Salaries for Australian teachers peak far quicker than in most other developed countries because our pay system offers little monetary reward for highly skilled or highly experienced teachers.
A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), offering a detailed examination of education systems around the world, finds it takes only 8.3 years for an early high school teacher in Australia to progress from a starting salary to the top of the pay scale.
This compares to an OECD average of 25 years.
Education Minister Simon Birmingham, who plans to make teacher pay a focus at a meeting of federal and state education ministers next week, leapt upon the findings to argue for change.
The Turnbull government is pushing for teachers' salaries to be linked more closely to their skills rather than how many years they have spent in the classroom.
The OECD notes in its report that the pay structure for Australian teachers is one of the most "compressed" of the 44 countries analysed.
Australian teachers start their careers on relatively high salaries - $53,265 (US$39,819) for a primary teacher, for example, compared to the OECD average of $41,539 (US$31,028).
This is followed by a speedy acceleration to an average salary of $76,639 for teachers with 10 years' experience but there is little opportunity for pay rises after that.
The salary at the top of the scale for primary teachers in Australia is $76,919, compared to $100,805 in Korea or $91,034 in Germany.
The OECD finds starting salaries for teachers and their likely pay growth have a "huge influence" on whether high-performing graduates pursue a teaching career.
"Weak financial incentives may make it more difficult to retain teachers as they approach the peak of their earnings," it notes in its Education at a Glance 2016 report.
But there could also be advantages to compressed pay structures.
"For example, organisations in which there are smaller differences in salaries among employees may enjoy more trust, freer flows of information and more collegiality among co-workers," it finds.
Senator Birmingham said: "The way we reward our teachers and recognise our most effective educators is a key priority of the Turnbull Government's evidence-led school reforms," he said.
"This new data from the OECD highlights that teacher pay in Australia levels out after around 10 years of service compared to higher-performing countries where the increases are more staggered.
"One of the government's teacher recognition reforms would see educators' pay linked to their ability to perform against national standards as 'graduate', 'proficient', 'highly accomplished' and 'lead', rather than simply how long they've worked in the system."
Australian Education Union President Correna Haythorpe said teacher salaries should be set through negotiations between state governments and the workforce.
"Experienced classroom teachers should be recognised and rewarded for their high levels of knowledge and skill and their contribution to schools, without having to move into administrative roles," she said.
Other findings from the report include:
- Australian children spend more time in the classroom than anywhere else in the OECD (attributable to the young starting age for primary school and strong high school completion rates).
- Australia's spending per primary school student is below the OECD average but above average for high school students.
- Australia has an average primary school class size of 24 students compared to an OECD average of 21.
- University fees, including for international students, are among the highest in the OECD.
- A relatively high share of expenditure on all levels of education in Australia comes from private sources.
- Forty-three per cent of Australians are tertiary-educated, one of the highest shares in the world.
The report also finds that "there is no simple relationship between overall spending on education and the level of student performance" in the countries studied.
"Higher levels of expenditure on education cannot automatically be equated with better performance by education systems," the report finds.
"This is not surprising, as countries spending similar amounts on education do not necessarily have similar education policies and practices."
