Teacher salaries and growth...
- Things Education
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
...need attention.
Hello all. Welcome to the 137th edition of TEPS Weekly!
Last week, we wrote a little about whether teachers are leaving their profession in India, and if they were leaving, what the potential reasons for this could be. This week, we focus on teacher salaries and working conditions. Just as in the previous edition, we will try to dive into available data and make inferences.
No salary?
Teachers’ salaries are high and competitive.
Teachers’ are paid too little for the work that they do.
Teaching is a service in nation building.
We may all have heard a version of any of these three statements when we speak about teacher salaries. But what are the actual teacher salaries? A preschool teacher on average gets anywhere between ₹7500 to ₹11,500 per month; a primary school teacher gets ₹11,000 to ₹31,000 per month; a secondary school teacher gets between ₹13,500 to ₹38,000 per month. These are average numbers, and while a government teacher’s salary can go up to ₹1,10,000 (primary) or ₹1,43,000 (secondary), these are rare cases and only for extremely experienced teachers. Only 12% of private school teachers and 24% of government school teachers have a monthly salary of more than ₹50,000.
By itself, we can see that teacher salaries are pretty low. For example, compare it to what a teacher at an average tuition class makes. Better yet, let’s put the salaries in context of our day-to-day living. The average per person monthly spend in India is around ₹6500. This means that teachers at the lower end of the salary range are barely earning enough to sustain themselves. There is almost no space for any other dependents. This implies that a teacher cannot be the only breadwinner in an Indian household. And we wonder if there is even a question of savings! In Indian society, males are considered the primary breadwinners of a family. Given that teaching may not be a sustainable profession for a primary breadwinner, we would think that there are more females in the teaching community. However, this doesn’t bear out – about 45% of the teaching workforce is female and 55% is male. So teachers don’t have the highest salaries, and yet are willing to work in the field.
No contract?
The figures detailed above are for teachers who are either in government or private schools – but these teachers are on contract. About 25% of teachers in government schools and more than 50% in private schools work without a contract. And these teachers are routinely paid lower salaries than their contracted counterparts. A non-contracted teacher may get 1/3rd of what their contracted counterparts get. So a primary school teacher in a private school may get less than ₹4000 a month.
No benefits?
More than 50% of all teachers get no benefits – no healthcare, maternity/paternity leave, provident funds, etc. – even when on contract. A primary or secondary teacher in a government school, who is a full-time employee gets all benefits, but that is only about 75% of the teachers. Only around 50% of private school teachers at any grade level are getting any benefits.
No growth?
We mentioned earlier that a teacher’s monthly salary can go up to more than ₹1,00,000. So what does this growth look like? On an average, a private school teacher’s salary grows at about ₹340 per year! And that of a government school teacher grows at ₹800 per year. Let’s take the case of a young primary school teacher who has started working in a private school, and her salary is ₹11,000. This teacher gets the average raise of ₹340 – this is a raise of around 3% (light green in image). Similarly, a primary school teacher in a government school who has a salary of ₹31,000 and gets a raise of ₹800 is getting a raise of just a little more than 2.5% (dark green in image).
India’s annual consumer inflation rates over the last 5 years has been around 5%! The lowest annual inflation in the last 25 years in India was 3.3%. Teachers’ salary increment rates are lower than consumer inflation rates in the country! This means that teachers are effectively paid less as they become more experienced!
No agency?
So all this paints a pretty bleak picture of teachers in India. Is there a silver lining? No! Let’s look at the working conditions for teachers. On an average, a teacher has to teach 34 periods in a week (including scheduled periods and substitution periods). If each class is 40 minutes, a teacher spends about 23 hours a week teaching in class. If they spend the same amount of time preparing for class, checking answer sheets, checking homework, etc. outside the classroom, they are working a 6 day week (~46 hours). This is excluding any of the other things that teachers are expected to do, like fill in attendance data into an app, meet parents, help with school activities, and so on.
We are expecting teachers to nation-build without really investing in them. How can we expect teachers to be motivated to find novel ways of approaching a topic? Why would teachers really want to upskill themselves when there is no benefit to them?
We will leave you with some numbers to show you how ignored teachers are in our system. Toilets for female students have increased across the country, and this has led to increases in female student enrolment. And this is great! But what about teachers? Only 33% of government schools and 46% of private schools have a functional toilet for teachers. At the same time, 38% of government schools and more than 50% of private schools have CCTV cameras (56% in private schools) and internet access (76% in private schools). The problem of teacher motivation and agency is multi-dimensional and not simple to solve. But there are some things that are obvious and can be solved.
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Edition: 4.44
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