This is the seventh 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 mentions the importance of teacher status. To attract high-calibre applicants, top-performing school systems have made teaching a high-status profession. In the U.S., it’s a low-status profession. However, U.S. policy makers can raise the status by emulating some of the policies of top-performing school systems.
Raising the status of teaching attracts more talented people. Attracting more talented people further raises the status of teaching. It’s a reciprocal process:
In all the systems we studied, the ability of a school system to attract the right people into teaching is closely linked to the status of the profession. In Singapore and South Korea, opinion polls show that the general public believe that teachers make a greater contribution to society than any other profession. New teachers in all of the systems studied consistently reported that the status of the profession is one of the most important factors in their decision to become a teacher.
In all school systems there are powerful feedback loops associated with the status of the teaching profession. Once teaching became a high-status profession, more talented people became teachers, lifting the status of the profession even higher. This is particularly apparent in Finland and South Korea, where historically strong teaching forces have given the profession a high status in the eyes of the general public, enabling them to attract further high-calibre recruits, thereby perpetuating this status. Conversely, where the profession has a low status, it attracts less-talented applicants, pushing the status of the profession down further and, with it, the calibre of people it is able to attract. The power of these feedback loops suggests that seemingly small policy changes can sometimes have a massive impact on the status of the teaching profession.