Turkey’s education system 'more efficient' than Germany, Switzerland: Index

ANKARA

Pupil/teacher ratios would need to change dramatically, the index says.

Turkey ranks in the bottom third of a new international comparison of the efficiency of educational systems in 30 member countries of the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to a recent index.

However, although it is only 21st out of 30 OECD countries, Turkey is still more efficient than Western European countries such as Germany and Switzerland and Southern European countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, according to index, which measures which education systems deliver the best value for money.

In addition, the index also suggests that Turkey could match Finland’s high PISA results in the fields of reading, mathematics and science if it were to dramatically increase teacher wages.

The Efficiency Index, announced on Sept. 4, was commissioned by GEMS Education Solutions, an international K-12 education company that owns and operates high performing schools.

The company says the index is the first comprehensive international analysis that looks at how efficiently education budgets are allocated in each country. It ranks 30 OECD countries based on their expenditure on teacher costs, which account for 80 percent of education budgets on average, and the pupil outcomes they achieve. In this way, it calculates which system generates the greatest educational return for each dollar invested.

The index ranks Finland as the most educationally efficient country in the OECD.

According to the index’s model, which calculates the proven statistical link between teacher salaries or class size and PISA scores, Turkey could match Finland’s high PISA’s results if it were to dramatically increase teachers’ salaries. According to the index’s model, teachers’ salaries in Turkey would need to be increased by 129 percent, meaning an increase from the current average salary of $17,180 to $39,380.

Alternatively, pupil/teacher ratios would need to change dramatically from the current Turkish average of 16.4 pupils for teacher to 1.4 pupils for each teacher.