New Express Entry Category Added: Education Category sees its Debut in 2025

Canada’s Express Entry system is an immigration program that allows skilled workers and tradespeople from around the world to immigrate to Canada and contribute to Canada’s economy by becoming permanent residents of Canada. The program, which was introduced on January 1, 2015, is designed to streamline applications for skilled workers to come to Canada and contribute to the country’s labour force. 

Express Entry consists of the Canadian Experience Class, the Federal Skilled Worker Program, and the Federal Skilled Trades Program. Express Entry candidates are sorted in the Express Entry pools by their comprehensive ranking system score and draws take place based on the score determined by factors such as age, education, work experience, language skills, and other relevant information. 

Express Entry in 2025

One of the key benefits of the Express Entry system is its speed. The program is designed to process applications within six months, making it faster than some other immigration programs. For example, the Canadian Experience Class of Express Entry has an estimated processing time of five months. The speed of processing makes Express Entry an attractive option for skilled workers who are looking to move to Canada quickly. So far in 2025, several Express Entry draws have already taken place, and over 30,000 invitations to apply have been issued, with the later draw occurring on March 21, 2025. There are over 200,000 people in the Express Entry pool, sorted by their comprehensive ranking system scores. This is in line with the numbers publicly published in the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan, which calls for over 100,000 new permanent residents to settle in Canada through Express Entry in 2025.

Although Express Entry has been around for over ten years now, the program continues to evolve and change along with Canada’s immigration system. The changes that take place are important as they impact potential Express Entry candidates and their chances of being chosen in an Express Entry draw. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has indicated that the focus of Express Entry in 2025 is to invite candidates with experience working in Canada through the Canadian Experience Class to apply for permanent residency.

Interestingly, as of March 25, 2025, having a valid is no longer considered for comprehensive ranking system score. This means that Express Entry candidates will no longer receive extra comprehensive ranking system score based on having a job offer in Canada. The change was discussed earlier, but formally took place following the Ministerial Instructions that took effect on March 25. 

New Express Entry Category

Another impactful change to Express Entry that has taken place in 2025 is the addition of a new Express Entry category. Express Entry draws being category-based is still a relevant new phenomenon. Category-based admissions started after June 2022, when the Canadian Government changed part of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in order to allow for the selection of immigrants to be made based on attributes that support economic priorities, such as specific work experience or knowledge of French. The result of the change was people in specific professions and with certain skills were able to be targeted for admission through Express Entry. This resulted in category-based Express Entry draws that met identified economic goals. Prior to 2025, the categories were:

• French language proficiency
• Healthcare and social services occupations
• Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) occupations
• Trade occupations
• Agriculture and agri-food occupations

Following the change that allowed certain professions to be targeted through Express Entry, category-based draws have taken place, specifically with several large French language proficiency draws in 2025.

Education as an Express Entry Category

The new Express Entry category introduced in 2025 is education. This category was introduced on February 27, 2025, in a press announcement from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Although education was added broadly, there are still restrictions on who qualifies to apply under the education category of Express Entry. 

Occupations in Canada are systematized according to Canada’s National Occupation Classification system. Jobs are assigned a specific National Occupation Classification code. In order to qualify under an employment-based express entry category, an applicant’s work experience must correspond with one job code of the National Occupation Classification. The applicant must have six months of full-time work experience that meets one of the codes in the last three years. Further, part of the National Occupation Classification is the Training Education Experience and Responsibilities system, which ranks occupations based on traits that are related to their responsibilities.

In the education category, there are five job titles and corresponding National Occupation Classification and Training Education Experience and Responsibility numbers are listed with them:

Occupation	NOC Code	TEER Category
Elementary and secondary school teaching assistants	43100	3
Instructors of persons with disabilities	42203	2
Early childhood educators and assistants	42202	2
Elementary school and kindergarten teachers	41221	1
Secondary school teachers	41220	1

While some of these categories are relatively straightforward, there may be some confusion for potential applicants for some of the categories as to whether their work experience would qualify them. Additional information regarding the work experience that qualifies for each NOC code is available on the Canadian government website. NOC codes can be searched by the code number or by the name of the occupation. For those who want to apply to the Express Entry as an educator, be sure to check the NOC in order to confirm that your experience applies.

Express Entry Going Forward

The addition of the education category is a positive step for Express Entry as it indicates that Canada is willing to continue to react to economic needs and will adapt Express Entry to reflect those needs. Although there have not been category-based draws for anything except for those for the French language thus far in 2025, the addition of a new category seems to indicate that there will be more category-specific draws as 2025 goes on. Be on the lookout for the first education-specific draw.

Contact Garson Immigration Law for help with making a Canadian Immigration Application

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