This is the fourth part in a series I’ve been writing this week about the report, How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, which is an analysis of the world’s school systems to find out why some schools succeed and others do not.
Today, my focus is on the section of the report that explains how the world’s top-performing school systems get the right people to become teachers. Getting the right people to become teachers is the first critical step toward improving student outcomes and becoming a top performer.
Here’s how top performers get the right people to become teachers:
The top-performing school systems consistently attract more able people into the teaching profession, leading to better student outcomes. They do this by making entry to teacher training highly selective, developing effective processes for selecting the right applicants to become teachers, and paying good (but not great) starting compensation. Getting these essentials right drives up the status of the profession, enabling it to attract even better candidates.
How selective should top performers be?:
The top-performing school systems we studied recruit their teachers from the top third of each cohort graduate from their school system: the top 5 percent in South Korea, the top 10 percent in Finland, and the top 30 percent in Singapore and Hong Kong.
In sum:
Almost universally, the top school systems do two things: they have developed effective mechanisms for selecting teachers for teacher training, and they pay good starting compensation. These two things have a clear and demonstrable impact on the quality of people who become teachers. These same features are frequently absent in lower-performing systems.