Research

This report analyses key aspects of the professional life of lower secondary teachers (ISCED 2) across Europe. It is based on qualitative Eurydice data from national policies and legislation, and quantitative data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) on practices and perceptions of teachers and school heads. Connecting these two data sources, the analysis aims to illustrate how national policies and regulations may contribute to making the teaching profession more attractive. It examines ways teachers receive their initial education, and policies that may influence the take up of continuing professional development. Among other issues, the report investigates working conditions, career prospects and teachers’ well-being at work. It also explores to what extent teacher evaluation is used to provide formative feedback, and ways to encourage teachers to travel abroad for learning and working. The challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the shift to distance teaching and learning, are briefly addressed. The report covers all 27 EU Member States, as well as the United Kingdom, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Turkey. The reference years are 2018-2020.

Reference:

European Commission, European Education and Culture Executive Agency, Motiejūnaitė-Schulmeister, A., De Coster, I., Davydovskaia, O. (2021). Teachers in Europe: careers, development and well-being, (P.Birch,edito) Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2797/997402

The OECD teachers’ occupational well-being framework contributes to understanding and measuring the occupational well-being of teachers between and within systems. It provides a pathway to explore the association between the quality of working environments and teachers’ levels of occupational well-being. It also covers the association of teachers’ occupational well-being with the quality of learning environments (measured by classroom quality processes and association with students’ well-being) and teachers’ stress levels and motivation to continue teaching.

Reference:

OECD (2020), “The teachers’ well-being conceptual framework: Contributions from TALIS 2018”, Teaching in Focus, No. 30, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/86d1635c-en.

As education systems face a post-COVID-19 world, we must not lose sight of the importance of teachers’ well-being. Already, prior to the pandemic, teachers were struggling to cope with workload and stress, as shown by the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), one of the first international efforts to capture the well-being of the teaching workforce. Nevertheless, schools and teachers have the tools to improve well-being and reduce stress at the work place. The goal of this brief is to provide some glimpses into concrete actions that schools and education systems could take to improve teachers’ well-being and job satisfaction.

Reference:

OECD (2021), “Building teachers’ well-being from primary to upper secondary education”, Teaching in Focus, No. 42, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/722fe5cb-en.

Modern education systems evolve in a context of growing teacher shortages, frequent turnover and a low attractiveness of the profession. In such a context where these challenges interrelate, there is an urgent need to better understand the well-being of teachers and its implications on the teaching and learning nexus. This is the ambition of the OECD Teacher Well-being and Quality Teaching Project.

This working paper is an integral part in the development of this project as it proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework to analyse teachers’ occupational well-being and its linkages with quality teaching.

The core concept of this framework defines teachers’ well-being around four key components: physical and mental well-being, cognitive well-being, subjective well-being and social well-being. The framework then explores how working conditions, at both system and school levels, can impact and shape teachers’ well-being, both positively and negatively aspects. It also presents two types of expected outcomes regarding teachers’ well-being: inward outcomes for teachers in terms of levels of stress and intentions to leave the profession; and outward outcomes on quality teaching in terms of classroom processes and student’ well-being. In an annex, the paper proposes an analytical plan on how to analyse teachers’ well-being indicators and cross the results with other OECD instruments. It also presents the field trial items of the new module on teachers’ well-being which are included in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2021 teacher questionnaire.

Reference:

Viac, C. and P. Fraser (2020), “Teachers’ well-being: A framework for data collection and analysis”, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 213, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/c36fc9d3-en

Teachers’ remuneration and career prospects are an intrinsic part of policies aiming to attract the best candidates and ensure they remain in the profession. Are teachers in Europe well paid? What prospects for salary increases do they have as they progress in their career? Have teachers gained or lost purchasing power in recent years?

School heads have a crucial role to play in improving the quality of teaching and learning within schools and shaping a whole-school approach that helps tackle early school leaving. What are the minimum salaries for school heads? Does the size of their school impact their pay?

This report shows the composition and differences in teachers’ and school heads’ earnings among countries in the Eurydice Network. It provides information on statutory and actual salaries and covers pre-primary to general secondary education. Data used for the comparative report are available in open data format.

Country sheets present by country the information included in this report, and more (governance, qualification requirements, allowances, and actual salaries for school heads). They are available in open data format.

A brand new interactive web tool will also be released later this year. It will enable the visualisation of data collected on teachers’ and school heads’ salaries in an interactive display. This tool will allow cross-searches by topic or by country and data export in different formats.

Data have been collected jointly by the Eurydice and the OECD/NESLI networks.

Reference:

European Commission, European Education and Culture Executive Agency, (2023). Teachers’ and school heads’ salaries and allowances in Europe 2021/2022, Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2797/764821

This briefing is intended for policymakers, national governments, mental health and education coalitions and advocates. It outlines key policy recommendations to strengthen education systems to protect and promote the mental health and psychosocial well-being of children and adolescents, including support for their teachers and caregivers.

The report was prepared in the scope of the ERASMUS + Action ProW (“Promoting Teachers’ Well-being through Positive Behaviour Support in Early Childhood Education”; 2021- 2024). This report is part of Implementation of the Field Trials Work Package 3 and presents the procedures that took place to implement the ProW intervention. This report provides a summary of actions conducted in the four countries (Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Romania) to prepare and begin the ProW implementation.

This report presents the findings of the needs-assessment study conducted in the four countries (Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, and Romania) to identify the specific needs of key educational stakeholders related to early childhood professionals. Part A includes a collection of quantitative and qualitative data from each country to identify educational stakeholders’ needs around early childhood teachers’ careers, well-being, and professional development supports, as well as on schoolwide discipline prevention and student socio-emotional supports. Part B includes an action plan for early childhood teachers’ training implementation.

This literature review provides an up-to-date critical overview of early childhood teacher’s careers, well-being, and professional development supports. It provides a summary of current views on early childhood education and care (ECEC) informed by Positive Psychology interventions focusing on teacher well-being (PERMA) and School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) frameworks, defines key concepts, and builds on empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals.

A general consensus exists among Member States that gaining academic knowledge on its own is not enough for young people to play a role as active citizens and face the socioeconomic realities in their lives, in order to avoid inequity, poverty, discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion. In the 21st century, education needs to go beyond narrow sectoral goals such as academic achievement. In addition, it should contribute actively to the health and well-being of children and young people, whose mental health needs are becoming more evident and demanding. The recent European Commission communication on the achievement of the European Education Area by 2025 (European Commission, 2020) has set in motion a collaborative process to determine how schools can address the learning and socio-emotional needs of their students – in particular, those children who encounter difficulties – and how they can provide students with a balanced, high-quality, education that sets them on a trajectory towards an active, productive and healthy life. This report is in response to such initiatives and to the recognised need for schools across Europe to prioritise and actively promote the mental health and well-being of school children within safe and inclusive contexts. More specifically, it seeks to review the international literature on the promotion of mental health and well-being and the prevention of bullying in schools. In addition, it seeks to develop a theoretical framework to guide the way in which the whole-school system, in collaboration with the community, can be mobilised at various levels to promote mental health and well-being. The report makes recommendations for the effective implementation of a systemic, whole-school approach to the promotion of mental health and well-being and the prevention of bullying in schools across the EU. This report adopts a systemic, whole-school perspective that emphasises the importance of interacting subsystems within and beyond particular individuals and settings.

Reference:

European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Simões, C., Caravita, S., Cefai, C. (2021). A systemic, whole-school approach to mental health and well-being in schools in the EU : analytical report, Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/50546