3.6.2 Teacher salary scales

Many countries use a single salary scale, featuring classes or bands based on academic qualification and incremental salary progression within these, based on seniority or years of service. They are increasingly using skill or performance levels, based on standards defined in competency frameworks, as a basis for salary increases (see Section 3.7). Typically, regular incremental increases within such salary scales are based on years of experience, whereas larger increases are associated with movement up the skill levels defined by the career structure – for example, from newly qualified teacher to professional licence holder, then accomplished teacher, then expert teacher (or whatever terms are used in a particular career structure, as described in Section 3.4).Footnote 21

In many countries, it is not possible to make changes to the civil service teacher salary scale without extending these to all civil servants.

3.6.3 Other financial incentives