Personal Interest in Education and Teacher Salary Policies

Abstract

Vladimir Averkin, D.Sc. in Pedadogy, Professor, Rector of Novgorod Institute of Educational Development, Veliky Novgorod, Russian Federation. Email: niro.niro@mail.ru
Address: 27 Novoluchanskaya St., Veliky Novgorod, 173001, Russian Federation.

Oleg Zaychenko, Ped.D., Associate Professor, Head of the Chair of General Education Theory and Methodology, Novgorod Institute of Educational Development, Veliky Novgorod, Russian Federation. Email: oleg170770@mail.ru
Address: 27 Novoluchanskaya St., Veliky Novgorod, 173001, Russian Federation.

The role of personal interest as a factor of teacher motivation is explained. The paper identifies approaches to developing teacher salary increase strategies to replace the existing strategy of correlating teacher salary with the average interindustry wage in a relevant federal subject of the Russian Federation. The approaches proposed in the study suggest considering salary expectations of Russian teachers and university graduates, as well as European teacher salary standards, and the cost of teacher labor in paid educational services.

The authors believe that creating efficient motivation mechanisms could integrate the human factor more deeply in education and thus allow for higher achievements in educating Russian school students. If teachers are given an opportunity to satisfy their personal interest, the public interests will be satisfied, too. However, an increase in teacher salary alone does not guarantee any improvement in quality of school education. Rewards and incentives should also be applied to boost teacher morale.

School administrators are supposed to be interested in creating an efficient teacher pay system. To provide this, salaries of school administrators should be determined by achievements of the educational system, i.e. by teaching quality and teacher motivation to work for great results in order to satisfy their personal interest.