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New Trends in School Education Development
Based on the Annual Monitoring Research Conducted by the Center of Economy of Continuous Education of the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
E. Avraamova, D. Loginov
Received in Elena Avraamova
July 2016 Doctor of Sciences in Economics, Professor, Head of the Laboratory for Social Development Research, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Email: avraamova-em @ranepa.ru Dmitry Loginov
Candidate of Sciences in Economics, Senior Researcher, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Email: loginov-dm@ ranepa.ru
Address: 11 Prechistenskaya Quay, 119034 Moscow, Russian Federation.
Abstract. We analyze results from the fourth wave of the annual monitoring of school effectiveness, conducted by the Center of Economy of Continuous Education of the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) since the academic year 2012/13. Based on a survey of school principals, teachers and parents, we build quite a holistic picture of school education evolution and changes to its components, such as the staffing of schools, teaching quality, as well as professionalism, salaries and social positions of teachers. The development of the school education system from the
perspective of principals and teachers is compared to the parental requirements for school education. We also show the effects of the economic downturn on education, in particular the cuts to school funding. Teachers report a decrease in their salaries. Egalitarian distribution of incentive bonuses has given way to a higher differentiation in teachers' pay, which can be regarded as a positive effect of the efficient contract. The reduced effective demand for supplementary educational services entails a decline in ex-trabudgetary revenues. There has been a perceptible decrease in the territorial differentiation in teacher remuneration, teacher engagement in advanced training programs, and the quality of education as such. At the same time, regional differentiation is growing. The chain of transformations launched by the remuneration reform has rejuvenated the staff composition of Russian schools, enhanced the quality of the teaching staff, and contributed to better interaction between teachers and other school education actors, but the effect on the quality of graduates has yet to be revealed. Keywords: school, school education, payment of teachers, training of teachers, staffing of schools, education quality assessment.
DOI: 10.17323/1814-9545-2016-4-163-185
Problem setting The article presents some results from the fourth wave of the moni-and information toring of school education effectiveness conducted by the Center of basis Economy of Continuous Education of the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). All of the monitoring waves are conducted using the same methodology developed by the authors and tested during the first wave (academic year 2012/13). The basic methodological principle of this study is to use a few categories of respondents—principals, teachers, and parents—as a source of information, instead of just one homogeneous category. By doing so, we analyze information obtained from respondents representing all the main types of school education actors, thus we are able to draw quite a holistic picture.
The information basis of research is the survey data collected from households with school-aged children and school teachers (2,100 respondents in each target group), complemented with school principals' opinions obtained in 40 in-depth interviews. The surveys were conducted in four regions of Russia differing in socioeconomic development: Chelyabinsk Oblast, Stavropol Krai, Altai Krai, and Saint Petersburg. Respondents were drawn from a multistage random sample covering the population of the regional capitalsas well as urban and rural localities of the selected regions (25 surveyed locations) and en-suredthe representativeness of the obtained sociological data (statistical error does not exceed 4%).
The universal methodology used in each wave of the monitoring, however, does not rule out certain variations in the questionnaires. Each individual wave includes questions required to obtain information on emerging problems and any issues that become the focus of public attention or arouse the interest of researchers.
The following aspects are always included in the monitoring: school staffing, teaching staff rejuvenation, quality of teaching, school financing, teacher pay, and development of extracurricular education. Researchers also analyze the changes in parental requirements for school education; in particular, this is addressed by Avraamova, Klyachko, Loginov [2014]. Apart from these constant elements, the fourth wave also deals with two specific issues: (i) how the teacher remuneration system has changed, and the consumption of educational services in a down economy; and (ii) which qualitative characteristics of education have been affected by the teacher remuneration reform.
Beliefs about Most of the parents surveyed agree that a child should attend a good education value school in order to obtain a quality professional education in the future. and accessibility Approximately the same percentage of respondents believe that children need supplemental courses even if they attend a good school.
The financial standing of a family affects the choice of school (in this study, the notion of "good" schools covers specialized schools,
Table 1. Types of schools attended by children from families with different financial standings (%
summed up row-wise)
Financial standing Type of school
Regular Specialized school / gymnasium / lyceum
Above average 69.6 30.4
Average 79.2 20.8
Below average 85.0 15.0
Total 79.4 20.6
Table 2. Types of schools attended by children from families with different parental education statuses (% summed up row-wise)
Parental education Type of school
Regular Specialized school / gymnasium / lyceum
Both parents have a higher education degree 64.5 35.5
Only one of the parents has a higher education degree 79.4 20.6
None of the parents has a higher education degree 89.7 10.3
Total 79.4 20.6
gymnasiums and lyceums)1 (Table 1). The higher the family income, the more likely a child will attend a specialized school, gymnasium or lyceum. These findings are important as they allow us to see how effectively the general education system meets its fundamental challenge of expanding access to high-quality education. Some positive trends can be observed here: the percentage of children from low-income families attending specialized schools has increased by 5.6% as compared to the first wave findings.
There are research findings [Konstantinovsky, Popova 2016] demonstrating that a family's beliefs about education are shaped by its place of residence and socioeconomic status. Judging from the
Financial standing was determined based on respondents' subjective assessments.
Table 3. Types of preschool experience (% summed up column-wise)
Type of preschool experience
No preschool education 3.2
Attending a kindergarten offering no preschool or early childhood development programs 23.7
Attending kindergarten-based preschool courses 12.2
Attending kindergarten-based preschool courses and engaging in other preschool or early childhood development programs 59.9
monitoring data, family status retains its importance as a factor determining beliefs about education value and accessibility, while place of residence is gradually losing ground, as illustrated below.
Other factors affecting the choice of school, important from the perspective of social reproduction, include the education and social self-identification of parents. The higher the education level of parents, the more likely a child will get enrolled in a good school (Table 2).
There is no obvious difference in the choice of school between households identifying their financial standing as "above average" and "average", but those defining themselves as "below average" are definitely less particular about education quality, more so for the underclass. Therefore, school still plays the role of a social reproduction mechanism, but the underclass is getting ever more access to quality education.
As more and more parents understand the importance of choosing the right kind of school, most children tend to engage in preschool courses (Table 3), and many even engage in various types of preschool education. Preschool education is most intensively pursued by children who apply for specialized schools, which means that complex and varied educational trajectories start early, at the preschool age.
The choice of school made by parents of preschool children is rarely revised later: only 9% of children changed their school for different reasons. Particular loyalty to preselected schools is demonstrated by parents of children attending specialized schools.
The educational intentions of school students have been widely studied and covered by researchers [Konstantinovsky et al. 2015:123-184; Avraamova, Loginov 2014; Abankina, Krasilova, Yastrebov 2012]. However, the fourth wave of the monitoring revealed a certain decrease in the trend where the vast majority of children progressed or intended to progress from Grade 9 to Grade 10 with a view to obtaining higher education in the long run (Fig. 1). According to the most recent official figures, the relevant indicator has dropped by almost 7%.
Educational intentions
Figure 1. Intentions of parents concerning the education of their children after Grade 9 (as a percentage of the overall number of respondents whose children study in Grades 1-9)
Table 4. Intentions of parents concerning the education of their children after Grade 9 depending on the type of locality
(% of the number of respondents whose children study in Grades 1-9, summed up row-wise)
Type of locality Intended educational trajectories after Grade 9
Progress to Grade 10 Go to a technical college / vocational school Have not yet decided
Regional capital 48.2 11.6 40.2
City 39.1 12.1 48.8
Rural settlement 42.1 16.7 41.2
Total 42.8 13.5 43.7
There is almost no difference in parental intentions to send their children to high school depending on the region and type of locality, except that parents in the regional capitals are slightly more committed to providing high school education to their children (6% higher than the average value). Meanwhile, the intentions of rural families differ little from those of parents in municipalities (Table 4).
The intention to progress to high school is determined by the family's financial standing (Table 5): the higher the family income, the more likely parents are to send their children on to Grade 10. At the same time, only 50% of families with an above average income made a firm decision about it (the relevant indicator being considerably lower in other income categories), which can be regarded as an indirect indicator of decreased higher education orientation.
Table 5. Intentions of parents concerning the education of their children after Grade 9 depending on the family's financial standing
(% of the number of respondents whose children study in Grades 1-9, summed up row-wise)
Financial standing Intended educational trajectories after Grade 9
Progress to Grade 10 Go to a technical college / vocational school Have not yet decided
Above average 50.7 12.2 37.1
Average 43.4 12.0 44.6
Below average 36.8 18.8 44.4
Total 42.8 13.5 43.7
The research findings show that the value of higher education is unshakable in the minds of school students' parents: 85% of respondents are convinced that higher education is a must, regardless of whether they live in a regional capital, municipality, or rural settlement. However, actual intentions are not really in line with those declarations.
The need for Many parents are committed to sending their children to a university supplemental and thus want them to score better in the final ninth-grade examina-courses for tions. Meanwhile, 53% of parents surveyed are convinced that high schoolchildren scores are hard to achieve without supplemental courses. The higher the family income, the higher the percentage of children attending fee-based supplemental courses.
As a rule, specialized schools provide a wider choice of fee-based educational services (Table 6). This way, they benefit not only from more complex education programs but also from attracting households with higher levels of effective demand.
The parent surveys show that supplemental courses are mostly needed to provide for further educational intentions rather than to achieve better outcomes at school. As children progress from elementary to high school, the incidence of reporting sports and arts as extracurricular activities drops from 20% to 2% and from 42% to 7%, respectively, and successful performance in the final examinations comes to the foreground.
Economic downturns may change parental intentions to continue providing children with the opportunity to attend supplemental courses in the future. Only 7.5% of parent respondents report being unaffected by the negative economic trends, with 85% being affected to some extent. Only 40% of parents are convinced that they won't have to change the intended educational trajectories of their children.
Table 6. Fee-based supplemental courses in different types of schools (% summed up row-wise)
Type of school Fee-based supplemental courses
Wide choice Narrow choice None No answer
Regular school 5.9 15.8 48.6 29.7
Specialized school / gymnasium / lyceum 17.8 26.1 27.0 29.1
Total 8.4 17.9 44.2 29.5
Table 7. Parental beliefs about the importance of specific school education objectives (% summed up row-wise)
School education objectives Degree of importance
Very important Quite important Of little importance Not important at all
Obtaining knowledge required for building a specific career in the future
2015 65.8 26.0 5.5 2.7
2016 72.1 23.5 3.7 0.7
Obtaining diverse knowledge expanding the world vision and giving the right to be called an educated person
2015 63.3 33.4 2.7 0.6
2016 69.6 28.1 1.8 0.5
Inculcating self-discipline, diligence, and rules of conduct in children
2015 68.6 28.7 2.4 0.3
2016 70.6 26.1 2.7 0.6
Inclusion in sports, arts and tourism
2015 52.2 37.6 9.1 1.1
2016 51.4 39.1 8.7 0.8
Learning to communicate with peers and teachers
2015 64.3 33.0 2.3 0.4
2016 68.5 28.6 2.5 0.4
Parental requirements for higher education
Having compared the findings of the last two waves of the monitoring, we can say that parents tend to understand the importance of school objectives better: each of the objectives, except sports inclusion, is believed to be very important by more parents than last year (Table 7).
As with last year's monitoring, most parents insist on the importance of all the specified objectives instead of accentuating only one or two, and only slightly prioritize obtaining knowledge as such over
the other objectives. The idea of school as a universal institution providing not only education but also the socialization of children may be considered a social norm, being shared by the overwhelming majority of parents, notwithstanding their level of education, place of residence or financial standing.
Based on the data we obtained about the inclusion of parents in the learning process and the high consumption of supplemental educational services, we can suggest that parents have mastered, together with schools, the mechanism of achieving the paramount objective of obtaining the necessary knowledge. Meanwhile, they find it a challenge to support the other objectives, so they just bring them entirely under the control of schools.
What principals think about the changes in school education
Modern schools operate in the context of ongoing reforms, which makes it difficult to provide an effective response to parental demands. School principals believe that the core school education content should remain unchanged, yet keep up with technology development. The main changes to the learning process should be associated with the teaching methods and techniques, considering the wide distribution of new information technology. Information technology has become engrained in teaching practices: teachers use online journals and diaries, include IT technology in the learning process, set up we-binars, etc. Distance education is available in nearly every school and is usually provided to students who are unable to attend school with their peers due to health issues, family reasons, etc.
All the principals agree that changes to the school system—wheth-er content- or form-related—should be introduced very carefully, step by step, to prevent any wreckage of established traditions.
School When discussing school effectiveness, all the principals emphasize effectiveness that it cannot be assessed based on one or two criteria or formal indicators only. Apart from the rankings, most school principals assign a lot of importance to the school climate, its traditions, and teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships. The success of graduates is measured by the level of their social adaptation and integration. Effective schools build long-term relationships with students. They are often perceived as comfortable for learning, having been attended by several generations of the same families. The effectiveness of regional schools is largely determined by the percentage of the school's graduates in the teaching staff.
Principals believe that school effectiveness is shaped by external and internal factors. Schools cannot influence the external factors of financing and material resources, and the trends are universally believed to be mostly negative: schools have been underfunded in recent years, and most principals do not expect any change for the
better in the near future. However, schools are able to work on internal factors, which should form the foundation of their development. These include teaching staff, teaching quality, professionalism and open-mindedness of teachers, as well as efforts to engage parents in solving school problems. Some principals tend to associate the positive trends in the development of internal school effectiveness factors with the creation of parent councils and school boards.
School The staffing situation in St. Petersburg schools differs from those in staffing other regions. St. Petersburg schools experience virtually no problems with filling vacancies, and if they ever have any, such problems are always easy to solve. In contrast, other regions continuously suffer from a blatant staff scarcity. There is usually a shortage of subject-specific teachers (mathematics, geography and physics were mentioned most often). At the same time, some positive trends in school staff rejuvenation are emerging: the modal age interval is 40-45 years today, as compared to 45-50 in the first wave. Teachers of 20% of schools surveyed report a significant staff turnover.
School principals are normally happy with their teaching staff and are not eager to make any transformations. All the principals assess their teachers as having high levels of competencies and claim to be willing to work with both senior and younger professionals, although seasoned employees are obviously preferred in terms of reliability and qualifications.
Quality of The fourth wave of the monitoring shows a reinforcement of the trends teaching revealed at the previous stages. These include, first of all, the leveling of the quality of teaching between regular and specialized schools. The second major trend is that teachers, upon their own statements, expand their competencies, paying more attention not only to lesson planning but also to out-of-school activities. Thirdly, teachers have now adopted new forms of teaching based on using IT technology.
However, the shifts in the quality of teaching described above have not increased the overall performance level, which has only grown in SFE-92 ad USE3 subjects. And even this subject-specific improvement can hardly be accredited to school alone, because, as teachers believe, only supplemental courses can guarantee high examination scores.
The lack of direct correspondence between final exam requirements and school education quality assessment criteria is realized by school administrators, becoming a driver of regular chang-
2 State final examinations for ninth-graders
3 Unified State Exam
es to the final test procedures. Not only do these changes produce a psychological stress for students and their parents, but this is also a stress for school administrators, because adjusting to new final test requirements distracts teachers from actually teaching, thus decreasing the teaching quality. Therefore, SFE-9 and USE scores cannot be considered as a formal indicator of education quality.
Teachers in the regional capitals assess the quality of teaching more critically than their rural and municipality colleagues. Most probably, this tendency indicates a higher level of self-exigency of metropolitan schools rather than a higher quality of teaching in rural and municipality institutions.
There is an inverse relationship between the quality of teaching and the degree of teaching staff turnover. Schools that had had little or no employee turnover were more likely to have strong teaching teams, while teachers in schools with a significant staff turnover tended to give more conservative teaching quality assessments. We can assume that it must be the case that the strong teaching teams simply did not require any transformation. Anyway, a significant staff turnover cannot be unequivocally interpreted as a prerequisite for enhancing the quality of teaching.
Increasing Teachers are unanimous in their opinions on the ever-increasing re-teacher quirements to teaching quality imposed by school administrators, requirements whatever the type of school (regular or specialized). While the requirements are universal as such, the increase mostly affects teachers who find meeting those requirements more difficult than others (e. g. rural teachers).
On the whole, teachers are receptive to these changes, believing that high teaching quality and classroom management requirements are "objective law" under the existing conditions (Fig. 2). Besides, teachers understand that school administrators feel pressure fromthe higher-level education authorities.
There is direct relationship between school administrators' requirements and teaching staff reinforcement: the school teams that became stronger, as believed by the teachers themselves, had experienced a greater increase in the teaching quality requirements imposed by school administrators.
More than half of teacher respondents also report an increase in the requirements imposed by parents of school students (Fig. 3).
The percentage of teachers who believe that bureaucratic requirements have also increased is nearly the same as the percentage of those who reported an increase in teaching quality requirements. However, increased quality requirements reinforce the teaching staff, which is out of the question in the case of bureaucratic requirements.
Figure 2. Reasons for school administrators increasing teacher requirements, as perceived by teachers (%)
The increase in the requirements is due to personal characteristics and attitudes of school administrators, 3,0
Requirements of the higher-level authorities have increased, 26,7
Don't know, 2,9
Teaching quality and classroom management requirements have been objectively increasing under the existing conditions, 67,4
Figure 3. How parental requirements for the quality of teaching have changed, according to teachers (%)
Don't know, 6,4
Parental requirements have decreased, 5,9,.
Parental requirements haven't changed 34,2
Parental requirements have increased, 53,5
Teacher Russian teachers upgrade their skills actively: only 3.9% of school professionalism teachers have not engaged in continuing professional education programs in the previous three years.
Continuing professional education courses offered by specialized further education institutions are considered by teachers to be the most effective. Relevant programs provided by pedagogical universities are ranked second. Continuing education realized in the form
of a mentorship at the same school or advanced programs offered by other schools as part of inter-school cooperation are not classified by teachers as effective forms of continuing education (as pointed out by less than 10% respondents).
Sixteen percent of teachers attach so much importance to engaging in continuing professional education that they are ready to pay for it out of their own pockets, if necessary. Another one-third of respondents claim to be ready to consider such an option. However, half of teacher respondents do not agree with paying for advanced training courses.
Teachers can enhance their skills by attending courses offered by either third-party educational institutions (outside continuing education) or their own school (in-house training). Outside education courses can be of different types:
• Courses in specific subjects (for teachers teaching those subjects);
• Courses in methodology of teaching (e. g. in Federal State Education Standard integration);
• Courses designed to improve technology literacy and train teachers to use modern devices.
In-house training is a widespread way of continuing professional education. It is delivered in the form of seminars (both intra-school and inter-school), exchange of experience, and mentorship programs. Principals find it important that they are free to determine the content of such advanced training programs.
School principals believe that continuing education programs are not infallible, as they do not always give teachers the knowledge they really need and are usually off-the-job. In regional schools, the lack of teachers during such training periods leadsto severe problems, given the scarcity of staff. For this reason, most principals are hostile to the looming introduction of annual advanced trainings for teachers. At the same time, the majority of school principals point out the positive effects of such programs as well as the improvements in the quality of teaching over the recent years.
The most demanded topics in advanced training courses are related to psychological techniques of teaching students, especially those with disabilities.
Teacher An increase in teachers' pay has been the focus of public attention remuneration over recent years, making up part of the Russian President's package of inaugural decrees. The incentive was supposed to promote the effectiveness of school education [Abankina 2009].
The fourth wave of the monitoring reveals cuts in public school funding at the level of expenses for repair, equipment, supplies, and
Figure 4. Perceived teacher pay dynamics (%)
Don't knowb, 3,3 Salaries have increased considerably, 2,8
Table 8. The perceived dynamics of teacher salaries across different teacher categories (% summed up column-wise)
Salaries Teacher category
Top category Category 1 Category 2 / No category
Have increased considerably 2.1 2.4 5.2
Have increased insignificantly 15.1 23.9 23.8
Have not changed 33.2 27.7 21.1
Have decreased insignificantly 23.5 21.8 18.3
Have decreased considerably 25.6 23.7 16.6
Don't know 0.5 0.5 15.0
procurement. Principals claim that teacher salary funding has not been cut, but most teachers do not agree with this statement, arguing that they are paid less than before. In addition, teachers assess their financial standing lower than in the previous waves of the monitoring.
The higher teachers' qualifications (category) are, the more likely they are to report a decrease in salaries (Table 8), and vice versa: Category 2 teachers or those with no category at all are more likely to indicate that salaries have increased. It may be that schools pursue egalitarian teacher pay policies to provide incentive bonuses for young teachers with no category. At the same time, it is possible that the size of remuneration fails to meet the ambitions of the most highly qualified teachers. It is not improbable that both assumptions are true, explaining the differences in how teachers perceive the dynamics of
Figure 5. Teacher beliefs about the level of teacher pay differentiation (%)
There is a great differentiation between salaries of individual
There is no teacher pay differentiation, 13,1
teachers, 25,0
There is a little differentiation between teacher salaries, 61,9
their salaries depending on the category. Anyway, the revealed trend reflects certain dysfunctions in the teacher pay system.
The worsening financial standing of teachers is due to, on the one hand, the negative economic trends in Russia resulting in a soaring cost of living and, on the other hand, a reduction in fee-based educational services. Due to a decrease in the effective parental demand, rural schools have virtually stopped offering such services, while most urban schools only manage to maintain fee-based preschool courses at the same level.
In most educational institutions, teachers are paid under an "effective contract" which includes a "base rate" and "supplemental payments". Every six months, each teacher submits a comprehensive portfolio, based on which a special committee decides on the size of supplemental payments for each individual teacher. School principals maintain that teachers with higher categories, greater work experience, more working hours and some kind of additional workload are able to earn much more than young teachers with no work experience, no qualifications and little workload.
Eighty-five percent of teacher respondents reported receiving additional incentive bonuses. The higher thr teacher category, the more likely incentive bonuses are to be granted. Coming back to explaining the difference in subjective teacher pay dynamics assessments, we can conclude that the most highly qualified teachers provided negative assessments not because they had no incentive bonuses at all but because the size of those bonuses did not meet their expectations. This is also proved by the data presented in Figure 5: there is some differentiation in salaries between more qualified and less qual-
Table 9. The relationship between perceived financial standing and social self-identification of teachers (% summed up row-wise)
Perceived social status Perceived financials standing
Above average Average Below average Low
Above average 4.9 63.1 23.5 8.6
Average 4.4 59.2 28.6 7.8
Below average 1.6 43.2 39.4 15.8
Low 0.5 21.3 36.1 42.1
ified teachers, but it is insignificant, as reported by most respondents (62%).
The first waves of the monitoring revealed egalitarian preferences of teachers concerning the distribution of incentive bonuses: most respondents favored uniform incentives for an equal number of working hours. However, the last wave shows a change in these attitudes: now, teachers want a greater differentiation in salaries to provide greater bonuses for teachers with better qualifications.
Social positioning As an effect of the teacher pay increase, teachers were supposed to of teachers become a fully-fledged segment of the Russian middle class. Such social positioning was designed, firstly, to eliminate the problems that teachers faced when interacting with some parents, who were likely to see them as "service people" only, and, secondly, to take the teacher's mission to a higher level [Avraamova, Maleva 2014]. The last wave of the monitoring shows that social self-identification of teachers is rather heterogeneous: about 45% of respondents assess their social status as average or above average and 43% as below average or low. Obviously, there is no reason yet to rank all teachers among the middle class.
Meanwhile, half of the teachers assess their financial standing as average, with 46% identifying it as below average or low. Thus, we can see the asymmetry of status self-assessments, which demonstrates the so-called status inconsistency typical of non-meritocratic societies [Dadush, Shimelse 2012]. On the whole, teachers tend to assess their social status higher than their financial standing. The inconsistency between social position and remuneration causes low teacher job satisfaction to a large extent, which we dwell on below.
As we can see from Table 9, 23.5% of teachers assessing their social status as above average believe their financial standing is below average. However, status inconsistency does not apply to all of the teaching staff: about 40% of the teachers assessed both their social status and financial standing as average, and 10% assessed
Figure 6. Teacher satisfaction with different job components (%)
Completely satisfied Rather satisfied Rather unsatisfied Completely unsatisfied
Teacher-student relationships Teacher-administrator relationships Teacher-parent relationships Teacher-teacher relationships
Salary 9,6 Financial incentives 11,1
Teaching load Non-teaching load
57,8
3,3 34,4 |,,2 4,7
52,2 11,1 1,0 26,6 11,1
both categories of status as low. The most stressful situation arises when financial standing is assessed lower than the perceived social status.
Bringing the level of teacher salaries to the average regional indicators has not yet affected the prestige of the teaching profession. Most principals and teachers consider it to be low, referring to the following: (i) the public treating education as a service and teachers as service people; (ii) the mass media focusing on negative incidents from school life and ignoring positive news; and (iii) low teacher salaries.
Job Figure 6 shows that salaries are the most frustrating job component for satisfaction teachers, both in terms of the base rate and incentive bonuses. Similar data was obtained in the previous wave of the monitoring, but the percentages of teachers completely unsatisfied with their salaries and incentives have increased by 8% and 10% in 2016, respectively. As a result, 65% of teachers are now rather or completely dissatisfied with their salaries, and 63% with the bonuses provided.
Workload, another component of the teaching profession, frustrates about 20% of teachers in the case of teaching hours and 27% in the case of non-teaching tasks.
The teacher job satisfaction index that we calculated4 allows us to create a typology of teachers based on their job satisfaction (Fig. 7). Teachers whose job satisfaction can be defined as "above average"
4 The index is calculated as a sum of points: any parameter that satisfies a teacher completely earns 3 points, and any "rather satisfying" one earns 1 point.
Figure 7. Teacher job satisfaction index (%)
Table 10. Teachers' intentions to leave the school education industry depending on their job satisfaction levels (% summed up row-wise)
Job satisfaction (index value) Intentions
Yes Maybe No
Low 11.5 29.0 59.5
Below average 7.1 25.8 67.1
Average 5.6 21.9 72.5
Above average 5.4 16.3 78.3
High 1.9 11.1 87.0
Overall 6.6 21.7 71.7
account for less than one-third of the total sample, while satisfaction "below average" is typical of 40%.
Dissatisfaction with specific job components, mostly salary, can encourage teachers to change their occupation. About 30% of the respondents leave this possibility open—they are mostly teachers whose overall job satisfaction is evaluated as low (Table 10).
Territorial The fourth wave of the monitoring demonstrates an alleviation of the differences territorial gaps in school education, which manifests itself in similar evaluations provided by principals and teachers of rural and urban schools. However, some substantial regional differences persist. In particular, these concern school staffing: whereas St. Petersburg
schools experience no problems with filling their vacancies, other regions surveyed suffer from staff scarcity.
A unique situation has developed in Altai Krai, where the quality of teaching is assessed higher than in other regions. However, the region demonstrates the worst teacher pay conditions: only 11% of the respondents report an increase in salaries (the sample average being 22%), and 46% actually report a considerable decrease (the sample average being 23%). In addition, 24% of the teachers in Altai Krai claim to receive no incentive bonuses (the sample average being 14%). Perhaps, this could be explained by the fact that Altai Krai has been affected the most by the economic downturn: 55% of the respondents said that the crisis was affecting them really badly (10% more than in Stavropol Krai and 20% more than in Chelyabinsk Oblast).
While teachers in Altai Krai report a sharp decrease in their salaries, most respondents in Chelyabinsk Oblast (41.5%) believe that the salaries have not changed (and so do 29.2% in the total sample). The situation in Stavropol Krai is closer to that in Chelyabinsk, except for being less stable: 31% of the respondents report no changes.
To sum up the results of the fourth wave of the school effectiveness monitoring, we can state that bringing teacher salaries to the level of average regional salary values has had positive effects on a range of indicators determining the effectiveness of school education. The chain of transformations launched by the remuneration reform has rejuvenated the staff composition of Russian schools, enhanced the quality of the teaching staff, contributed to better interaction between teachers and other school education actors, and outlined the framework of integrating Russian teachers into the middle class. The implementation of the Presidential Decree has opened the path in this direction, which will hopefully not be cut off due to the negative economic trends.
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