World teacher crisis looms, says OECD

PARIS - Many rich Western countries risk a shortage of teachers in coming years, as a generation of older teachers retires and not enough young people want to work in education, the Paris-based OECD think tank says.

Most primary school teachers in 15 out of 19 countries the OECD examined were at least 40 years old, and in Germany and Italy almost half of all secondary teachers were above 50, according to the OECD's Education at a Glance 2003 report.

"It is very important to have policies put in place to attract new teachers," Eric Charbonnier from the OECD's education division told a news conference, adding that national systems were too different to find a policy valid for all.

Starting salaries for secondary school teachers were highest in countries such as Switzerland and Germany, but teachers in Japan and Korea, for example, could expect bigger pay rises from their starting wage over the next 15 years, the report showed.

It was one of a raft of reports by the OECD, a club of 30 mostly industrialised and wealthy countries, examining performance in various fields.

Mr Charbonnier said last week's report could not give conclusive reasons for students from countries such as Finland or the Netherlands performing better than German or Portuguese pupils in the organisation's 2000 PISA study, which tested literacy.

"We can't explain all the PISA outcomes, but our data can provide information to help ministries work on improving their performance."

The report showed smaller classes did not necessarily improve student performance.

More than 35 teenagers sat in one class in Korea, versus around 20 in Italy, but the Korean students beat the Italians in the PISA study.

Nor could the level of state spending on education explain why some countries' students did better than others.

"There are countries like Germany, which spend a lot on education and did not do well in the PISA study," Mr Charbonnier said. "And we see countries like Korea and Canada, who spend moderately on the secondary level but performed well in the PISA study."

- REUTERS