Teaching in FE: Wales Requires Registration, England Abolished It

To teach in a further education college in Wales you must be registered with the Education Workforce Council and hold — or be working towards — a specified qualification. Doing the job unregistered is prohibited by law.

Cross into England and none of that applies. No registration, no mandatory qualification, no CPD requirement.

The interesting part is that England did not simply never have these things. It had all three, and dismantled them in 2012 and 2013, in the same years Wales was legislating to build them.

What Wales requires, and the prohibition behind it

The operative provision is regulation 19 of the Education Workforce Council (Main Functions) (Wales) Regulations 2015, as substituted. It states that a person may not provide education in or for a further education institution unless two conditions are met.

The first condition is registration with the Council in the category of further education teacher. The second is that the person holds at least one of the specified qualifications, or meets an alternative requirement for those with recognised overseas qualifications.

There is a route for people still training. A person who is registered but does not yet hold a specified qualification may work as a further education teacher while working towards one, for a period not exceeding three years if employed full-time, or five years part-time. Absences for maternity, parental, paternity, adoption, shared parental and parental bereavement leave are disregarded, and from 19 March 2026 so are neonatal care leave, pregnancy, and sickness or injury.

The enabling power is section 15 of the Education (Wales) Act 2014, which lets Welsh Ministers provide that education may not be delivered in a further education institution unless the person has a specified qualification and is registered in the category of further education teacher.

The qualification condition itself was substituted into the regulations with effect from 10 May 2024. Welsh Government guidance confirms the requirement has applied since that date, and that the list of specified qualifications was significantly expanded in 2026, developed with the Council and ColegauCymru. Practitioners can check whether a qualification they already hold is on the list through their Council registration record.

The exemptions, which are broader than you would expect

The prohibition does not apply to someone who only: teaches higher education in or for a further education institution; provides training updates for industry, commerce or professional practice on a temporary or occasional basis; hires or uses the institution's premises with consent; provides training at the request of and specific to the requirements of an external body; acts as a volunteer; or provides, on a temporary or occasional basis, training relating to a profession for which they hold the necessary qualifications or experience.

The volunteer and temporary-professional-training exemptions were added on 10 May 2024, alongside the qualification requirement — which is a sensible pairing, since tightening the qualification rule without them would have excluded a lot of legitimate guest and industry input.

That last exemption is the one most relevant to anyone delivering professional training into a Welsh college. If you are a qualified practitioner delivering occasional training in your own field, you are outside the prohibition.

Registration categories, fee and renewal

The Council maintains 13 registration categories. At the higher fee: school teacher (requiring QTS), independent school teacher, further education teacher, principal or senior leader in a further education institution, independent special post-16 institution teacher, adult learning practitioner, work-based learning practitioner, and youth worker. At the lower fee: school learning support worker, independent school learning support worker, further education learning support worker, independent special post-16 institution learning support worker, and youth support worker.

Registration in several categories attracts only the highest applicable fee. Renewal is 1 April each year. Employers in Wales deduct the renewal fee from salary, typically at the end of March; those not in contracted employment pay the Council directly online between early February and the end of March.

On the amount, there is a wrinkle that explains a discrepancy anyone researching this will hit. The statutory fee is 46 pounds a year for every category, set by the Education Workforce Council (Registration Fees) Regulations 2017. But the same regulations provide that the fee is to be subsidised by such amount as Welsh Ministers determine from time to time, with the subsidy published on the Welsh Government website — and where someone is registered in more than one category, the fee payable is the higher one after the subsidy. So 46 pounds is the statutory figure and the amount practitioners actually pay is lower. If you see two different numbers quoted, that is why. Check the Council's current advertised figure before budgeting.

Our guide to youth work qualifications and registration covers two of the other mandatory categories, where the same prohibition structure applies to providing youth development services.

Is there a CPD requirement?

Not a statutory one. There is no CPD condition of registration that we could find, and no mandated hours.

What exists is a conduct-code expectation. The Council's Code of Professional Conduct and Practice, launched in revised form on 1 September 2025 and now covering all 13 registration categories, has six principles — personal and professional responsibility, professional integrity, collaborative working, leadership for those with leadership or management roles, professional knowledge and understanding, and professional learning.

The professional learning principle asks registrants to demonstrate a shared commitment to their continuing professional learning, to reflect on and evaluate their practice, to keep their professional knowledge and skills up to date, and to improve their practice where needed. The professional knowledge principle requires registrants to know and meet the professional standards relevant to their sector throughout their career. And the leadership principle requires those in leadership roles to ensure all staff have access to the training and supervision they need.

The Council also provides a Professional Learning Passport, a flexible online portfolio available to all registrants and accessed through their Council account. Usefully, it is not linked to employment, so access continues as long as registration does — which makes it a better long-term record than an employer-held system. Its use is not stated to be mandatory.

So the honest position: a commitment to professional learning is a conduct expectation enforceable through fitness to practise, not an hours requirement with a counter. That distinction between what the law compels and what a professional body expects runs through every regulated sector, and we unpack it in our guide to statutory versus mandatory training.

England dismantled all three requirements

This is the part worth knowing, because it is usually described as England simply not regulating further education teaching. It is more specific than that.

The CPD and registration requirement went first. Regulations revoked in 2012, in force from 30 September that year, removed rules which — in the explanatory note's own words — required teachers to complete a minimum number of hours of continuing professional development every year, maintain a record of that CPD and make it available as specified, and to register and maintain registration with the Institute for Learning.

The qualification requirement went a year later. The Further Education Teachers' Qualifications (England) Regulations 2007 were revoked with effect from 1 September 2013. Those regulations had required teachers in full teaching roles to hold prescribed qualifications and QTLS, and those in associate teaching roles to hold prescribed qualifications and ATLS, prohibiting people from teaching in a further education institution without the relevant award subject to limited exceptions.

So England once had mandatory registration with a professional body, a mandatory annual CPD minimum, and a mandatory teaching qualification for further education. All three were removed within twelve months of each other. Wales legislated its own regime in 2014 and 2015 and tightened the qualification requirement in May 2024.

What applies in England now

The Department for Education's own position is explicit: you do not always need a formal teaching qualification to start, and a teaching qualification is not essential to start teaching in further education.

It names the Level 5 Diploma in Teaching (Further Education and Skills) as the primary recognised full teaching qualification and the industry standard, with Level 6 and Level 7 university routes as graduate alternatives.

QTLS — Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills — is a professional status rather than a qualification, achieved after a Level 5 teaching qualification plus a period of professional formation with the Society for Education and Training. It is voluntary.

And it carries one entitlement worth knowing about, which dates to a specific instrument. Regulations in force from 1 April 2012 amended the qualified teacher regulations so that QTLS holders fall within the categories of person who are qualified teachers — meaning QTLS holders are eligible to teach in schools in England on the same statutory footing as QTS holders.

That is a genuinely valuable piece of portability, and it is the main practical reason for an English further education teacher to pursue a status that nothing obliges them to hold.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland registers the role: the General Teaching Council for Scotland appears on the UK Government's list of regulated professions as the regulator for college lecturer. Northern Ireland's General Teaching Council is listed for school teachers, with no further education teacher entry.

So the four-nation picture is: Wales and Scotland regulate college teaching as a profession, England removed its requirements in 2012 and 2013, and Northern Ireland has no listed further education entry.

What this means if you deliver or commission training

If you employ further education teachers in Wales, registration is a pre-condition of starting work rather than an induction task, and the qualification condition has applied since May 2024 — so anyone recruited since then needs either a specified qualification or a documented start date for working towards one, with the three-year or five-year clock running from that date.

If you deliver occasional professional training into Welsh colleges, check yourself against the exemptions rather than assuming you need to register. The temporary-professional-training and volunteer exemptions exist precisely for that.

And if you are an English further education teacher deciding whether to pursue a Level 5 qualification and QTLS that nothing requires: the regulatory case for it disappeared in 2013, but the portability into school teaching has existed since April 2012 and is the strongest remaining reason.