Chapter 28 - Teacher supply

Abstract

The supply of high quality school teachers has been, and continues to be, problematic for many countries. Contributing to these problems are government budget constraints and structural demographic change. However, there is good evidence that a major determinant of teacher supply is the relative wage on offer in teaching. Hence teacher shortages often occur in subjects where the opportunity wage is high like Mathematics, and ICT, and in particular high cost living areas or where teacher working conditions are worst, like capital cities. Evidence suggests that schemes to provide teachers with incentives like performance related pay have mixed outcomes. Recent large-scale surveys suggest that perceptions of teachers pay and working hours are very heterogeneous across countries with the general public thinking that they are not paid as fair wage and systematically underestimating the hours that they work. This evidence has found a clear relationship between teacher pay and status and pupil performance.