By using ECSS site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
ECSS - Egyptian Center for Strategic StudiesECSS - Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies
  • Home
  • International Relations
    International Relations
    Show More
    Top News
    The Tigray crisis: The Cost of Instability in Ethiopia
    November 18, 2020
    The ethnic crisis of Qemant: The complex reality of Ethiopia’s Amhara
    July 31, 2021
    US Politicization of Human Rights against China
    US Politicization of Human Rights against China
    January 23, 2022
    Latest News
    Heated Competition: Syria’s Phosphate and Russian-Iranian Spheres of Influence
    March 22, 2023
    Structural Causes of Economic Decline in South Africa
    March 18, 2023
    Consolidation of Presence: Israel Heads to West Africa via Sudan and Chad
    March 11, 2023
    Opportunities and Challenges: Turkish Rapprochement with the Syrian Regime
    March 9, 2023
  • Defense & Security
    Defense & Security
    Show More
    Top News
    Coping with Challenges:
    ISIS from Operation Kayla Mueller to the Syria Earthquake
    March 4, 2023
    Strategic Shift: Iran’s role in Sanaa between Proxy Management and Direct Involvement
    November 7, 2020
    Political Considerations: The Motives and Implications of Lifting Five Foreign Terrorist Organizations off US Terrorist List
    Political Considerations: The Motives and Implications of Lifting Five Foreign Terrorist Organizations off US Terrorist List
    May 28, 2022
    Latest News
    ChatGPT: Promising Applications, Potential Difficulties
    March 6, 2023
    Coping with Challenges:
    ISIS from Operation Kayla Mueller to the Syria Earthquake
    March 4, 2023
    Reasons and Ramifications of Al-Shabaab’s Retreat from its Positions
    January 30, 2023
    Task Force 59: The New US Military Deployment Pattern in the Middle East
    November 30, 2022
  • Public Policy
    Public Policy
    Show More
    Top News
    Radical Overhaul: Egypt’s Plan to Upgrade the Railway Network
    August 21, 2021
    Fruitful Efforts: Egypt’s National Agricultural Projects and Achieving Self-Sufficiency
    June 1, 2022
    The Law of General Average: Ever Given Compensation Crisis
    August 19, 2021
    Latest News
    Imminent Challenges: Hunger and Global Food Security Disruption
    March 14, 2023
    How will Forward Exchange Contracts Affect Egypt’s Market Stability?
    January 24, 2023
    Egypt’s Economic Gains from COP27
    December 14, 2022
    Global Crisis: Whither Inflation?
    December 8, 2022
  • Analysis
    • Analysis
    • Analytical article
    • Opinions Articles
  • Activities
    • Conferences
    • ECSS Agenda
    • Panel Discussion
    • Seminar
    • Workshops
  • ECSS Library
    • Books
    • Digital Editions
    • Periodicals
    • Special Editions
  • العربية
  • Advertise
All Rights Reserved to ECSS © 2022,
Reading: Will raising teachers’ salaries enhance their performance?
Share
Notification Show More
Latest News
The World is Changing
Opinions Articles
Heated Competition: Syria’s Phosphate and Russian-Iranian Spheres of Influence
International Relations
China’s Approach to Peace in Ukraine: Motivations and Expectations
Analytical article
Structural Causes of Economic Decline in South Africa
African Studies
Reflecting on the Arab Regional System
Opinions Articles
Aa
ECSS - Egyptian Center for Strategic StudiesECSS - Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies
Aa
  • اللغة العربية
  • International Relations
  • Defense & Security
  • Special Edition
  • Public Policy
  • Analysis
  • Activities & Events
  • Home
  • اللغة العربية
  • Categories
    • International Relations
    • Defense & Security
    • Public Policy
    • Analysis
    • Special Edition
    • Activities & Events
    • Opinions Articles
  • Bookmarks
Follow US
  • Advertise
All Rights Reserved to ECSS © 2022, Powered by EgyptYo Business Services.
Public Policy

Will raising teachers’ salaries enhance their performance?

Mahmoud Salama
Last updated: 2022/11/02 at 10:24 PM
Mahmoud Salama
Share
11 Min Read
SHARE

Low pay is a frequent complaint of teachers across the world. Teachers often request a raise that would provide them with a fitting standard of living for nation-builders. Some education researchers suggest a positive link between increasing salaries and the quality of educational outcomes. 

However, this relationship remains uncertain. Raising salaries doesn’t not necessarily lead to better teacher performance, particularly in public schools where salaries are based on a gradual, closed scale.  

It is more or less the same in Egypt where teachers suffer low salaries and often call for increasing salaries that would lead to a better performance which would redound to the outcomes of the educational process, as if low salaries is the only reason for the current poor educational performance. 

Interestingly, even with a raise in teachers’ salaries, the performance remained consistent, neither showing an improvement nor a decline. Teachers always see the raise as either falling short of their aspirations or failing to meet their needs. Thus, the raise doesn’t help make their performance any better as long as it is granted parsimoniously and is more of a palliative dose rather than a curative one, sufficient enough to bring about a paradigm shift in salaries. 

Teachers’ salaries in Egypt

During the fiscal year 2020-2021, the total budget for pre-university education exceeded EGP 157 billion, of which EGP 80 billion were allocated for salaries and compensations, i.e. salaries allocated for the Ministry of Education (MoE) alone accounted for close to 25 percent of total salaries dedicated to all ministries, totaling EGP 335 billion. However, such a large proportion doesn’t necessarily mean that the financial conditions of employees serving under the MoE umbrella is satisfactory or in line with average salaries teachers in comparable countries receive. Indeed, this could be attributed to the substantial number of the MoE personnel. According to the Egypt’s 2020 Statistical Yearbook, the MoE personnel numbered 1,525,000 teachers, specialists, administrators, and workers.

Dividing the total salaries assigned for the ministry by the number of employees, we get an average monthly salary of above EGP 4,300 or a yearly salary of EGP 52,000. But the reality is far from these figures. The annual bulletin of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) shows that the average weekly pay for employees of the education sector amounted to EGP 521 or EGP 2,257 per month. The difference between the two averages is probably due to two reasons: 1) the CAPMAS’s average salary is calculated based on a sample comprising of 65,000 employees representing 624 educational institutions only and  2) the annual bulletin relied on data dating back to 2018 where EGP 65 billion only were allocated to salaries  of pre-university education personnel. In all cases, low salaries mean low standard of living which leads to less job satisfaction and subsequent low performance of public schools.

Due to the lack of data provided by Ministries of Finance and Education on teacher salary structure, some websites managed to unofficially get access to salary statements of teachers with different job titles. The following table shows salaries for different teaching job categories. Looking at data in the table, we find that these are generally low salaries compared to salaries of other professions. Actual salaries may even be lower after deducting tax and insurance.  

Table 1. Public School teachers’ salaries 

Job Category TeacherSenior TeacherSenior Teacher AMaster TeacherLead Teacher
Monthly Salary27003100360041005100
Planned Increase in January 2021(EGP)325350395450475

Source: Ministry of Education

Demand for colleges despite scarcity of employment opportunities

Besides the low salaries of teachers in public schools, it has been 20 years since the government stopped appointing graduates of education colleges in public schools. Rather, the ministry introduced “contracting” as the main mechanism for appointing teachers, where the Ministry contracts with a relatively small number of candidates compared to the total number of education graduates. Contract teachers have their contracts renewed every year before the conversion to permanent employment is made after three years. At a later stage, the Ministry switched to “competitions” for meeting its needs of teachers infrequently. In theory, these policies could have a chilling effect on students joining faculties of education as they no longer offer a guaranteed job nor a reasonable financial compensation that ensures a decent standard of living. Moreover, contrary to graduates of other colleges, education graduates have limited career pathways as they are only prepared to work as teachers. 

Nonetheless, there is a high level of demand for education colleges in excess of market needs. CAPMAS’s bulletin of “graduates of universities and higher institutes” of 2019 indicates that the total numbers of education graduates is over 73,000 graduates. This high level of demand could be attributed to several reasons including:

  • Together with nursing, science, and Al-Alsun (languages) colleges, education colleges retain a relative status falling between the so-called high-ranked colleges including medicine, engineering, computers and information, and economics and political science colleges and low-ranked colleges including arts, commerce, law, and agriculture. So, students who fail to join high-ranked colleges prefer enrolling in education colleges. 
  • The salaries public school teachers receive do not represent the total income they earn. From private tutoring, they can make twofold their salary. A large number of education graduates work in private tutoring centers or establish their own centers even before graduating.

What to expect in light of low salaries?

Low teacher pay poses two main challenges for public schools affecting the quality of the education process. First, low pay represents a push-factor for knowledgeable highly-qualified teachers to seek employment in public schools. So, a substantial proportion of teachers already hired need for ongoing in-service training which imposes burdens on the MoE. Second, low pay negatively affects teachers’ motivation, meaning some of them go to school just to perform the minimum tasks of their job without considering the quality of the educational service they provide nor working towards developing their capabilities. 

Everyone looks for a better standard of living and teachers are no exception. Some teachers resort to improving their income through private tutoring or do menial jobs that don’t befit their status and social position. Teachers with good teaching skills and capabilities manage to make the transition to private or international schools for a higher pay, causing public schools to lose the best-qualified human resources they have. Moreover, a significant proportion of education graduates who fail to get a good job opportunity in Egypt leave to work in Gulf countries a year or two after graduation.         

Overall, the education environment in Egypt doesn’t allow for attracting qualified teachers capable of creating a surge in the education outcomes. The education environment can be described as being talent- repellent particularly with the exacerbation of a number of problems related to infrastructure, technology, high classroom density, and high ratio of students per teaching staff. This calls for urgent intervention to consider reforming teachers’ salary structure in a way that motivate them provide quality education services.

This intervention may entail making a quantum leap in teachers’ salaries over a three-to-five year period, bringing them close to salaries in comparable countries. However, such a raise should go hand in hand with a re-evaluation process of teachers and principals of public schools to ensure the salary increase serves its purpose, i.e. improving performance which will be necessarily reflected in the quality of the educational output. In addition, teachers’ motivation need to be measured closely at intervals through ad-hoc psychological tests.

In conclusion, the low salaries of public school teachers in Egypt give rise to numerous problems that affect the performance and quality of the education system as a whole, which calls for restructuring teachers’ salaries to attract the best talents, retain existing competencies, and establish incentives that encourage teachers to give their best rather than providing the minimum performance.

Related Posts

Heated Competition: Syria’s Phosphate and Russian-Iranian Spheres of Influence

Imminent Challenges: Hunger and Global Food Security Disruption

Opportunities and Challenges: Turkish Rapprochement with the Syrian Regime

Challenges and Risks: Nigeria’s General Elections

TAGGED: Featured, performance, Teachers' salaries
Mahmoud Salama July 26, 2021
Share this Article
Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp LinkedIn Telegram Email Copy Link Print
Mahmoud Salama
By Mahmoud Salama
Researcher at Public Policy Program

Stay Connected

Facebook Like
Twitter Follow
Instagram Follow
Youtube Subscribe

Latest Articles

Sheikh Jarrah: A Simulation of the rise of the ‘nationalist extremist’ party in Israel
International Relations May 31, 2021
Strategic Dimensions: Egypt-Djibouti Relations
Public Policy March 14, 2022
Dwindling Opportunities: The State of the Union Address and Biden’s Chances in the Presidential Race
Others February 21, 2023
Phenomenal Performance: How the Suez Canal Exceeded Expectations in the Face of Challenges
Public Policy February 12, 2022

Latest Tweets

International Relations

  • African Studies
  • American Studies
  • Arab & Regional Studies
  • Asian Studies
  • European Studies
  • Palestinian & Israeli Studies

Defence & Security

  • Armament
  • Cyber Security
  • Extremism
  • Terrorism & Armed Conflict

Public Policies

  • Development & Society
  • Economic & Energy Studies
  • Egypt & World Stats
  • Media Studies
  • Public Opinion
  • Women & Family Studies

The Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies is an independent non-profit think tank, providing decisions-makers by Policy alternatives, the center was establised in 2018 and comprises a group of experts and researchers from diffrent generations and scientific desciplines. 

All Rights Reserved to Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies - ECSS © 2022

Removed from reading list

Undo
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?