There are a few types of assistantship to consider when planning your year aboad. The main two that we talk about are the British Council English Language Assistantships and secondly the Socrates / Comenius assistantships.

Assistants normally spend between twelve to sixteen hours per week teaching mainly in either primary or secondary schools and earn a wage of between 500€ and 1000€ per month depending on wages in the country and the type of assistantship that you choose to do.

The duties of an assistant are to boost the confidence and ability of speaking and understanding English. It will seem overwhelming at first but once you get into it, the experience will be one you never forget.

This option means you will spend the whole of the school year in one school, so it is not suitable for students studying Modern European Languages or two or more languages.

More information can be found here or why not contact us and ask us your questions.

You could also look on our forum or web journal pages and see what other students have to say.

One advantage of this assistantship is that you are able to spend much shorter periods as an assistant. This means that this route is open to everyone, it is more flexible and means that you can also spend your time abroad doing other placements such as studying or working.

The ideas behind the placement are much the same as those for the British council assistantships, in that the idea is to encourage children to be confident and to help improve their English skills in both spoken language and the understanding of the language.

For more information on this assistantship visit the website

Otherwise contact us or ask someone from our forum for answers to those questions