Teachers' and school heads' salaries and allowances in Europe

 European Commission - Eurydice (EC)

 10/2022

 

This report covers the salaries of teachers and school heads in pre-primary, primary and general secondary public schools in 2020/2021 in 39 European education systems. The comparative overview examines the statutory salaries for beginning teachers and the prospects for salary increases throughout their career. It also analyses the main changes to teachers’ statutory salaries in the past years, the average actual salaries including allowances and other additional payments, and the statutory salaries of school heads. There is an annexe to this report on Eurydice-website, which includes the country-specific information in Excel-format. Data have been collected jointly by the Eurydice and the OECD/NESLI networks.

Introduction 

Section 1. Teachers’ salaries

• Salaries for beginning teachers vary greatly across Europe
• Salary differences across education levels are usually related to differences in minimum qualification requirements
• Potential for salaries to increase over the career span varies considerably
• Salaries continue to rise in most European countries
• In ten countries, starting salaries of teachers (inflation-adjusted) remained on 2014/2015 levels or lower over the last six years
• Average actual salaries are below the GDP per capita for all educational levels in seven countries
• In most education systems, top-level authorities or collective agreements determine a wide range of different allowances.

Section 2. School heads’ salaries

• School heads require at least five years’ professional experience at their appointment in half of European education systems
• School heads are often paid on a different salary scale from teachers
• School heads’ earnings are usually related to the size of the school
• The minimum statutory salary for school heads is lower or equivalent to the salary for teachers with 15 years’ experience in a quarter of education systems
• In most education systems, there are significant differences in the minimum and maximum salaries that school heads may receive

Glossary

References

Annexes

Acknowledgements

https://eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu/publications/teachers-and-school-heads-salaries-and-allowances-europe-20202021