Yes, let’s pay teachers more, but let’s also raise the entry-level requirements for the profession

Mmusi Maimane, leader of the One South Africa Movement, recently proposed a Twitter debate on fixing the education sector in South Africa and providing venture capital to young entrepreneurs from historically excluded backgrounds. He shared an article he wrote in which he provided his five ideas to fix our public education system. 

I want to address the first idea he proposed which is raising teacher salaries. While I totally agree with the notion of raising teacher salaries, I should warn that raising teacher salaries alone is not enough, especially if we want to improve learning and if we want to have the best teacher candidates in the system.  

What research has shown is that low teacher salaries often push teachers to get second jobs which reduce their energy and effort put into their teaching. 

Higher salaries, on the other hand, might attract less qualified candidates — due to the rise of unemployment in our country almost every student candidate wants to be a teacher or wants at least a low-qualifying career that also pays well. This makes it difficult to know and/or to select candidates with high competency.

Indonesia once raised salaries by more than a quarter for a subset of teachers for more than 10 years. The results from that research revealed that teachers were happier and they were less likely to hold a second job, but student learning remained unchanged and there was no improvement in the classroom.

It’s not just about attracting candidates into the teaching profession with good salaries, it’s about selecting candidates who will go on to be great teachers — we can’t attract the best candidates if the requirements are not set at a higher level.

Finland, for instance, has high requirements in place for students who seek to become teachers — to be accepted into the teaching profession, these students are required to have a master’s degree, including pedagogical studies and teaching practice.

Combining salary increases with increasing the educational requirements to become a teacher has seen countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Singapore and many others prosper in terms of student learning. The period between 2006 and 2013 saw Ecuador record the highest student literacy gains in Latin America when they combined the two policy reforms.

We shouldn’t just raise teacher salaries; we should also tighten entry requirements for teachers to absorb the best talent. An increase in salaries should be accompanied by higher entry requirements.

However, this article is part of a wider conversation because salary increases and hiring the best teachers are not always enough to improve student performance, but combining them gives schools a better chance and is a step forward. DM