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Teacher salaries in 2022 and beyond: out of the abyss and back again
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
The relative amounts of teachers‘ salaries helps to define the attractiveness of entering the teaching profession and can be a component in ensuring sufficient interest in the profession. Selectivity into teaching, both at entry and throughout the career, determines the quality of education. These processes are realised in the long term through continuous entries and exits from teaching, and ongoing training during the career. Therefore, the effects of teacher salaries on interest in entering the profession, the quality of teachers' work, and ultimately a country's educational outcomes can only be tracked over the long term.
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Head teachers’ salaries: long overlooked
Korbel, Václav ; Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
School leadership staff (head teachers and their deputies) are crucial to teaching quality. Pay for primary school leadership staff in the Czech Republic, however, is not closely monitored in the long term, despite the fact that pay influences the efficiency of managerial work and educational leadership and, moreover, affects potential candidates’ motivation to apply for school leadership roles. For our analysis, we use employee level data from the ISPV database of salary statements for the years 2017–2021. The classification used in the ISPV database does not enable us to distinguish between different leadership roles – head teacher vs. deputy – so our analysis looks at sets of school leadership staff as a whole. We analyse their average total gross monthly salaries, the average value of bonuses, the variability in their pay range and the factors that influence the amount of their pay and its variability.
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Teacher salaries in 2021: peak reached so what next?
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
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. In the coming years, maintaining the achieved relative level of teacher salaries will require increasing them at the rate of nominal wage growth in the economy. However, relative teacher salaries are likely to fall slightly to 119% in the 2022 outlook. Based on promises made in the summer following the government’s negotiations with unions, salaries are likely to remain at the same level in 2023. Teacher salaries will certainly not reach the 130% level promised by the previous and current governments, let alone the salaries of the wider pedagogical workforce.
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Teachers’ salaries in 2020 and beyond: will the Czech Republic rest on its laurels?
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
In relative terms, teachers’ pay in the Czech Republic was lower than in most EU and OECD countries until 2017/18. Thanks to an unusually fast pace of growth in the past few years, in 2021, teacher’s pay will almost reach the average for OECD countries and the EU, which is around 90% of the average salary for a university-educated employee in the national economy. Andrej Babiš’s outgoing government will thus fulfil its Summer 2018 program statement. The level of teachers’ pay is a factor in attracting interest in teaching as a profession. Raising interest is necessary not only in order to recruit sufficient numbers of teachers, but to allow selectivity into the profession, allowing for more emphasis on the quality of teaching. These are long-term processes that gradually build the overall quality of the country’s teaching staff, through continuous arrivals and departures from the profession. Therefore, the impact of the teachers’ pay rates on attracting interest in the profession, the quality of teachers’ work, and pupils’ educational outcomes can only be observed over many years, or even decades.
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Impact of Russian Federation on Integration Organizations in Post-Soviet Space
Smolka, Václav ; Romancov, Michael (advisor) ; Riegl, Martin (referee)
Bachelor thesis Impact of Russian Federation on Integration Organizations in Post-Soviet Space focus on integration organizations in area so-called Post-Soviet space, their functionality and role of the Russian Federation in them. Russian Federation as a traditionally strong actor in international relations strived since early 1990s to keep its impact on the area and one of its instruments was its working in regional international organizations. Aim of the thesis is to find out how the organizations operate and the way in which the Russian Federation asserts its influence in them. Thesis maps the development in each organization and sets it into concept of international organizations to determine these information. Afterwards the thesis evaluates how much do they really work. On the basis of obtained results the thesis assess if and how the Russian Federation uses its influence in the organizations.
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Teachers' salaries in 2019: a glimpse of a brighter future?
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
As far as the relative level of pay for teachers compared to other university-educated employees is concerned, the Czech Republic has long occupied a very low position relative to other developed countries. As recently as 2018, the country ranked lowest on this front among all the OECD countries. The relative level of teachers’ pay is one of the factors that determine the attractiveness of the teaching profession. The teaching profession needs to be attractive not only in order to ensure a sufficient supply of teaching staff but also to enable selectivity in teacher recruitment, with an emphasis on teacher quality. The national data for 2019, which have recently been published and on which this study is based, show that this situation has begun to improve substantially. If the pledges originally made by the current government are anything to go by, this situation ought to further improve substantially during 2020 and 2021. In 2019 primary school teachers’ average pay reached 123.5% of the average salary in the national economy, up from 114.3% in 2018. This means that teachers’ relative pay level exceeded the previous record, which was set almost fifteen years ago in 2006. The speed of increase in teachers’ salaries in 2019 was far greater than the speed of increase in the salaries of other university-educated public sector employees and very substantially greater than that in the private sector. During 2018-2019 teachers’ mean and median pay rose by more than 28%. The equivalent growth among university-educated employees in the public sector was 19.8% and in the private sector just 14,1%.\n
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Czech teachers’ pay: a new hope
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, V.
Teachers’ pay has long been lower in the Czech Republic than in almost all the other most economically developed countries. That is a natural consequence of the fact that the Czech Republic spends around one third less of its gross domestic product (GDP) on regional schooling than is usual in developed countries.\nIf Czech teachers’ average monthly salary was, relative to the salaries of other tertiary educated employees in the Czech Republic in 2018, comparable to the equivalent ratio in EU countries on average or in Finland or Germany, it should stand at around 53,000 or 56,000 CZK rather than the current 36,000 CZK.\nRelative to the average salary in the national economy, average teachers’ salaries rose year on year in 2018 by 2.9 percentage points to nearly 115%. Nevertheless, this only marked a return to the levels of 2008, i.e. ten years ago, prior to the global financial crisis. Teachers’ salaries were raised substantially in 2017-2018, but at the same time salaries for all tertiary educated employees rose substantially across the whole public sector. The raise in teachers’ salaries was thus hardly ahead of the game.\nIn relative terms, teachers at the beginning of their careers in the under 30 age bracket are the best paid. In 2018, ‘only’ 69% of non-teachers in this age group received higher salaries than their teacher peers (tertiary educated, same age and gender in the same region). Next best is the situation among the oldest teachers, in the 50-59 and 60+ age brackets. Teachers in the middle age bracket, 30-49 years, receive the worst pay in relative terms: 80% of demographically equivalent employees earn more than the teachers’ average salary.\nCzech teachers’ salaries are highly equalized, or even egalitarian, both in national and international comparison. In the youngest age bracket the variability in pay is comparable with that of administrative staff and other university educated public sector employees. However, whereas pay grades and variability increase with age (and experience) among non-teachers, teachers’ pay rises extremely slowly with age (experience) and its variability remains low.\nIn 2018 the already low share of overall teachers’ pay allocated to merit-based bonuses decreased. The substantial raise to teachers’ salaries in that year was achieved partially at the expense of further reducing the already very low levels of merit-based pay.\nUnder Bohuslav Sobotka’s government in 2014-2017, raising teachers’ pay was not a priority above and beyond increasing salaries across the whole public sector more generally. A turn for the better in this respect only became apparent during the first year of the new government in 2018. Further development on this front is however still in the realm of promises, or at best rough estimates for 2019.\nThe pre-election pledges made by ČSSD and ANO in this area are not mutually comparable. While ČSSD took the average salary in the national economy in 2021 as the basis for its calculations, the second took average teachers’ salaries in 2017. Thus, in 2021 teachers should be paid 49,530 CZK per month according to ČSSD and 47,367 CZK according to ANO. The latter figure was adopted into the government’s statement of policy. However, ANO’s promise is problematic because it does not anticipate the concurrent growth of salaries in other professions, which can only be broadly predicted.\nIf teachers’ pay were to increase by 7.5% annually from 2020 onwards, the level of teachers’ pay relative that of other tertiary educated public sector employees in the Czech Republic would match the equivalent ratio across the EU as a whole only in 2030, i.e. a decade from now. To reach the relative levels in Germany or Finland would take 13-15 years.\nPrevious political promises in the more distant past regarding raises to teachers’ pay were vague, short-lived and rarely fulfilled. The consequence of that has been to substantially reduce the public’s belief in such pledges. In order to permanently and substantially increase the long existing low level of interest in the teaching profession among the youngest generations these pledges must be given greater credibility. It is not only essential that the current commitments be fulfilled, but also that they be extended well beyond a single term of election. Help in achieving this may come through key political parties declaring their consensus, the introduction of statutory salary indexation for teachers and a more responsible approach to compiling the mid-term state budget outlook.
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Employment effects of minimum wage increases in the Czech Republic
Grossmann, J. ; Jurajda, Štěpán ; Smolka, V.
This study examines the direct effects of four minimum wage increases in the Czech Republic during 2012-2017 on the employment of low-earning workers in the business sector. This series of minimum wage increases followed a period of 7 years during which the national minimum wage was not raised. During the period studied, the monthly minimum wage was raised by 37.5 % overall, from 8,000 to 11,000 CZK. To estimate the effects of the minimum wage increases we make use of the fact that various companies or parts of companies reported different shares of employees who were paid at or below the level of the new minimum wage. We estimate whether, within a given company, homogeneous groups of employees in which a greater proportion were previously paid less than the new minimum wage were disproportionately badly affected in terms of their employment (or hours worked) after the change than groups of employees unaffected by the raise to the minimum wage. Our results show that the national minimum wage increases in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017 did not have any significant negative effects on employment. They did, however, have a positive effect on salaries. Even at the start of 2019, the minimum wage in the Czech Republic remains low in comparison to other European countries and affects only a small proportion of workers. Our findings however cannot be taken as an indication that potential future minimum wage increases would also have negligible effects on employment. It is thus essential to regularly assess in detail what the effects of future increases to the minimum wage would be.
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Higher teachers’ salaries: promises, promises, promises
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, V.
International comparisons show that Czech teachers’ pay, in relation to other tertiary educated workers, has long been among the lowest across the most economically developed countries. Based on the latest international comparisons published, from 2015, Czech teachers earned 56% of what other tertiary educated workers were earning, whereas the average across OECD countries was 83%.
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Impact of Russian Federation on Integration Organizations in Post-Soviet Space
Smolka, Václav ; Romancov, Michael (advisor) ; Riegl, Martin (referee)
Bachelor thesis Impact of Russian Federation on Integration Organizations in Post-Soviet Space focus on integration organizations in area so-called Post-Soviet space, their functionality and role of the Russian Federation in them. Russian Federation as a traditionally strong actor in international relations strived since early 1990s to keep its impact on the area and one of its instruments was its working in regional international organizations. Aim of the thesis is to find out how the organizations operate and the way in which the Russian Federation asserts its influence in them. Thesis maps the development in each organization and sets it into concept of international organizations to determine these information. Afterwards the thesis evaluates how much do they really work. On the basis of obtained results the thesis assess if and how the Russian Federation uses its influence in the organizations.
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