They’re shaping the minds of the next generation around the globe, and are responsible for the well-being of our children, siblings, nieces and nephews, for a considerable chunk of their week.
And we know them to be notoriously underpaid.
Teachers put up with a lot. That we know for sure:
But just how much money are teachers earning, and where in the world we are looking after them the best?
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a study compiling global salary data from 25 countries in the year 2013. Chalk.com reports the salaries have been adjusted for cost of living using the Purchasing Power Index (PPP). They have also been converted into equivalent U.S. dollars.
Maximum salaries range from $138,00 US in Luxembourg, to just $17,000 US in Estonia. In Luxembourg, the starting salary of lower secondary teachers is equivalent to $79,000 US. That is higher than the maximum in almost every other nation.
Here in Australia, we remain above the OECD average, with our teachers earning approximately $50,000 US per annum.
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I think most workers would agree that there has never been, and needs to be, a monetary figure put on the paid holidays. What other business could sustain paying workers for almost 3 months of non-productivity?
As a worker who also works long days in a pressured environment and takes work home, I would gladly give up some of my (low) salary as a mental health practitioner, in return for paid annual leave that covered all my children's school holidays. My employer simply wouldn't allow it because the health system would run at a loss like that.
Maybe teachers should accept once and for all that they are on a fabulous wicket and take the lower pay as acknowledgement of this.
I think good teachers should be paid much much more and bad teachers much less. Part of the problem is that they start relatively high compared to other graduates but then can't move up much regardless of how good or bad they are or how much or little work they do (cue hordes of teachers chiming in to say that a) teachers work collegiately so they can't be individually assessed - hardly unique to teachers of course and b) they all put in 80 hour weeks). Really good teachers should be getting $150-200 k per year but in return should have much bigger class sizes and put in 10 hour days like anyone else earning this sort of money. Bad teachers should get $25k or less. Part of the problem with teaching in Australia is that it's a low status profession. We need to make it aspirational like medicine or law which means hard to get into and hard to stay in.
I agreed to some extent- as a teacher myself I get very frustrated when some of us on lower incomes put in more effort than those who've been teaching longer and are therefore on larger incomes. But how does one measure a "good" teacher? Students marks or NAPLAN/HSC results really aren't indicative of how hard a teacher works.
As a teacher i believe that bad teachers shouldn't be paid anything. They shouldn't be working. Also increasing the class size disadvantaged the children in the class so i fail to see why you would do this for any teacher including good teachers.
Since you know so much - please define 'good' teachers and 'bad' teachers. Also, I presume you are not a parent as increasing class sizes is something that does not work and actually affects children's learning. Kindergartens/prep are capped at 20 students in NSW. This is so teachers can give individual attention in this critical phase of learning. FYI I am a teacher and I already work a 10 hour day - face to face teaching is just six hours of the day. I am at school at 7am and leave at 5pm. Happy?
Naplans a crock