School Staffing: Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract

Teachers play a key role in achieving the national policy goals in secondary education, in particular in improving students’ outcomes. The ongoing changes of the recent years inevitably affect the functions and working conditions of school teachers. Surveys of teachers’ perceptions of self and of the current situation and development prospects in secondary education should become a required element in the design of national education policies.
This study was based on the results of the Monitoring of Secondary Education conducted by the Center for Lifelong Learning Economics (Institute of Applied Economic Research, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) in Novgorod Oblast, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Tula Oblast in 2020. The survey was administered in early March, prior to the emergency transition to remote online education due to the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic. For this reason, the article reflects little to no transformations in teachers’ perceptions of their jobs and labor conditions caused by the rapid transition to a different format of teaching. At the same time, the monitoring results can serve as a baseline for analyzing the post-COVID developments in secondary education.
Despite the government’s measures to refresh the teaching staff in schools, nothing has changed significantly in this regard so far. Teachers often resist massive refreshment initiatives, arguing that such changes would degrade the overall level of teaching competencies within the institution. Young teachers, in their turn, are increasingly more likely to be mismatched to their jobs, looking for additional sources of income within or outside the system, and ready to withdraw anytime. Attraction of youth to school teaching careers should thus be accompanied by managerial solutions for improving school effectiveness in the context of staff refreshment.