Page 5 - IDEA Studie 12 2022 Platy ucitelu

Study 12/2022 Teacher Salaries in 2021: Peak Reached so What Next?2 AUGUST 2022 DANIEL MÜNICH, VLADIMÍR SMOLKA Summary • In the long term, the level of teacher salaries co-determines the attractiveness of the teaching profession and ensures sufficient interest in choosing to embark on a career in teaching. The selectivity of the profession, both in the process of university preparation and during the career itself, stimulates the quality of teachers’ work. However, these are long-term processes, occurring through continuous entry into and exit out of the profession and through further training. Therefore, the effects of teacher salaries on interest in the profession, teacher quality and educational outcomes can only be traced over a period of years, or rather decades. • The level of teacher salaries relative to other salaries in the economy is an important indicator. Until 2017/2018, teacher salaries in the Czech Republic (CR) were among the lowest in the EU and top ten most economically advanced countries in the world (OECD). In 2021, however, thanks to an unusually dynamic rate of increase for several years in a row, salaries of Czech teachers reached levels significantly closer to the average of OECD and EU countries, reaching 122% of the average salaries in the Czech economy. Thus, in just a few years, the government of Andrej Babiš achieved what no previous government had managed to do; it succeeded in making significant steps towards fulfilling its ambitious commitment, which few people had believed was possible given the lack of success the past. 2 This study represents the authors’ own views and not the official position of the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences nor of the Charles University Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE). We are grateful to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs for its approval to use ISPV data collected and managed by TREXIMA spol. s r. o. The authors are grateful to Karel Gargulák, Václav Korbel, Tomáš Protivínský, and Jan Zeman for their valuable comments and advice. We appreciate consultations on salary indicators kindly provided by the Department of Statistics at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and in particular Petr Čech. Any remaining ambiguities or errors are the responsibility of the authors. The study was produced with support from the Czech Academy of Sciences as part of its AV21 Strategy programme “Society in Motion and Public Policies”. 3