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29 March 2024

Teachers love their job but feel undervalued: Survey

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By Staff
The OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) finds that more than 9 out of 10 teachers are satisfied with their jobs and nearly 8 in 10 would choose the teaching profession again.

However, fewer than 1 in 3 teachers polled believe teaching is a valued profession in society. Importantly, those countries where teachers feel valued tend to perform better in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

More than 100,000 teachers and school leaders at lower secondary level (for students aged 11-16) in 34 countries and economies took part in the OECD survey.

It aims to help countries develop a high-quality teaching profession by better understanding who teachers are and how they work.

The survey shows that too many teachers still work in isolation. Over half report rarely or never team-teaching with colleagues and only one-third observe their colleagues teach.

Feedback is also rare, with some 46 per cent of teachers reporting they never receive any from their school leader, and less than a third (31 per cent) believe that a consistently underperforming colleague would be dismissed.

But the survey shows that teachers and school leaders can do a lot about this. Teachers who engage in collaborative learning have higher job satisfaction and confidence in their abilities. Participation in school decisions also boosts job satisfaction and makes teachers feel more valued in society.

“We need to attract the best and brightest to join the profession. Teachers are the key in today’s knowledge economy, where a good education is an essential foundation for every child’s future success,” said Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills, launching the survey.

“This survey provides strong evidence that teachers are open to change and keen to learn and develop throughout their careers. At the same time, they need to take more initiative to work with colleagues and school leaders, and take advantage of every opportunity for professional development.”

The survey challenges some stereotypical views of the profession. For example, job satisfaction rates are much more affected by classroom behaviour than class size. And most teachers find appraisals and feedback constructive: 62 per cent of teachers, on average across countries, said that the feedback they receive in their school led to moderate or large improvements in their teaching practices.

But between 22 and 45 per cent of teachers in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden said that they have never received feedback in their current school, compared to an average of 13 per cent across the 34 countries surveyed.

The teaching profession has become more feminised, with 68 per cent of teachers being women, except in Japan. The average age is 43, with Singapore having the youngest teachers and Italy the oldest. About 9 in 10 (91 per cent) have completed a university education and had teacher training (90 per cent). A typical teacher has taught for around 16 years, usually full-time (82 per cent) and on a permanent contract (83 per cent).

Around half of school leaders are male (51 per cent), are around 50 years of age and have 21 years of teaching experience. They spend most (41 per cent) of their time managing people and resources, planning and reporting. And while those with higher levels of instructional leadership reported higher job satisfaction, more than one in five (22 per cent) have never had leadership training and 31 per cent only after they became a principal.

The average class size is 24 students. Teachers spend an average of 19 hours per week teaching, ranging from 15 hours in Norway to 27 hours in Chile. But in about half of the countries, one in four teachers said they spend at least 30 per cent of lesson time handling classroom disruptions and administrative tasks.

Of an average total of 38 hours of work, seven hours per week are spent preparing lessons, five hours per week marking, and two hours per week on school management, working with parents and extracurricular activities.

Most schools are well-resourced and teachers report positive relationships with their peers and school leaders. But more than a third of teachers work in schools where the principal reports significant staff shortages of qualified teachers, teachers for students with special needs, and support staff.

Two-thirds (66 per cent) work in schools with formal induction programmes. The exceptions are Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Spain, where only between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of teachers work in schools with formal programmes.

Around nine in ten (88 per cent) of teachers have had professional development in the past year, with more than three-quarters (between 76 per cent and 91 per cent of teachers) reporting it had had a positive impact on their teaching.

Teaching students with special needs was the area most teachers (22 per cent) said they needed more training, followed by information and communications technology skills (19 per cent).

Nearly 80 per cent of teachers get feedback following classroom observation and two-thirds (64 per cent) from analysis of student scores.

But formal appraisals have little impact on career advancement or financial recognition, according to most teachers. Annual pay rises are awarded regardless of performance in four-fifths (78 per cent) of schools and 44 per cent of teachers work in schools where formal appraisals have no impact on career advancement.

Around half of teachers also report feeling that most appraisals are carried out merely as administrative exercises and 43 per cent say they are not strongly related to how they teach in the classroom.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)