction matters when you budget time and cost. A non-native teacher who already holds a qualifying English test result or an English-medium degree clears the usual employer bar; one who does not may need to sit a test before a centre will put them forward, which affects the start date rather than the legal dossier.

How does teaching map to the Decree 219/2025 categories?

Decree 219/2025 recognises four foreign-worker categories — manager, executive director, expert and technical worker — and eased the thresholds from the old Decree 152/2020 regime.1 A foreign English teacher is normally permitted as an expert; the general expert route needs a university degree plus two years’ relevant experience, or a degree plus one year in priority sectors such as technology and finance.14

There is a practical route for new teachers. A licensed language centre can show the teacher meets the education-sector operating standard — a recognised degree plus a teaching certificate — and that standard carries no minimum-experience requirement, so a new graduate with a degree and a TEFL can be permitted to teach at the centre. As of October 2026 this rests on the education-sector centre standard read into the “expert” definition, not on an explicit carve-out in Decree 219.3

How do the visa and residence card work for teachers?

A work permit is valid for up to two years, tied to the labour-contract term, and is issued within 10 working days of a complete application.1 It can be extended once, for up to another two years, after which a fresh permit is needed.1 With the permit in hand, a foreign teacher is sponsored for a labour (LĐ) visa and can obtain a Temporary Residence Card valid for up to two years, but never longer than the permit.6 The visa and card steps are set out on the Vietnam work visa and residence-card page.

Not every short teaching engagement needs a permit. A foreign manager, expert or technical worker who is in Vietnam for fewer than 90 cumulative days in a calendar year can fall within a work-permit exemption, though the employer must still notify the labour authority at least three working days before work starts.1 Whether a visiting teacher, examiner or short-course trainer qualifies is set out under work-permit exemptions in Vietnam; for an ongoing teaching role, plan on a full permit.

How EOR Vietnam employs and permits your teachers

Through EOR Vietnam, a licensed Vietnam-registered entity becomes the legal employer of your teacher: it signs the labour contract, runs payroll in dong, withholds income tax, pays the statutory contributions and, where the role allows, runs the work-permit, visa and residence-card dossier — while you direct the teaching. It is ordinary direct employment under a business-to-business service agreement, which is how an EOR is lawfully structured in Vietnam. It does not, on its own, license a public teaching operation — that licence stays with you or your local partner, as set out above.

Our service fee is a flat US$149 per employee per month for Vietnamese nationals — the same fee regardless of salary, seniority, role, city or headcount, as of October 2026, and not a percentage of payroll. There are no setup, onboarding, offboarding, contract or payslip fees and no hidden fees; the gross salary and the statutory employer contributions are passed through at cost. Each engagement carries a refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee’s employment cost — gross salary plus statutory employer contributions — held for the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts. Because most English teachers are foreign nationals whose work-permit, visa and residence handling differs case by case, a foreign teacher is quoted separately rather than at the flat fee.

For a foreign teacher on a labour contract of 12 months or more, the cost base differs from a local hire. The teacher joins compulsory social insurance (employer 17.5%, employee 8%) and health insurance (3% and 1.5%) but is exempt from unemployment insurance, while the 2% trade-union fee still applies — so the employer carries about 22.5% in on-costs and the teacher about 9.5%, versus roughly 23.5% and 10.5% for a Vietnamese-national employee.78 The full breakdown for foreign staff is on social insurance for foreign employees; build a complete monthly figure with the EOR Vietnam cost calculator and the on-cost detail on Vietnam payroll and employer costs.

Related guides

These sit within the full set of Vietnam employer guides — work permits, visas, payroll and compliance in depth.