UNICEF Mongolia - Teachers College Columbia University

CHAPTER 4: THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 2007 SALARY REFORM AT SCHOOL LEVEL
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TEACHERS IN MONGOLIA: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON RECRUITMENT INTO TEACHING,
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND RETENTION OF TEACHERS
with their salary. In fact, one is surprised how much teachers complain about their salary. There is a
culture of complaint among teachers in Mongolia that deserves explanaon. A few possible reasons for
this dissasfacon come to mind, especially as teachers tend to compare their salaries with what others
make and with what they have to pay in terms of living expenses. Some comparisons made are:
• Comparison with the private sector: Salaries in the private sector are much higher and teachers
observe that their peers who le the public sector have a much higher income.
• Comparison with administrators: There exist unofficial sources of income at the school level,
especially for principals and accountants, and teachers find it unfair that they have to rely only
on official sources.
• Comparison with actual living expenses: Teachers are heavily indebted and are in a perpetual
crisis with regard to salary loans. Every month significant deducons are made from their
income to repay their loans, leaving them with very small earnings.
It is important to understand the mindset of teachers and their frame of reference in order to understand
why they express their dissasfacon. However, even though the subjecve assessment of teachers
needs to be taken into account, there is no ground for complaint about salaries when one considers that
the teaching job in Mongolia is, in effect, a part-me job. Only in a handful of schools that we visited
were teachers expected to stay on the school premises, grade papers, prepare lessons, or meet with
students, teachers, school administrators or parents. The typical scenario is that teachers leave school
upon compleon of the daily instrucon. As a result, they work on average 20.5 hours/week at the
school and a few more hours at home for lesson preparaon and grading. In addion, the school year
consists of 34 weeks, and is therefore relavely short. There were two reasons given for why teachers do
not normally work 40 hours per week:
• Space: Almost all schools in Mongolia teach in two shis and very few schools have a Teachers’
Room that is large enough to be used as a workplace for teachers. Unlike schools in other
countries, there is no space for teachers to work except for when they teach. In other countries,
teachers have an office at the school (e.g., in Japan) or have their own classroom (e.g., in United
States) that they can use for work.
• Control: Many educaon managers pointed out that there are limits to how much they can
exert their authority to make teachers work at the school or stay engaged beyond the actual
teaching load.
• Unlike teachers who are permied to teach addional hours and leave the school premises
upon compleon of the teaching load, educaon managers have to stay and work for 40 hours.
In addion, they are not entled to the kind of seniority bonuses that teachers receive aer
five, ten, and fieen years of teaching. They also do not enjoy the privileges or the autonomy
that principals have to secure addional income from bribes and other non-official sources.
They, therefore, find their middle posion (“sandwich”) unpleasant between being de facto an
overworked teacher and an underpaid administrator. The majority of the educaon managers
was dissasfied with their posion and would have preferred to work as regular teachers.
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