Teacher's protest on Thursday
צילום: מורן זליקוביץ'
It’s all about the teachers
International study shows quality of teachers more important than their salary
A decade after the current teacher strike ends, will our children be more educated than they are now? Will the results they achieve in international comparative tests improve? Will we find ourselves in good company, next to education world leaders such as Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, or are we going to be in the same group as the most backward nations?
The unfortunate answer is that our chances are slim. Indeed, boosting teacher salaries is a required step, and it is possible that making teachers stay at schools for longer hours won’t hurt, but there is no connection between the material gains of teachers and the expected achievements of their students. This is the conclusion of a convincing study regarding the link between education costs and outcomes. The study was carried out by well-known consulting firm McKinsey and its essence was published by The Economist several weeks ago.
The researchers looked into the most influential factor when it comes to student achievement, and discovered that it is not the level of teacher salaries. It was also not a matter of the funds earmarked for education, or the number of students per class, or teaching methods. Rather, the deciding factor was the quality of teachers at elementary schools.
This is the conclusion after all variables are isolated: The countries at the top of the list are the ones that direct the best of the best to elementary school teaching positions. An examination undertaken in the United States showed that students with average abilities who have access to top teachers are at the top 10%, while students with similar abilities who only have access to the worst teachers find themselves at the bottom.
McKinsey’s study showed that the expense per student at leading countries is not higher, and is often lower, than countries that boosted teaching resources to a huge extent. In the US, for example, expenditure per student doubled since 1980, but the level of students is lower than ever. Australia tripled its expenditure per student since 1970, but did not see positive results. Teacher salaries in Switzerland, Spain, and Germany are very high, but results are dubious. At the same time, teaching hours in Finland are fewer than they are in its Scandinavian neighbors, yet Finnish students are better.
The South Korean model
In order to boost the level of teachers, leading countries set high acceptance standards to teachers’ college. Teaching students there belong to the same group that allows students in Israel to be accepted into the most sought after programs: Medicine, psychology, accounting, and law. The temptation is not only related salary, but also to social prestige, which stems from the realization that only the best of the best are entrusted with teaching the children.
In South Korea, candidates are accepted into elementary school teaching programs only if they hold a B.A. degree from a handful of the best universities, while high school teaching programs accept holders of degrees from hundreds of colleges. The result is that the supply of teachers authorized to teach high school students is much larger than the supply of teachers authorized to teach in elementary schools. Therefore, the salary of the latter is higher than that of high school teachers.
The number of students per class is a factor that mostly affects the achievements of elementary school students, while its effect on high school students isn’t significant. Reducing the number of students per class leads to a larger number of teachers, and therefore results in more teachers of lesser quality. If the alternatives are an excellent teacher in a large class or a lesser teacher in a small class, the first option is better.
McKinsey is the most important consulting firm in the world. Governments and giant corporations use it in order to shape their policies in the areas of management and economics. Its conclusions may be wrong, but if they are right, we’re screwed, because in almost every educational area we rely on false assumptions, and therefore we do the opposite of what is needed.
