PRIMARY TEACHERS in Ireland are among the best paid in the world, according to a draft report considered by the Cabinet yesterday.
The Forfás 2010 report on the cost of doing business in Ireland says the starting salary for the Republic’s 25,000 primary teachers is 15 per cent above the OECD average, while their top salary scale is 33 per cent above the OECD average.
The report says pay for primary teachers with 15 years experience is the highest of any OECD country, aside from Luxembourg.
The report benchmarked teacher salaries with those across 24 other OECD states including the US, Sweden, Britain, Germany and Norway.
The report also found Ireland had the highest average salary for medical specialists ($225,000 a year) when compared with other OECD states.
Commenting on the finding, it says that while public sector wages do not have a direct impact on business costs, they have a significant indirect impact because they represent a “significant component of the cost of public and administered services”.
In the past decade, various OECD reports have placed teachers in Ireland near the top of the pay league. Since the 1960s, all teachers – at both primary and second level – have been paid from the same common scale.
The starting salary for a primary teacher who has just graduated from teacher training is €32,000 a year with an additional allowance of €4,918 for those holding honours degrees. At the top of their incremental scale, teachers earn €59,350 a year plus degree and other allowances.
The Forfás report takes account of the public service cuts but it does not allow for the impact of the pension levy, which reduced salaries by an average 7.5 per cent.
While teachers gained an additional 13 per cent from the public service benchmarking process in 2002, teacher unions claim this has been “wiped out” by pay cuts and the pension levy.
Last night, the INTO said Irish salary scales had to be seen “in the context of food and drink being 29 per cent more than in other EU countries, bread and cereal which is 32 per cent higher and meat, which is 21 per cent higher”.
A spokesman for the union said Irish primary teachers, on average, taught 200 hours more than the OECD yearly average – and taught in the second-largest classes in the EU. The spokesman said Irish primary teachers were very productive turning below-average government investment into top-class educational outcomes for children.
Irish literacy rates for this generation of students were among the highest in the world, he said.
In Britain yesterday, there was controversy after it emerged that a head teacher in southeast London earned £231,400 a year – more than the prime minister.
€32,000
The starting salary for a primary teacher. It is 15 per cent above the OECD average, while their top salary scale is 33 per cent above the OECD average, according to the Forfás 2010 report on the Cost of Doing Business in Ireland.