The State Duma decided to increase teachers’ salaries: to whom and by how much they will increase

To do this, we need to rewrite the laws

A group of State Duma deputies led by Yaroslav Nilov developed another draft law on raising the level of teachers’ remuneration. They say that teachers’ earnings are an investment in future generations. Therefore, it is necessary to equalize their size throughout the country and make no less than two and a half minimum wages. It is reported that the draft amendments to the federal law “On Education” have been sent to the government for consideration.

Teacher’s money is like fools and roads, or the location of Schrödinger’s cat is a symbol of hopelessness and quantum uncertainty. The fact that teachers in the Russian Federation should be given decent wages has been continuously talked about for decades.

On the one hand, there are May decrees of the model already in 2012, declaring the level of remuneration for state employees not lower than the average salary in the region. On the other hand, there are real teachers’ salaries, which “average for the hospital” are about 45 thousand rubles – such data are cited by Nilov in an explanatory note. But if in Yakutia or in Moscow it is 60-80 and even 100 thousand, then in the North Caucasus – 25. And if you read teachers’ public pages, it is easy to find out that in the vast majority and in central Russia teachers receive 20 thousand or less, less often 30 thousand rubles. Massively work for 1.5-2 rates, are engaged in tutoring. They sew, wash the entrances, keep a garden – otherwise you won’t survive. “My salary is the same as that of our watchman, 8,000 rubles,” says an MS teacher (junior specialist) from the Oryol region. Even the Ministry of Education admitted a year ago that 76% of teachers across the country have a base salary below the minimum wage…

“The teacher is a key figure in shaping the future of society,” postulate the authors of the bill. And they add that “in many countries” the teaching profession is prestigious and highly paid.

The ill-fated “two minimum wages” have already been brought up for discussion in the State Duma more than once. The last one is in 2021. Then even two bills were submitted to the State Duma: on the approval of the basic salary of teachers (with a minimum workload of 18 hours, payment is not less than 70% of the average salary in the region). And in addition, the notorious “two minimum wages” as a fixed payment to the teacher. Both were not accepted. The profile committees rejected it because “the idea is unrealizable” due to the lack of a unified system for calculating teachers’ pay. Indeed, from region to region or municipality, schools have different tariffs, incentive payments, bonuses, and so on. And the government cut down “two minimum wages” due to the fact that “additional budget allocations will be required to implement the bill.”

And now they are offering “2.5 minimum wages”, that is, 40 thousand rubles, with “kopecks” (the size of the minimum wage is now 16,242 rubles). Beautiful and correct words about “restoring the prestige and demand for the teaching profession” – and again the lack of a mechanism for implementing the law and a binding regulatory framework.

In 2022, on the eve of the Year of the Teacher and Mentor, the chairman of the committee on science, education and culture of the Federation Council Lilia Gumerova said that in the regions the base rate does not fall below the subsistence level because “teachers work at 1.5–2 rates.” And the system of northern, for example, coefficients provokes a difference in salaries from region to region several times. In six subjects of the Russian Federation, an experiment is being launched to introduce a unified system of remuneration for teachers in schools. And – silent, nothing more is heard about the “pilot”.

“I felt for myself how teachers’ salaries are being “increased,” says Nina Viktorova, a mathematics teacher at a Moscow school. – When once again in 2017 there was some order to raise teachers, I really received 15 or 20 thousand more … once. And then they took it and exactly for this difference we were removed stimulating. And then the quarterly bonus was not given. Somehow they cunningly counted everything so that at the end of the year I received the same amount as before. All other “increases”, if any, I did not notice.

It has somehow traditionally developed that teachers are promised a lot of things, but then the “exhaust” is not great. Unless they removed the concept of “educational service” from the basic law. But as far as the budget is concerned, there are no changes. Introduced surcharges for classroom management – in practice they are not required. Principals want to pay them, or not … Or the announced “5 thousand for “Talk about the Important” on the ground easily turn into 1.5 thousand, 500 rubles or nothing: “there is no payment for teaching a class hour in the tariff scale.”

Therefore, the next “increase” of the teacher is not even discussed. The OGE-USE is coming to an end, “holidays” are on the agenda: school camps with accompaniment, reports, new unified programs and advanced training courses. And for this, there are no additional payments “in excess”, the additional load is included in the appendage to the “naked” rate. A teacher in Russia with one minimum wage will not die, Ushinsky to help him.