The Economist : "Higher teacher pay and smaller classes are not the best education policies".

The link between results and teachers’ pay is surprisingly weak. An experienced Finnish teacher earns on average $42,800. But Switzerland pays teachers at the same point in their careers $68,000, and though it gets creditable maths results, coming ninth out of 65 in the most recent PISA assessment in 2012, it does much less well in reading and science. The figure in Germany is $54,000 a year. Its results have improved recently, but at a cost that leaves it a lowly 25th in the efficiency ranking.

Education spending depends not only on what teachers earn, but on how many of them there are—and in many places that number is rising, as rich countries cut class sizes in the hope that children will learn more. Parents, convinced that their children will do better with fewer classmates, are keen on the policy, too. But again, the data provide little support.

Both Korea and Finland have high pupil-teacher ratios (third- and fifth-highest of the 30 countries GEMS studied, respectively). France and Norway, with few pupils per teacher even by rich-world standards, trail in performance rankings, coming 25th and 30th in PISA 2012. Portugal, one of Europe’s laggards, has just half as many pupils per teacher as Finland (partly because the number of teachers did not drop as birth rates fell). Only when classes become truly unwieldy do outcomes seem to suffer: along with Brazil, the other country with a higher pupil-teacher ratio than Korea is Chile, which also has poor results.

Quality of teachers has a clearer impact than class size,” says Mr Schleicher.

maîtresse a écrit:C'est quoi alors selon The Economist la bonne politique éducative ?