University Teachers’ wages, 1961 and 2010 and education policy

January 24, 2012, 12:00 pm , The Island.


by Usvatte-aratchi

There is much discussion about the behaviour of teachers, both at school and at university. Many older people recall, no doubt with some selective memory lapses, that in the decade of the 1950s, the work of their teachers both at school and at university was by and large without blemish and in fact exemplary. They were dedicated to their students and their teaching. They worked after hours without payment, supplementary to their wages. There was no room for private tuition as teachers did a fine job of teaching in school. Teachers whether at school or at university managed to meet their expenses with what they earned as wages and any supplementary income they had from sources other than private tuition which they did not engage in. It was never heard that teachers sought or were offered illegal and illicit payments for favours to students. There were cases where managers of Assisted Schools had cheated teachers of their due wages but neither students nor their parents were victims. There were stories of officials in the Education Department and sometimes Ministers of Education seeking illegal payments from teachers and again students were not touched by these. Teachers both at school and at university lived reasonably comfortable lives, sent their children to good schools, mostly public, and were prominent and respected citizens in their neighourhood.

Those who were in university in the humanities faculties, mostly in Peradeniya, speak of a fine faculty of teachers. At least some of them were outstanding scholars and fine teachers.

In 2010, there is widespread grave dissatisfaction with teachers in both schools and universities. Teachers in schools do not teach properly in the class room. Students go out for private tuition. The same teachers as those that teach in schools conduct private tuition classes. A few well known tuition masters conduct classes in many parts of the country. Both heads of schools and teachers are accused of financial impropriety, sometimes in large amounts. A President of the Republic once publicly alleged that the Education Ministry was the second most corrupt government agency in the nation. There is a huge demand from students for tuition outside the school class room. Students who sit for the A’Level Examination for the second time do not learn in school but almost entirely in tuition classes. Whether unsatisfactory teacher behaviour in schools feeds this demand for private tuition is difficult to be certain about. There is far more severe competition for places in schools and universities now than there was in 1960 (about). Parents are far more sophisticated and far better educated in 2010 than in 1960. That perhaps drives them to get children to tuition in the hope that tuition might help the student to gain that fraction of a mark pushing him into the medical faculty from the science. Japan has a strong system of public schools. Yet the demand for juku or cram shops is very strong. One in five first year students in primary school and nearly all university-bound high-school children attend juku [The Economist, December 31, 2011]. The Republic of Korea has much the same features. It is difficult to ascertain to what degree bad teaching in schools contributes to the demand for private tuition but that it does contribute is not in doubt.

We must at the same time recall that competition to enter some government schools is intense. It is not simply schools like Visakha Vidyalaya and D.S.Senanayake Vidyalaya which attract students but also Debarawewa Maha Vidyalaya and Central College Kuliyapitiya. Parents want to admit children to those schools because there are good teachers in them. I have heard about excellent teachers and scholars in our universities. There are good teachers and bad teachers both in schools and in universities now as there were of old. However, the noise about poor teaching drowns the piccolo high notes of praise that we hear in this cacophony.

Why bad teachers?

Many have spoken and written about ‘moral decay’ in society and among teachers to account for these changes in behaviour. I have bothered myself for long that there must be some more substantial material incentives for this alleged drastic change in behaviour on the part of teachers. A good place to begin with is the wages of teachers, both at school and at university. I imagine that if teachers are drastically less well paid now compared to of old, there would be a dramatic change for the worse in teacher’s behaviour. To establish that teachers are now less well paid than earlier, it is necessary to see changes in real wages paid to them in say around 1960 and 2010. I do not have the resources to mount that enterprise. So I sought a substitute way, rough though it be. Please note that I am interested in WAGES paid to teachers and not their total income.

The fall in real wages

of teachers

My base year for these comparisons is 1961 and the end year 2010; reasons there for will appear later. I put the figures in the following table.

[Income figures are from the Central Bank. Figures about teachers’ wages are my responsibility. I collected those for 1961 from memory and sought confirmation from knowledgeable friends. For 2010, the figures are from teachers currently in employ.]

Let me explain the numbers. Annual income per person is obtained by dividing the annual income of the nation [GDP] into the mid-year population of that year. The figures are in prices for that year. The annual wages of school teachers are what a graduate teacher was paid in his first year of appointment to that post, in fact what I was paid in 1959 when I was a school teacher for 3 months. Similarly, the wages of a university teacher are what were paid in her first year of work as a university teacher. I used a graduate teacher’s wages as indicative of teachers’ wages. One could have worked with some average of school teachers’ wages and similarly for university teachers. It raises logical and practical problems, as we will need wages over a lifetime and figures of average income of persons over some forty years of work of a teacher. With my resources these ends are not attainable. For the rough sort of argument I make, I have the necessary data, in the table above.

In columns IV and V, I show the ratio of wages to annual income per person in the country. It tells you how the wages paid to a teacher compared with the income of the average person in the country. I derived a ratio so that I can compare the figures for 1961with those for 2010. Otherwise it would have been necessary for me to express 2010 wages in 1961 prices. When I derive ratios I compare ‘pure’ numbers untrammelled by price considerations.

Let us compare now. In 1961 a school teacher was paid four and a half times the average income of a person in the country. In 2010, he was paid just a little below the average income of a person in the country. In 1961, university teachers earned ten times the average income of a person in the country, in 2010 no more than twice. There has been a sharp drop in the ratio of wages paid to teachers whether at school or at university relative to the average income of a person in the country. Relative wages of school and university teachers have fallen roughly five times over the 50 years. Consequently relative wages between school teachers and university teachers have remained roughly the same. Do you want more reasons to explain changes in the behaviour patterns of school and university teachers?

Harsha Aturupana [Treasures of the education system in Sri Lanka, Figure 3.9] pointed out that real wages of school teachers in relation to the real wages of other government servants had fallen severely between 1995 and 2002. Between those two years no other category of government employees [not even unskilled labour] had lost relative real wages as teachers did.

In most rich countries, a fresh teacher’s wages are very close to the average income of a citizen and that of a young university teacher just a tad above the average. We must not be misled by the fancy wages paid to celebrity professors in private universities. It is important to recall to that the average income of a person in rich countries is itself high and that a person can lead a reasonably comfortable life does. In our country it does not.

Why did wages [prices] fall?

Let us digress for a moment to consider why the fall in these relative differences. The major reason is the rise in the supply of persons seeking employment as teachers. In 1961, relative to demand there was a shortage of persons who could be employed as school or university teachers. The massive spread of education during the last fifty years increased the supply of persons who could qualify to apply for employment as teachers. Any increase of supply on that scale without a parallel growth in demand must result in a drastic fall in prices. That would happen to the price of mangoes or plumbers. Consequently, teachers’ wages fell. The lack of alternative employment is as important as the rise in supply. Alternative employment to teaching in school would be work in the garment industry or emigrating to Arab lands for almost slavery. Alternatives to teaching in university would be teaching in schools or clerking.

There was a policy element as well. In 1961 there were about 2.2million students enrolled in school. In 2010, this number was almost double that in 1961. There were about 30 students to a teacher in 1960 and about 18 to a teacher in 2010. The number of teachers in school in 1960 was roughly 70,000 and in 2010, 250,000. In 1960, the ratio of expenditure on education to GDP was 4.4 percent; the comparable ratio in 2010 was about 2 percent. [See Chart 3.5 in Annual Report 2010 of the Central Bank.] This society could not have achieved those high percentages of enrolment at school and expanded university education without reducing unit costs substantially. The way to cut unit costs was to keep wages of teachers down, as more than 90 percent of current expenditure on education comprises teachers’ wages. Government as the virtual monopoly employer of teachers both at school and at university and because there was a scarcity of comparably remunerative other employment in the economy, was in a position to cut relative wages of teachers with no resistance from teachers. A necessary consequence was the fall in standards of education. The minister of Higher Education who is on high gear to raise the quality of university education had better bear in mind that he cannot buy good things cheap. The World Bank’s project to raise quality in university education [IRQUE] might ponder the wisdom of Lee Kuan Yu’s bon mot that peanuts attract monkeys. Government which talks about a knowledge hub in South Asia in this country is not serious about it. Activism on the part of university teachers in 2010 is something new and long overdue. School teachers curiously do not seem to have similar plans.

The second piece of evidence on the policy emphasis of government can be read from the following table.

In the first five years 1948 to 1953, the share of government expenditure that was spent on defence was quite small, about 0.5 percent, and government was free to spend on expanding opportunities education. By 1982, the share had risen to 7.5 percent. The rapid escalation came after 1994, 28 percent in 1996 and continued to be high. Even in 2010 one year after the destruction of LTTE, that share continues to be high. In 2011, current expenditure of government allocated for defence and public order and safety was estimated to be about 20 percent and on education 10 percent. Over a long period of time the share of government current expenditure spent on education had at best stagnated while expenditure on defence had expanded. In the meanwhile personnel in both defence services and education had grown massively. Those in education suffered a fall in relative wages.

For some 15 years, we have spent twice the proportion of government current expenditure on defence and public order compared with education.

Such departures from normal may take place in any society, especially due to exigencies of war, which was our experience during the last 20 years or so. We all recognise the enormous losses this society suffered during that war in material wealth and many thousands of lives. But few are aware of the benefits foregone [therefore losses] in neglected education, as we have shown here. To continue that war pattern of expenditure now is to try to run a society on the strength of the armed forces rather than govern by discussion and consent. We must soon get back to normal. The current balance of forces in government does not permit that. The large number of ministers [nine?] dealing with education does not contain anyone of political heavy weight and The Family unfortunately does not have anyone who would pull for education against defence and public order and safety. But it would be foolish to give into expediency once again.

A comment on the fall in real income of teachers in 2010.

In 1961 it was not uncommon for a senior teacher to come to work in a jacket. Now hardly anybody does, except where they are paid to do so by the past pupils’ association. Again a few teachers possessed small motor cars: Morris Minor, Fiat 1100 and Ford Anglia. Now nobody does. They simply cannot imagine buying and running a motor car. In 1961, a new Volkswagon car cost Rs.10,000. That was about 18 months’ wages of a young university teacher. Most young university teachers bought a car in the first year of employment. I obtained the price of the cheapest Toyota car in the market today. It is a Toyota Adanza and costs Rs.3.4 million, roughly seven years wages of a young university teacher! In addition in 1961, most teachers’ children went to public schools at little cost to parents. In 2010, public schools have so fallen in quality that many university teachers send their children to private schools, if they cannot get them into one of the exceptionally good public schools. These are two major items of expenditure which reduce the real income of school and university teachers even below the ratios indicated directly.

Change in behaviour patterns of teachers

Given that scenario how would you expect teachers to act? Try every possible way to augment their incomes. Conduct tuition classes and do all that that would raise the demand for those services. Seek any means of raising incomes without breaking the law or getting trapped by law enforcement agencies. What would university teachers do? Conduct classes for external degree students. Weekends are normally spent by university teachers in these classes, often 100s of miles away from their homes. Write school text books or guides to teaching. Teach in graduate classes in their university or elsewhere, as they are paid separately for teaching graduate courses. Undertake consultancy services for outsiders, preferably foreigners, who pay well for that work. They may also be able to present these to university administrators as research and get ahead in the queue for promotions. They would also persistently demand higher wages. Without being crassly materialistic, isn’t there in the data presented here adequate explanation for the changed behaviour patterns of teachers whether in school or university?