Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

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TEACHER PAY AND STUDENT MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT
Teacher salaries and workload
Primary and secondary school teachers in the Philippines have similar salary schedules.
A teacher with a minimum teaching qualification earns roughly 2.05 times the GDP per
capita as a starting salary, 2.26 times the GDP per capita after 15 years of experience,
and 2.43 times the GDP per capita after 30 years of experience (UNESCO Institute for
Statistics, 2006). A teacher with maximum qualifications and 30 years of experience
earns a salary that is 3.66 times the GDP per capita (UNESCO Institute for Statistics,
2006). In terms of international PPP dollars, the average salary for a primary or
secondary school teacher with minimum qualifications is $9,418 if that teacher has
no years of experience, $10,396 if he or she has 15 years of experience, $11,195 if he or
she has 30 years of experience, and $16,833 if he or she has 30 years of experience and
maximum qualifications (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2006). To move from the
minimum to the maximum salary, teachers need to have been teaching, on average, for
22 years (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2006).
Agarao-Fernandez and Guzman (2005) note that a public school teacher’s maximum
salary is only P10,000, well under the National Economic and Development Authority’s
basic living standard of P16,710 for an average family. Teachers, they observe, may not
only experience difficulty meeting their basic household needs but also have to purchase
their own teaching materials. Finally, teachers generally receive non-wage benefits and
bonuses only if their work is outstanding or if they obtain higher education degrees
beyond the basic requirement (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2006). Mathematics
and science teachers do not seem to earn additional benefits or bonuses, even though
they are generally in shorter supply. In the Philippines (as in other countries), teachers
are not paid on the basis of the subjects they teach but according to the level of the
education system they teach, that is, primary, secondary, or tertiary.
To compound the salary issue, teachers in the Philippines face a heavy workload in
terms of work hours and class sizes. Primary and lower-secondary school teachers are
required to work 196 days out of the school year for 30 hours per week, while uppersecondary
teachers are required to work 25 hours per week. However, the number of
hours each year that teachers in the Philippines teach is considerably more than the
hours taught by their colleagues in most other East Asian countries (UNESCO Institute
for Statistics, 2006).
In 1998, the Teacher Education Commission broke down the weekly teaching load of
a typical teacher in the Philippines as follows: 20 hours of actual teaching, 15 hours of
preparation and grading, and 10 hours on other tasks. According to the commission,
teachers at this time were working more than the 40-hours-per-week civil-service
requirement (Education Commission, cited in Agarao-Fernandez & Guzman, 2005).
From what we understand, the situation is much the same today. Furthermore, class sizes
in both primary and secondary schools are relatively large, with an average of 42 students
per class in the former and 36 in the latter in 2004 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics,
2006). Many classes in urban areas have 60 to 75 students. These large numbers very
likely act as a further deterrent to anyone considering entering mathematics teaching.
We estimated and compared the salaries of teachers with the salaries of two other
occupations for two years, 2001 and 2006. Our estimates suggest that both male and
female teachers are paid better than university graduates who are not scientists, but