What TALIS reveals about teachers across education levels

Abstract

The report New insights from TALIS 2013: Teaching and Learning in Primary and Upper Secondary Education (OECD, 2014) presents an overview of teachers and teaching in primary and upper secondary education for a sample of countries that participated in the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) in 2013. Women represent the majority of the teaching workforce for most countries at all levels of education. Despite this and the fact that most principals are former teachers, significantly fewer principals are women at all education levels. Primary teachers tend to work in schools where principals report material and personnel shortages that hinder the delivery of quality education more often than upper secondary teachers. Moreover, schools with high proportion of socio-economically disadvantaged students face greater shortages in terms of key resources in many countries. This further exacerbates the already-challenging circumstances for teachers and students.