Teachers should be held in the same regard as highly respected professionals like doctors, according to Sunny Varkey, the chairman of the Varkey Gems Foundation, which seeks to improve education for underprivileged youth.
But even if teachers were held in the same esteem as doctors, it would be a long way before they got paid like them.
As part of the Varkey Gems Foundation’s recent survey on the social status of teachers around the world, the group included a chart of the average salaries of teachers, converted to U.S. dollars.
The salaries range by the tens of thousands –- and somewhat surprisingly, the United States doesn’t fair half bad.
In his forward to the foundation’s Teacher Status Index, Varkey calls for teacher salary increases across the board:
Research shows that the better teachers are paid, the greater student outcomes. The Global Teacher Status Index indicates that in many countries people think that teachers deserve to be paid more – even in countries like Finland that already have excellent results.
Below we have replicated the Varkey Gem Foundation’s list of average teacher salaries, which is based on information from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and national statistics agencies.
What do you think of the results?