OECD: Teachers’ salaries in Turkey below average

ISTANBUL

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The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said teachers’ salaries in Turkey were below the average of those in OECD member states, stressing that seniority and teaching experience in Turkey were not well reflected in wages. 

The average annual salary of teachers with 15 years of experience across 34 OECD member states was $44,600, while this number dropped to $28,110 in Turkey, an amount nearly one-fourth of what a teacher gets in Luxembourg, the OECD said in its annual education report titled “Education at a Glance 2015,” consolidated upon education data from 2013.

The report said the average salary of teachers in Turkey was only higher than those in Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Greece, Czech Republic and Mexico.

Pay raises based on seniority and experience in Turkey were far less than in OECD member states, the report said, with pay rises by around 50 percent seen in counties such as Luxembourg, Canada, Germany and the United States. 

In key highlights addressing Turkey, the report said Turkey needs to value pre-primary education more for its positive impact on the future performance of students, noting results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that 15-year-old students who had attended at least one year of pre-primary education performed better than those who had not.

The report added that in 2012, less than 30 percent of 15-year-olds in Turkey had attended pre-primary education and just 7 percent of 3-year-olds and 36 percent of 4-year-olds were enrolled in early childhood education in 2013.

Unlike in most OECD member states, the report said, women in Turkey were well represented in the fields of sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Fourteen percent of graduates in sciences from upper secondary vocational programs in Turkey in 2014 were women, the report added.