From au pair to teacher, nurse or OT: how the job counts towards your career

If you’re au pairing while you decide on a course, or alongside a degree in education, nursing, psychology or occupational therapy, the job is doing more for your career than it looks like from the driver’s seat of a school run.

What you’re actually learning

• Managing children across ages with different needs, at the same time, without another adult in the room.
• Judgment under pressure: a fall, an argument, a late parent, a change of plan. You decide and act.
• Communication with adults: daily handovers, difficult conversations about hours or pay, updates a parent can trust.
• Structure and reliability: turning up every day for a year and holding a routine together.
• Practical child development: what a four-year-old can and can’t do, how a ten-year-old learns to read, what a tired teenager needs.

Those are the competencies that teaching, nursing, social work, psychology and OT programmes list in their admission criteria, and that employers in those fields look for.

On your CV

Don’t write “Au pair, 2026”. Write what you did:

Au pair for a family with three children (3, 7 and 10), Bryanston, February to November 2026. Sole afternoon carer five days a week: school collections across two schools, homework supervision including reading support for a Grade 2, sport transport, meals, and daily handover to parents. First aid certified. Driver.

That’s a job description a nursing school or a school principal understands.

In a bursary or residence application

Selection panels want evidence of responsibility, service and commitment. A year of au pairing is all three. Ask the family for a short written reference that mentions reliability and the children’s progress; most are glad to write one. Keep it with your matric certificate.

Careers it feeds directly

• Teaching. Foundation-phase and intermediate-phase teachers with au pair experience arrive knowing what children are like outside a classroom.
• Nursing and midwifery. Calm, observant, comfortable with bodies, tantrums and worried parents.
• Occupational therapy and speech therapy. Daily exposure to how children develop, play and struggle.
• Psychology and social work. Understanding families from the inside.
• Early childhood development. Au pairing is close to the job; a formal ECD qualification turns it into a profession.

Turning it into qualifications

A one-day first aid course, a short ECD certificate, or a swimming instructor course each make you more employable now and count towards later study. Some families will contribute to a course that benefits them; it’s worth asking.

Keep the door open

Many au pairs keep the same family through university on reduced hours, and many families become the first reference on a professional CV. Leave well, keep in touch, and ask for the reference while the year is fresh.

If you’re starting out, becoming an au pair in South Africa covers how.