UNICEF Mongolia - Teachers College Columbia University

have a large number of teachers who rely on addional hours in other subjects in order to aain a full
teaching load and a full salary.
RECRUITMENT INTO TEACHING
Fiy-three percent of teacher educaon students study at MSUE in Ulaanbaatar or Arkhangai. This study
therefore focused on an analysis of MSUE data and selected three departments that are very different
from each other: the Department of Primary Teacher Educaon, the Department of Foreign Languages,
and the Department of Mongolian Language and Literature. The research team was able to reconstruct
four of the five indicators for effecve recruitment into teaching: admission rate and criteria, enrollment
rate, compleon rate, and university-to-work transion rate. The findings show that there was a surge
in applicaons and enrollments in 2006/07 and 2007/08, when teachers’ salaries were significantly
raised, and the demand for teachers had grown due to the expansion of general educaon from 10 to
11, and later on, from 11 to 12 years. The average test scores also improved considerably in all three
departments, and especially for applicants to the Department of Foreign Languages. In 2006/07, the
average test score of applicants for the Department of Foreign Languages was 540 points; four years
later, in 2010/11, the average was 710 points. The compleon rate was low in the Department of
Foreign Languages; approximately 30 percent of students in that department either switched to other
departments, interrupted their studies, failed the final exam, found employment before compleng their
studies, or, for other reasons, did not finish their studies in the required period of four years. The biggest
problem in Mongolia is the low university-to-work transion rate. Only approximately one-quarter of the
graduates of pre-service teacher educaon programs actually end up working as teachers. In 2010/2011,
only 1,171 teachers were newly hired. Yet, approximately 5,000 teacher educaon graduates were
produced in that year and the majority of them were on the job market.
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 2007 SALARY REFORM AT THE SCHOOL LEVEL
This study focused on five objecves of the reform and examined whether the following goals were
accomplished at the school level: (1) a reducon of weekly teaching hours; (2) more predictable and
transparent income; (3) a reducon of income inequalies between teachers in rural and urban schools;
(4) full-me employment as a teacher; and (5) making the teaching profession more aracve and
reputable. All five objecves of the reform can ulmately improve quality in educaon and therefore
deserve closer aenon. It is assumed that instruconal quality improves significantly if teachers are
able to teach fewer hours per week; only teach subjects for which they received training; enrely focus
on their teaching rather than pursue mulple jobs; are movated in their work; and are highly regarded
by others. Based on an evaluaon of how the reform has been implemented, the research team makes
the following recommendaons:
• The statutory teaching load in Mongolia is 646 hours per year (19 hours per week), but the
actual average teaching load is 697 hours per year (20.4 hours per week). It is much lower than
the OECD average of 779 hours (primary), 701 hours (lower secondary) and 656 hours (upper
secondary). It is recommended to raise the statutory teaching from 19 to 20 hours per week
and increase the base salary accordingly. In the long term, when the educaon system possibly
moves from the two-shi to the one-shi system, the weekly instruconal hours should be
raised even further.
• The current salary is composed of six elements: base salary, addional hours, supplements for
funcon, supplement for rank, bonuses for performance (three types of bonuses), and general
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TEACHERS IN MONGOLIA: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON RECRUITMENT INTO TEACHING,
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND RETENTION OF TEACHERS
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