Recognition of qualifications as a teacher

If you seek an employment as a teacher in Berlin in the state school service, but earned your teaching diploma abroad, the equivalence of that diploma with one qualifying for Berlin must be assessed.

Please submit your application to the accreditation authority that will decide on the recognition of your qualification.

• Foreign teaching diplomas
• The accreditation authority for foreign teaching diplomas
• German teaching diplomas
• FAQ – Recognition of qualifications as a teacher

The application procedure

If you have completed your teacher training abroad, you must have your diploma recognised before you can be employed as teacher in Berlin for an unlimited period. You will be required to pay a fee for this service.Please refer to the booklet Recognition of teaching diplomas (Anerkennung der Abschlüsse von Lehrkräften) for further information and application documents.

You can already submit your application for recognition of your foreign qualification as a teacher from abroad. Within four months after you have submitted your application together with all required documents, you will receive a written notice of the outcome.

There are two options for submitting an application:

• Brief assessment notice – you will be charged a fee of EUR 55.00, or
• Detailed assessment notice – you will be charged a fee of EUR 222.00 Euro.

If the assessment of your application shows that you did not complete your teacher education abroad, you will be charged a fee of EUR 55.00.

Note: Please do not submit your application documents by e-mail, as the receipt of large quantities of data cannot be guaranteed. Please use the online-service of the Point of Single Contact Berlin to submit your application and to hand in your documents.

Non-German documents

All documents in foreign languages must be accompanied by a German translation, in some cases by a sworn translator. Translations of foreign documents which are not written in Latin script must additionally include a transliteration in accordance with the ISO standard.

The recognition decision

The recognition procedure will determine whether the qualification documented by you can actually be considered a completed teacher education. If you apply for detailed assessment, it will also be checked whether the teacher education from abroad is equivalent to one obtained in Berlin so that you are equally qualified to be employed as a teacher in Berlin.
If your qualification is recognised by us, you may apply as a native speaker for applicable teaching job offers (e. g. at the State Europe School Berlin).

If you are not sure, whether you have a completed qualification as a teacher, you can obtain detailed information from the Anabin Database, an offer by the Central Office for Foreign Education (Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen – ZAB) at the Secretariat of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (Sekretariat der Ständigen Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – KMK).

• For some countries, you will also find examples of completed teacher education in the booklet ‘Recognition of teaching diplomas’.

If the differences in your teacher education are such that it cannot be considered equivalent to the one obtained in Berlin, conditions will be imposed which you have to fulfil prior to full recognition. Such differences may be, for example, if:

• academic and examination achievements in a second teaching subject have not been established in the extent that is required or are totally missing (in Germany teachers must always be qualified in at least two teaching subjects),

• there is no documented period of a practical training at a school comparable with the Berlin preparatory service,

• evidence of German language proficiency at the level of the “Goethe-Zertifikat C2: Großes Deutsches Sprachdiplom” is missing.

Here you can find all FAQ to the recognition of your qualification:

• Frequently Asked Questions