Jobs at international schools that offer housing come in three forms, and only one of them puts you in an apartment the school has already paid for. The other two hand you money and a rental market — an allowance you spend yourself, or a subsidy covering part of the rent. All three get the same word in the advert.
That word is the problem. 'Housing provided' can mean a furnished flat across the road with the utilities settled before you see a bill, or a fixed sum that a two-bedroom in the same city stopped matching three years ago. A benefit stamp cannot tell you which — including ours.
Housing appears in 63% of listings on this board, across every employer type from language centres to international schools. What follows is how the models differ, how to tell which one you are being offered, and what the housing line is worth once you price it.
The three models, and who carries the risk
Every school covering accommodation is doing one of three things, and the difference is who is exposed to the rental market.
- School-provided housing — the school owns or leases the flat and allocates it to you. Utilities are often included. You get no say in the address.
- A housing allowance — a fixed sum paid alongside your salary, and you find the flat. Full choice of neighbourhood, full exposure to the rent.
- A subsidy or hybrid — the school pays a share, caps a bill, or covers the deposit and agent's fee while you cover the rent.
- No housing line at all — common where the salary is built to absorb it, which makes it a different offer rather than a worse one.
Provided housing is worth whatever the flat is worth, and you cannot inspect a flat from another continent. An allowance is worth its number against a rental market you also cannot inspect — except that this one moves, and allowances are rewritten far less often than rents change.
How to tell which one a listing is offering
Adverts compress all of this into two or three words, and the words are not standardised across the region. These are the ones that recur, and what each usually turns out to mean.
- 'Housing provided' — usually a flat the school controls, but ask whether that is a whole unit or a room in a shared one
- 'Free accommodation' — the same thing, and the word 'free' is doing no extra work
- 'Housing allowance' — cash. Ask for the figure, and ask when it was last reviewed
- 'Accommodation assistance' — no money. Someone at the school helps you find a flat and may read the lease for you
- 'Housing subsidised' — a share of the rent, and the share is the number to get in writing
- 'Settling-in allowance' — a one-off payment against the deposit and agent's fee, not a monthly line
One of those six costs the school nothing, and is still worth having in a city where you cannot read a contract. It is just not rent.
On this board the whole vocabulary collapses into a single stamp on the front of the card. The stamp tells you a housing benefit exists; only the listing body tells you which kind. 57% of candidates here use at least one benefit filter, so it is worth saying plainly: filtering to housing narrows the board to roles offering something, not to roles offering a flat.
An international school is a different employer to a language centre
The two hire on different rules. Language centres and public school schemes hire on a bachelor's degree and a 120-hour TEFL — 81% and 64% of listings on this board respectively. International schools typically want a state or national teaching licence plus around two years of classroom experience, and a TEFL certificate substitutes for neither. That gate is higher, the packages are more often built around a family than a single first-year teacher, and the housing is more often a whole flat.
The calendar differs too. International schools recruit for an August or September start, typically over the preceding October to March, so a search in May is looking at next year's board or at this year's gaps. Language centres hire year-round. Applying to both means running two timetables.
This board carries an International School Teacher category for that reason, and filtering by it alongside the housing stamp beats a keyword search — the phrase 'international school' also turns up in adverts placed by centres that sit next door to one.
Where housing is standard in Asia
Provided housing follows the labour market rather than the country's wealth. It is standard where schools recruit from abroad and a teacher cannot sign a lease before arriving.
- China — housing or an allowance is close to standard on first-year contracts, at training centres, public schools and international schools alike
- South Korea — a furnished studio is the norm on hagwon and public school contracts; international school packages more often pay an allowance
- Japan — subsidised school apartments are common, and the deposit-and-key-money system at the front of a lease makes that subsidy worth more than its monthly figure suggests
- Taiwan — an allowance is more usual than a flat, and the deposit is the part worth asking about
- Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia — housing appears on international school contracts far more often than on language centre ones
- Hong Kong — an allowance rather than a flat, because a school cannot buy its way around that rental market either
Those are patterns, not rules, and none survives contact with an individual contract. The country tells you what to expect; the listing tells you what is on offer; only the contract is binding.
What the housing line is actually worth
Price it against what you would keep, not against the salary. Reported savings separate the markets far more sharply than advertised pay does.
- Tier-2 Chinese city, housing covered: teachers report saving ¥9,000–13,500 a month (roughly $1,240–1,860 USD), against living costs of ¥5,200–7,400
- Seoul, housing covered: ₩900,000–1,400,000 a month (roughly $655–1,020 USD)
- Bangkok, no housing: THB 6,000–14,000 a month (roughly $170–390 USD)
The median advertised salary across this board converts to about $1,910 USD a month, and those three lines sit under it in very different places. Bangkok without housing is the clearest case: the salary is liveable and the saving is close to nothing, and only one of those two numbers appears in the advert.
Only 11% of listings here carry all five benefit stamps — housing, visa, insurance, flights and paid leave — so nearly every offer is a trade between them. Housing is the largest of the five in cash terms almost everywhere, which is what makes it worth an email before you write anything else.
Questions to ask before you treat housing as money
Ask before signing, not after arriving. A school that provides housing has answered all of these before and will not find them rude.
- A whole flat or a room in a shared one, and who chooses the flatmate
- The distance to the school door to door, at the hour you would actually travel it
- Who pays the utilities, and whether there is a cap
- Whether you can take a cash equivalent instead, and what that figure is
- What happens to the flat if you resign or the contract ends early
- For an allowance: the figure, when it was last reviewed, and whether it is paid before or after tax
Photographs and the commute change a decision most often. A flat an hour out is a transport bill and an evening, and neither appears in the offer letter.
A limit worth knowing about
Two limits, and the first is ours. 71% of listings here come from a partner board and are rewritten rather than read one by one. We check listings, not schools — nobody carrying thousands of rotating adverts has audited the companies behind them. The 29% submitted directly by a school are read by a person, and 4.2% are rejected. A housing stamp records what the advert claims, not what the contract says.
The second is freshness. A role in Ho Chi Minh City sat on a partner board for five weeks after it was filled, because nobody at the school took the advert down. Three candidates applied through the rewritten copy here before the school replied to say the position had closed in the first week. The listing was pulled the day it was reported. The applications had already gone.
So treat a listing as an invitation to contact a school rather than an inventory of open jobs. 47% of roles fill within 21 days of posting, and the median listing here is 9 days old against a refresh every 4 hours. The limit on that advice: early and specific, not early and lazy. A mass email to forty schools is not promptness.
And there is a case for not chasing the housing line at all. If you are moving somewhere you already know, with a partner who also works, or to a city where you have a reason to care which district you live in, provided housing is a constraint you are being paid in. Take the allowance instead, or the higher salary with no housing line, and rent what you want.
Frequently asked
Do international schools provide housing? Most established ones provide either a flat or an allowance, and the allowance is more common at the higher end and in expensive cities, where a school cannot outbid the rental market on your behalf. Board-wide, 63% of listings here carry a housing benefit of some kind across every employer type. We do not publish a separate figure for international schools — a number to a decimal place about a category this varied would be invented rather than measured.
What is the difference between housing provided and a housing allowance? Provided means the school holds the lease and hands you keys. An allowance means the school hands you money and you hold the lease. The first removes the search and the risk and takes the choice away with them. The second is worth its number against a market that moves, so ask when that number was last reviewed.
Do schools pay the utilities too? Often on provided housing, rarely on an allowance, and often is not always. Ask whether there is a cap: a capped bill is a real benefit, an uncapped one in a city with a hot summer is not.
Do international schools require a teaching licence? Typically yes — a state or national licence and around two years of classroom experience, which is a different gate from the 120-hour TEFL that 64% of listings on this board ask for. Check that line before anything else: no certificate substitutes for it, and no housing benefit compensates for missing it.
When should I apply? International schools recruit on a season, typically October to March for an August or September start, while language centres hire year-round. A first reply to an emailed application takes a median of 6 days here, so build that into the timetable.
Does a housing benefit mean the job is better? No. It means one large cost is covered. 74% of listings here sponsor a visa and 58% include health insurance, and a role with housing and neither of those is a narrower offer than it first looks.
The order that wastes the least time: check the licence requirement first, because that is the gate; filter to roles carrying a housing stamp; then email and ask which model it is, and what the flat or the figure actually is. Housing is the largest single benefit in most Asian teaching contracts and the one described most loosely, and that is what makes it worth one email before you assemble an application.