How much do teachers cost?

by Eric Charbonnier and Etienne Albiser
Analysts, Directorate for Education and Skills

Can increasing the salaries of teachers lead to better learning outcomes? Does reducing class size have a positive effect on learning outcomes? Given the current background of tight public budgets, governments seeking to ensure value for money must ask themselves these questions before increasing the salary cost of teacher per student, as teachers account for a major part of education expenditure.

The latest edition of Education Indicators in Focus highlights that the salary cost of teacher per student is a combination of four factors: teachers’ salary, class size, the number of teaching hours in front of a classroom and the number of hours of instruction received by students.

Countries that have similar levels of expenditure on education do not necessarily have similar educational policies and practices. A given level of expenditure may result from a different combination of these factors. One country may pay higher salaries to teachers while another may have smaller class sizes and thus more teachers to pay.

Between 2000 and 2010, increases in the salary cost of teacher per student were mainly influenced by changes in teachers’ salaries and class size
 With the exception of France and Italy, the salary cost of teacher per student at the primary and lower secondary levels increased between 2000 and 2010, and on average it increased by one-third and one-quarter, respectively (for countries for which data is available). In the majority of cases, this increase was due to an increase in the level of teacher compensation (16% at the primary level and 14% at the lower secondary level). The largest salary increases (more than 50%, in constant prices) were seen in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Turkey.

During the same period, class size decreased, by 14% (primary) and 7% (lower secondary), but this was often the result of changing demographics and not of a change in education policies.

Little change in instruction time and teaching time
With the exception of a few countries, there was little or no change with respect to the two other variables (instruction time and teaching time) during the same period. This may be due to the political sensitivity of reforms in these areas. At the primary level, teaching time increased most significantly in the Czech Republic (200 hours) and instruction time increased the most in Iceland (by nearly 200 hours).

The higher the level of education, the higher the salary cost of teacher per student, with great disparities between countries
Spending on education rises sharply with the level of education. The OECD average salary cost of teachers is USD 2 307 per primary student, USD 2 856 per lower secondary student and USD 3 301 per upper secondary student. In some countries, the differences between the different levels of education is quite small (in Chile and Hungary it is less than USD 50) while in others it is quite important (exceeding USD 2 000 in the Flemish Community in Belgium).

In general, teachers of higher levels of education earn more money than teachers at lower levels. In addition, teaching time generally decrease as the level of education increases (meaning that more teachers are necessary to teach the same number of students).

Wrapping up
Reforms relating to these four factors have an impact on education expenditure and may also affect learning outcomes. However, the link between expenditure and outcomes is not straightforward. PISA results show that between 2000-2009, the performance of 15-years olds did not vary significantly in the majority of countries, regardless of the changes we have seen in instruction time, teaching time, class size and teacher compensation. What is more, changes relating to pedagogy may have an impact on outcomes without necessarily having an impact on expenditure.

The bottom line is that in the past ten years, increasing teachers’ salaries and reducing class size have not led to better learning outcomes in the majority of countries. This raises the question: has all of the additional money been well spent?

For more information
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012
Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2012:  Indicator B7 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012)

Grade expectations

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills 

They’re a source of both anxiety and pride, but school marks can also have long-term consequences for students. Most teachers reward student achievement, but also the skills, attitudes, habits and behaviours that are necessary for lifelong learning. However, as this month’s PISA in Focus  points out, the tendency of teachers to award higher marks to girls and socio-economically advantaged students than to boys and disadvantaged students – even if they perform equally well in school and have similar positive attitudes towards learning – is cause for some concern.

Marks help to promote student learning by informing students about their progress, alerting teachers about their students’ needs, and certifying the degree to which students have mastered the tasks and competencies valued by teachers and schools. Schools and teachers recognise this: more than 95% of students in the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009 – except Korea – attend a school that measures student achievement through teacher-prepared tests, student portfolios or student projects. In most cases, students receive feedback on these assessments in the form of school marks.

As PISA results show, few countries and economies share the same marking schemes; in fact, even schools within a country may have different ways of marking. In addition, different education systems establish their own ways of informing students that they have failed a class or an assessment. In some countries, the marking scheme allows for only one possible value for failing. This means that students who fail do not know how far they are from meeting the passing criteria. This is the case in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and the Slovak Republic. Other countries establish the passing mark somewhere in the middle of the marking scale, which gives students some idea of how far they are from passing. In Ireland, for example, the grading scale ranges from 0 to 100, but only scores below 40 are considered unsatisfactory or failing. In some countries, such as Austria, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic, the remaining values on the marking scale reflect the quality of the passing mark in clear and distinct labels, such as “sufficient”, “good”, “very good” and “excellent”; meanwhile Belgium (Flemish Community), Italy and Ireland use a wider array of numeric values (e.g. 50 to 100, 10 to 20 or 6 to 10).  Analyses suggest that countries and economies that have a grading system with a limited number of values and use labels that refer to clear categories of achievement (e.g. “sufficient”, “good”, “very good”, “excellent”) can better differentiate students’ performance.

Students often base their expectations of further education and careers on the marks they receive in school; and school systems use marks to guide their selection of students for academically oriented programmes and, later, for entry into university. So whenever teachers reward – or punish – certain student characteristics that are unrelated to learning they may inadvertently shape a student’s future according to factors that have nothing to do with the student’s abilities, talents and personal goals.

That’s why it’s a good idea for school systems to promote marking practices that reward the behaviours and attitudes that help students to learn – so that more students can make the grade.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No. 26: Grade Expectations
Grade Expectations: How Marks and Education Policies Shape Students' Ambitions 
Photo credit: Test score sheet / Shutterstock

Who says she’s a great teacher?

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director for Education and Skills, Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary General

Most of us have been lucky enough to have had at least one great teacher in our lifetime: a teacher who inspired us to work hard and take risks, who opened up new worlds for us; a teacher whom we remember years, even decades, after the brief intersection of our two lives as someone who changed the course of our life or deepened the meaning of it.

What makes a teacher great? And who gets to decide? Students? Parents? Fellow teachers? Principals?

There are some countries where mentioning the phrase “teacher evaluation” around educators, teachers’ union leaders and policy makers provokes a rise in the ambient temperature. Teachers in the United States and France have gone on strike over the issue and Britain’s teachers’ unions and those that represent head teachers found themselves on opposite sides of a recent debate about whether to base teachers’ pay on their performance.

Nearly everyone agrees that school systems need to find a way to encourage promising teachers, reward those who have demonstrated their effectiveness, and remove underperforming teachers from the profession. And in the 23 countries that participated in OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), 83% of teachers who had received appraisal and feedback considered them to be fair assessments of their work; of those, 78.6% found that the appraisals were helpful in developing their work as teachers. But agreement on how to measure teachers’ skills is harder to come by.

Teacher-appraisal systems in most countries are still a work-in-progress – where they exist at all. Some 13% of teachers in countries that participated in TALIS had never received any feedback or appraisal of their work from any source. This is partly because such systems may be costly – in money and time – to design and maintain. More often, though, it’s because there is no consensus on what criteria should be used to measure teacher performance (student test scores? a teacher’s ability to engage a classroom full of students? students’ and/or parents’ opinions? some or all of the above?); who should do the measuring (an inspector from a central education authority? the school principal? fellow teachers?); and how the results of an evaluation or appraisal should be used (to determine salary? to shape the trajectory of a career? to signal professional-development needs? to weed out ineffective practitioners?).

Stakeholders are already beginning to find common ground on a few issues. They note, for example, that while student test scores offer important information, they cannot provide a complete picture of teaching quality; multiple sources of evidence are needed for that. And they agree that teacher-appraisal systems must be part of a holistic approach to the teaching profession that includes high-quality teacher training and professional development, attractive working conditions, nurturing school leaders, and engaging teachers in innovation and reform.

The subject of teacher evaluation came up briefly during the first two International Summits on the Teaching Profession, both held in New York. This week, participants at the third Summit, which is being held in Amsterdam and hosted by the OECD, Education International and the Ministry of Education of the Netherlands, will be examining the issue in depth from their various perspectives as teachers, union leaders, education ministers and experts in education – and perhaps, too, as former students who may have once had a great teacher. Consensus might be too ambitious a goal for this meeting; but a lively – not to say provocative and passionate – discussion is all but assured.

Links:
Third annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession, 13-14 March 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Teachers for the 21st Century: Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching
Related blog: A class act: giving teachers feedback
Follow the summit on twitter: #ISTP2013
Photo credit: Jose Luis Pelaez, Inc./Blend Images/Corbis

A Women’s Day Challenge

by Barbara Ischinger
Director for Education and Skills

On a recent visit to New Zealand, I attended a memorial service for the 185 people who lost their lives when the earthquake of 22 February 2011 struck Christchurch. What I took away from that gathering was less the still-fresh grief but rather the sense of purpose that followed the tragedy. Kay Giles, chief executive of Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT), for example, who was already devoted to assisting young people – most of them boys – who had dropped out of the education system, put her passion and expertise to work by calling on people involved in apprenticeship programmes to help those who had lost their livelihoods to the earthquake. Stakeholders from local businesses, industry and education worked together quickly to develop long- and short-term training modules to put people back to work – sometimes in entirely different careers – as soon as possible.

I met, too, with New Zealand’s Education Minister, Hekia Parata, who is part Maori, and a vocal champion of indigenous culture and rights. She told me she is particularly concerned about Maori boys who are increasingly falling out of the education system and, in doing so, are dooming themselves to a very uncertain future.

On this International Women’s Day I’d like to be just a bit provocative and suggest that we start paying a little more attention to boys. Boys are getting lost in today’s life and we don’t really understand why. A recent study finds that boys’ behaviour costs them dearly in school marks (our next PISA in Focus, due out on 14 March, has a few other interesting things to say about how teachers award marks to girls and boys); and a school in Shanghai, China – which was the best-performing school system in the 2009 PISA survey  – has just introduced boys-only classes  in an effort to turn around the decline in boys’ performance in university entrance exams. (I was interested to read that some of the boys interviewed said that they felt shy answering teachers’ questions in front of girls. Didn’t many girls used to say that the presence of boys made them reluctant to participate in class?)

How do we make sure that our education systems – and labour markets – are equitable, and create good opportunities for both boys and girls?

We have done a lot for girls, and we see the positive results of this in everyday life. Girls are, on average, doing better in school than boys, and more women now graduate from university-level education than men. Of course, there is still a lot of room for improvement: just look at the salaries of women versus those of men. And I am irritated when I attend board meetings in the private sector and note that women are still a minority.

So we must not look at the great strides girls and women have made in recent decades and think that the battle is won. But I would also add: We don’t gain much if we gain on one side and lose on the other.

Am I focusing too much on boys on what is supposed to be the day we celebrate the girls and women of the world? I don’t think so. It’s all about empowerment: having equal opportunities to realise our individual potential. And that is something that should not be gender-specific.

Links:
OECD work on Gender: www.oecd.org/gender and www.oecd.org/gender/data for data on International Women's Day
OECD Feature: Growing more equal
OECD Insights: Born a girl: bad karma?
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
Photo credit: Boy with apple on head in classroom / Shutterstock

A class act: giving teachers feedback

by Kristen Weatherby
Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

When I think back on my first experiences as a student teacher of English language and literature to 13- and 14-year-olds, I don’t really remember the successes; I am not sure there were many during my teaching practice. Rather, I am reminded of the more colourful episodes of classroom management and student behaviour that seemed to occur all too frequently. For example, there was the time I looked up from reading to the class to see one student staring back with a green mustache and eyebrows. Another time one student jumped up from his desk and threw another student’s books out the window before I could blink. And then there were the countless times that I had to take away combs, brushes and makeup from both girls and boys in an effort to turn my classroom from a beauty salon into a place of learning. Needless to say, in these moments I didn’t feel like a very effective teacher.

Little did I know it at the time, but I was not alone in feeling a bit like a failure due to a less-than-ideal classroom climate. The newest Teaching in Focus brief, “How can teacher feedback be used to improve the classroom disciplinary climate?” discusses how providing teachers more feedback to improve their classroom’s disciplinary climate can have a positive effect on their sense of mastery of the situation, what is known as self-efficacy. The OECD’s  Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) measures classroom disciplinary climate by the amount of time it takes to ready students for a lesson, the number of student interruptions, and the amount of noise in the classroom, among other factors. TALIS data shows that, on average, 13% of a typical class’s teaching and learning time is lost to keeping order.

TALIS data also shows that most teachers are not receiving the kind of feedback that helps them to improve their classroom disciplinary practice. As a result,  teachers are left feeling much as I did as a new teacher – not very effective. In fact, this is supported by the TALIS data, which indicates a relationship between teacher self-efficacy and classroom disciplinary climate. Teachers’ self-efficacy can have a significant impact on what goes on in the classroom, as it indicates not only aspects of productivity but also how teachers act in class. And teachers who report poor classroom discipline also report lower levels of self-efficacy.

Policymakers, union leaders, and teachers will be meeting next week in Amsterdam for the third International Summit on the Teaching Profession. This year’s topic is teacher evaluation and professional standards. Constructive feedback – as part of formal or informal teacher appraisal – could help teachers to improve their classroom disciplinary climate. TALIS 2008 results suggest that individualised feedback that considers the teachers’ characteristics, competencies, and individual classrooms, would be most helpful in improving classroom disciplinary climate and teacher self-efficacy. It undoubtedly would have helped me to chalk up a few successes during those early days in front of the class.

Watch this space for more blogs related to the Teachers’ Summit. We’ll also be tweeting live from the Summit. Follow the summit on twitter: #ISTP2013

Links:

For more on the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey:www.oecd.org/edu/talis
Teaching in Focus: How can teacher feedback be used to improve the classroom disciplinary climate?
Third annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession, 13-14 March 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Teachers for the 21st Century: Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching
Follow TALIS and Kristen Weatherby @Kristen_Talis
Photo credit: Positive feedback/Shutterstock

2much 2handle? Schools, social networks, and cyber bullying

by Tracey Burns
Analyst and Project Leader,  Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

“I’m really worried but I don’t know how to react” my friend told me over coffee the other day. Her daughter, 11, had told her that she was being bullied online, but would not say by whom.

“What can I do? And how do I know if it’s serious or not?”

A just released OECD publication looks at how rapid technological development has changed the way we interact with each other and our communities. Despite the enormous potential of the Internet to reshape our world, there is a downside to infinite connectivity. Internet fraud, privacy concerns and identity theft are all part of the online world. For parents and children, worries about cyber bullying and protecting children from explicit content and online predators are crucial.

Cyber bullying occurs when a child, preteen or teen is threatened, harassed, or embarrassed by another young person using the Internet. A number of high–profile tragedies, for example teens who committed suicide as a result of cyber bullying, have brought this topic to the top of policy, education, and parental agendas. However the extent of cyber bullying is hard to estimate, varying from more than 10% of surveyed internet users aged 9 16 years in Australia, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden and the Russian Federation to between 2- 3%, in Italy, Portugal and Turkey. While cyber bullying is worrisome, bullying offline is still reported to be more common.

Interestingly, the bully and victim roles are often interchangeable and related: those who admitted bullying others were more likely to report being bullied themselves, both online and offline. Guides to protecting Internet users make it clear that the best preventive strategies involve awareness, constant vigilance, and keeping an open dialogue about children’s concerns and online lives. For education, this poses a series of tough questions. What responsibilities do educators have in monitoring student’s time online during school hours? How can different parental standards of safety be accommodated?

The advent of cyber bullying is just one example of technological changes sweeping OECD countries. Trends Shaping Education 2013 looks at 14 of these trends and their possible impact on education, including:

• Social networking: Founded in 2004, Facebook had over 1 billion active users by September 2012. Should schools see social network sites as an opportunity to extend the learning process/experience beyond the classroom?
• Increasing diversity of local content: Since the mid 2000s the diversity of languages on the Internet has increased dramatically. There are now over 250 languages online, with English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish comprising the top five. Does local diversity of Internet content lead to better or worse quality of information available for students?
• The evolution of the Internet: In January 2009, there were 15 000 downloadable applications, or “apps” available. By September 2012, this figure had grown to over 1.5 million. Is there a market for educational apps to improve learning in the classroom and extend it beyond?

The transformation of the Internet is felt throughout the entire world, including the poorest regions. Trends Shaping Education 2013 provides a powerful snapshot of these trends and links these data to the evolution of our classrooms and schools. How can educators develop their students’ critical capacity to use and contribute to the wealth of information available at the click of a button? What kind of quality control should we expect from e-learning? How can teachers make the best use of ICTs for teaching and learning?

These are just some of the questions we must ask ourselves when planning for the medium and long term of technology in our education systems. Our world is changing. The question is: are our schools evolving too?

Links:
Trends Shaping Education 2013

This is the second of a series of blogs issued for the release of Trends Shaping Education 2013. You can find the first one here:
The weight of nations: the shape of things to come?

Photo credit: Cyber bullying concept/ Shutterstock.com

Getting the best start

Miho Taguma
Senior Analyst, Early Childhood and Schools Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Given the current background of fiscal constraint, is public funding of early childhood education and care programmes a sound investment?

As more and more women have been entering the labour force since the 1970s, access to pre-school services has improved across OECD countries. Although in the 1970s and 1980s, early childhood education and care policy was put into place to facilitate women’s entry into the labour force, in recent years it has become more child-centred, focusing instead on the child’s development and improving educational outcomes. As inequalities, which are often present well before children begin primary school, are likely to increase over time, early childhood policies can be a component of anti-poverty and educational equity measures as well.

As the latest issue of the OECD’s brief series Education Indicators in Focus shows, countries vary widely on all aspects of early childhood education and care, from their policies and systems to their quality. In most countries, the proportion of children enrolled in pres-school programmes has significantly grown in recent decades. Although on average across the OECD, 79% of 4-year-olds are enrolled in such programmes, it ranges from more than 95% in Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, to between 30% and 60% in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Greece, Poland and Switzerland, and to less than 30% in Indonesia and Turkey.

But what are the benefits of early childhood programmes? PISA scores have shown how important access to these programmes can be for improving children’s outcomes in later stages of life. Data also shows that pre-school can improve children’s cognitive abilities and have a positive impact on reading performance at age 15. It also helps children, especially those from disadvantaged or immigrant backgrounds, to build a strong foundation for life skills. But what is more important, quantity or quality?

There are also vast differences among countries on all of the quality indicators: from the number of children per staff – which ranges from more than 20 pupils per teacher in China, France, Israel, Mexico and Turkey, to fewer than 10 in Chile, Iceland, New Zealand, Slovenia and Sweden – to the length of the programmes – with the majority of countries offering at least one year of  for free, including the Netherlands (for 4  and 5 year olds); England and Scotland (for 3  and 4 year olds); and France, Israel, Mexico, Portugal and Sweden (for all 3 6-year-olds).

Countries’ expenditure on ECE as a percentage of GDP also varies significantly – ranging from 0.1% or less in Australia, India, Indonesia, Ireland and South Africa to 0.8% or more in Denmark, Iceland, Israel, the Russian Federation and Spain.

The bottom line is that even in these times of fiscal consolidation and crisis, sufficient public funding should continue to be dedicated to early childhood programmes. This would help not only to improve children’s outcomes, social mobility from generation to generation and long-term efficiency gains for society, but also reduce poverty and protect the most vulnerable.

For more information
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators 
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012 
On the OECD’s Indicators of Education Systems (INES) programme, visit:
INES Programme overview brochure
Chart source: OECD.  Argentian and Indonesia: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (World Indicators Programme).  Table C2.1.  See Annex 3 for notes (www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012)