Why are teachers' salaries being raised, since the results are poor, asks Lyubomir Karimanski, and probably many other compatriots. The question sounds logical, but it also has its reasonable answers (in my opinion, but each reader assesses how reasonable they are).
This was commented on "Facebook" by Krasimir Valchev.
Here are some of them:
1. Because if teachers' salaries do not increase, they will lag behind the average salary for the country, and in 2022 and 2026 - also behind inflation. Over the past 10 years, the average salary in the country has been growing by between 10 and 15 percent annually. That is, teachers' salaries do not become relatively higher, but at best they maintain their ratio to the average salary for the country.
2. Because when basic teachers' salaries lag behind other sectors, mainly students with poor results will become teachers. Minimum salaries have a signal value to young people whether they will join a profession.
In the rating system of higher education institutions of the Ministry of Education and Science, there is one indicator - "average GPA from the DZI" of students. Before the increase in teachers' salaries, the lowest values according to this indicator were precisely in pedagogical professional fields. And if decades ago 30% of secondary school graduates continued in higher education and all had relatively high results, today 80 percent continue in higher education. If we want students with average and higher results to join pedagogical education and the pedagogical profession, teachers' salaries must be above the average for the country.
3. Because in today's modern societies, the attractiveness and reputation of the teaching profession are relatively low. Much lower than 50 or 100 years ago, when being a teacher was far more prestigious. There are many reasons for this, but the main ones are perhaps three: the undermining of traditional authorities, over-expectations and overheating, and the increased opportunities for realization for young people. The system today is in difficult, I would say unequal competition with far more solvent sectors and industries. There is no way that a mathematics graduate would prefer to become a teacher if he could start in the IT sector with a salary 5 times higher.
The problem is also exacerbated by the fact that for every 100 people who retire annually, only 60 young people replace them from the bottom of the workforce. In other words, we have a huge general shortage of people, which exacerbates competition between sectors.
4. Because investments in education are not like investments in an orchard. The payback period for investments in teachers is over 50 years. Today, around us, in every human relationship, in every square centimeter, the results of our education and the work of our teachers from 20, 30 or 40 years ago are projected. Teachers in whom the state invested even earlier. I will say it another way - the teachers we train today will be active until 2070, and the students they will prepare will be active until 2110. Failure to take into account the fact that investments in education and teachers have a much longer payback period is probably the reason why otherwise good financiers (I am not talking only about Karimanski) are mistaken in their conclusions. If the payback cycle were 5 or 10 years, they would be right from a purely financial-investment logic. But investment in education is different from investment in agriculture. However, an analogy can be made.
It is completely different to say “I will not water the garden because it does not bear fruit“ from “I will not water the garden until it bears fruit“. By saying “we will not increase salaries while the results are low“, we are saying that we will not water the garden until it bears fruit. And it will never bear fruit. Because the fruits of education are visible after 30 or 50 years. That is why it is politically unprofitable to invest in education, although a number of international studies prove that education spending is the investment with the highest long-term social return of all public spending. And that is why statesmanship is needed.
5. Because low PISA results do not mean that our teachers have not done their job. Bulgarian teachers follow Bulgarian curricula and educational standards. And they are different from what PISA measures. To paraphrase an example from athletics - we prepare students for shot put, and PISA is a sprint competition. The problem is that our curricula are too ambitious in terms of providing knowledge and too unambitious in terms of forming skills. And they reproduce the culture of memorization. I have repeatedly acknowledged this mistake of the Ministry of Education. And this must be corrected. And the question is: should we save on teachers while changing curricula?
And why do we only take into account PISA, which gives a negative assessment to tenth graders, and miss the good results in PIRLS and TIMSS, where basic knowledge of fourth graders is measured? Shouldn't primary school teachers receive high salaries by this logic?
6. Because teachers' salaries are not high. In the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the security services, for example, starting salaries are much higher. A junior police officer with secondary education starts with a 45 percent higher salary than a junior teacher with higher education. And this difference increases for higher positions.
And as a country, we do not pay more on average than other countries for the work of teachers. In our country, the costs of teachers' salaries and social security are 2.1 percent of GDP, while in the EU - an average of 2.4.
7. Because if we want to have good education, we must have good and motivated teachers. And if we want to have good and motivated teachers, the minimum salaries must not lag behind the average for the country. This is a basic prerequisite. Not the only, but a mandatory condition for good education.
Yes, we should also talk about differentiated pay, but it is a building block - after securing a competitive minimum wage. And currently there is differentiated pay in the system, but there is no single objective numerical assessment of the work of each teacher. Such cannot be done for a number of reasons - external evaluation does not provide sufficiently reliable and indisputable information about the work of each teacher, it does not provide information about all teachers (NVO is mainly in BEL and mathematics), teachers work with different children and their results do not reflect only the work of the teacher, the results of one student are a function of the work of a number of teachers, the results are not only in the grades, the most important results can come after decades, etc. Therefore, subjective evaluation is relied on, which is often unfair and whose role is inappropriate to expand.
8. Because the teaching profession is the basis of all other professions. All professions are important, but if we have good and motivated teachers, we will also have good specialists in all other sectors.
9. Because we leave the most valuable thing in our lives to teachers - children. And we expect them to compensate for all the deficits of the social, family and information environment and make them knowledgeable and capable people. Working with an average of 25 children, while we as parents have not managed with an average of 2.
P.S. Later in another post I will try to clarify why teachers' salaries are not 125, but 110 percent of the average salary for the country.