Georgian teachers complain about injustice: Why the "unprecedented pay raise" isn’t enough?

Teachers salary in Georgia

Since July 1, Georgia has implemented a new teacher salary system. The government calls it an “unprecedented pay raise,” but in reality, salaries for hundreds of Georgian teachers have either remained the same or decreased.

To understand the new salary policy, JAMnews spoke with ten teachers of various statuses, reviewed several documents, and read hundreds of comments in private social media groups.

In this article, we will explain our findings, shed light on what actually happened, why teachers are upset, and why this change signifies much more than just a salary increase or decrease.

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The “unprecedented pay raise” for state secondary school teachers was promised by former Georgian prime minister Irakli Garibashvili back in November 2023. The Minister of Education consistently stated that salaries would increase by 500-800 lari (approximately $184-295).

However, when July 1, 2024, arrived and the new system took effect, many teachers found that instead of an increase, their salaries had significantly decreased.

This particularly affected teachers who had invested considerable effort in advancing their qualifications and status. In Georgia, teachers were ranked by status, with mentor teachers receiving the highest salaries for their hard work. Now, the Ministry of Education has stated that the lessons of these teachers are no different from others, suggesting that the ranking system was unfair and needed to be abolished.

This triggered a strong reaction on social media, with teachers in private groups complaining that the issue was not with the ranking system but with the new salary policy. Many found the new salary calculation formula confusing and likened it to a puzzle. Expressions of frustration were common, with ironic questions such as, “How should we spend our increased salary now? Any ideas?” and “Where shall we vacation this year with our increased salary, Como or the Maldives?” Some teachers even considered the meager increases so insulting that they sent them back to the Ministry of Education.

How teacher salaries were calculated previously

Before July 1, 2024, the Ministry of Education calculated teacher salaries using the following formula:

Final Salary = Base Salary + Seniority Bonus + Qualification Bonus + Status Bonus

The base salary was quite low—up to 30 lari (about $11) per hour, totaling approximately 500-600 lari (about $184-221) per month.

This was supplemented by a modest monthly amount based on seniority and qualifications.

Experience was evaluated as follows:

For teachers with up to 5 years of experience: 15 lari (about $6)
For 5 to 10 years of experience: up to 30 lari (about $11)
For more than 10 years of experience: 45 lari (about $17)

Qualification bonuses were:

Bachelor’s degree: 20 lari (about $8)
Master’s degree: 40 lari (about $15)
Doctorate: 100 lari (about $37)

The most significant component in the old formula was the status bonus, which has now been removed from the new formula.

The teacher qualification program included three status levels: Senior Teacher, Lead Teacher, and Mentor Teacher. These bonuses, which had been in place since 2015, had gradually increased almost threefold.

CHART

The salary calculation also considers additional factors such as tutoring and work in high-altitude areas. However, since these bonuses are minor and unchanged, we will not focus on them in this article.

How the salary is calculated under the new scheme

The Ministry of Education has stated that it has “listened to the long-standing requests of teachers” and increased the hourly pay rate. Consequently, the ministry believes there is no longer a need for a status bonus.

The new salary calculation formula is as follows:

Final Salary = Base Salary + Seniority Bonus + Qualification Bonus + Functional Bonus (only for Lead Teachers and Mentors)

The base salary (hourly rate) has increased as follows:

• For teachers working up to 15 hours per week, the hourly rate is 96 lari (about $35). For example, if a teacher works 14 hours a week, the base salary will be 14 x 96 = 1344 lari (about $495).
• For 15 hours of work, the pay is 206 lari (about $76). Therefore, those who work 15 hours a week receive 14 x 96 + 206 = 1550 lari (about $571).
• After the 15-hour threshold, the hourly rate becomes 80 lari (about $30). So, for a teacher working 18 hours a week, the base salary (without bonuses) is calculated as 14 x 96 + 206 (for the 15th hour) + 3 x 80 = 1790 lari (about $660).

A detailed table of hourly rates can be found here.

Allowances for tenure and qualifications are added to the base salary, and their amounts have remained unchanged.

But there will no longer be an allowance for status.

Senior teachers, according to the new formula, do not receive anything, while leading teachers and mentors will receive a small functional bonus:

• Leading teacher — 150 lari [about $55];
• Mentor — 300 lari [about $110.5].

Teachers do not yet know what obligations come with this functional bonus.

Thus, according to the new formula, teachers’ salaries are proportional to the number of lessons — the more teaching hours, the higher the salary. Nothing else matters anymore. Teachers who have spent sleepless nights to improve their qualifications find this unfair.

According to the National Statistics Office of Georgia, by the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year, about 58,000 teachers (57,586) worked in public schools.

As JAMnews found out from the Ministry of Education, most of them hold the status of senior teachers.

Specifically, according to the Ministry of Education, as of May 10, 2024, there are 897 mentors, 9,998 leading teachers, and 41,209 senior teachers in public schools. There are also 349 candidates for status, 3,928 teachers without status, and 1,296 practicing teachers.

Senior teachers received the least amount of bonuses and were very dissatisfied with this, believing that essentially everyone conducts the same lessons, and the difference in salary is unjustified.

Mentors

Diana Tsurtsumiya has been teaching Georgian language and literature in a rural school for 30 years. She holds the title of Best Georgian Language and Literature Teacher of 2022.

Diana’s journey to becoming a mentor teacher was long and challenging. She participated in all programs offered by the Ministry of Education, became a certified teacher as soon as the scheme was launched in 2011-2012, and then passed professional and qualification exams.

• Brief overview of the teacher career advancement scheme

  

  Since 2008, there has been a focus on the professional growth of teachers.
  In 2009, a decree on certification was issued.
  In 2010, teacher certification testing on general professional skills and subjects was conducted for the first time.
  In 2011, the “Teacher Professional Development Program” was approved. Participation in the program was voluntary and only certified teachers could participate. They had to pass subject and professional exams to gain the right to teach. At that time, the scheme had three categories: certified, first, and highest.
  In 2014, the scheme was updated, introducing four categories of teachers: practicing (the lowest), senior, leading, and mentor (the highest category).

  Since then, the scheme has changed several times. In total, from 2011 to 2023, it has been revised five times.

Candidates for the status of lead teacher and mentor had to juggle their primary responsibilities with informal education. This meant creating various clubs at school, attending conferences and training seminars, fostering the professional development of colleagues, and much more. Additionally, they had to conduct model lessons evaluated by a special group and compile a portfolio that was also reviewed.

Despite all this, Diana successfully obtained both the status of mentor and the title of the best teacher in the country.

“It was incredibly hard work. So much so that I couldn’t do anything else. I had to give up farming to achieve this status,” Diana said.

Therefore, when the ministry talked about raising teachers’ salaries, Diana was filled with optimism.

Diana has already received her first “increased” salary – an extra 157 lari ($58).

In reality, Diana’s salary was reduced. This “increase” was actually a compensation for teachers whose salaries were cut due to a new formula. The ministry added 200 lari ($74) to such teachers’ salaries during a two-year transition period, but after taxes, this amount is reduced to 157 lari.

Tsaulina Malazonia is also a mentor teacher, having achieved this status through significant effort.

For the past 15 years, she has been teaching Georgian to non-Georgian students in a rural school in a region populated by ethnic Armenians. Previously, Tsaulina worked in the social-humanitarian faculty of a university in the same region and as a journalist. But when a Georgian language teacher was needed in the village of Zaki, she dropped everything and moved to this village with a harsh climate.

At that time, only two families in the village understood Georgian. Tsulina rented a small house and began teaching amidst constant questions: “Why do we need Georgian?! Why did you come here?!” Often in winter, the roads were blocked, and she couldn’t visit her family on weekends.

Tsaulina also participated in all certification programs, first obtaining the status of senior teacher, and in 2018, lead teacher. She worked in this status for three years, combining her teaching duties with informal education activities and coordinating the ministry’s program at her school – introducing it to her colleagues and helping them in their professional growth:

“I was in charge of 16-20 teachers. They were not very good with computers, especially the older ones, so I had to do practically all the computer-related work for them. Also, as a member of the evaluation group, I had to attend their model lessons and so on. In short, these were three very intense years of work.”

To become a mentor herself, Tsaulina had to undergo a professional skills assessment. This was the first, experimental year of the exam:

“They gave us so much literature to prepare for the exam that it was simply impossible to read it all. Then we had to take a huge test in four hours. This was too little time, and after teachers protested, it was extended to five hours. The test questions had many errors, and the passing threshold was 75%, which was very high. Under these conditions, we took the exam, and then we were told we had to defend our portfolio.“

Defending the portfolio involved documenting the mandatory actions defined by the mentor teacher standard, placing them in an electronic folder, and presenting them. The obligations cover three areas.

Part of the portfolio was a telephone survey of Tsaulina’s colleagues and the parents of her students by commission members, and an examination of her work.

Finally, last year, Tsaulina became a mentor teacher. But she only received the corresponding salary increase for ten months. Now, as a result of the “unprecedented raise,” her salary is 232 lari ($85).

Leading teachers

Hatuna Mshvenieradze, a mathematics teacher with 21 years of experience, teaches at a school in the village of Gombori. She lives in a neighboring town and travels 120 kilometers round trip from her home to the school. She works four days a week, with transportation costs alone amounting to 224 lari ($82) per month.

Hatuna is a lead teacher, having earned this status by passing a difficult exam:

“During the exam, we faced questions that were not covered in the 5,000 pages of literature provided for preparation. This material is only taught in paid training sessions. Everyone’s scores were mercilessly cut. The correctness of an answer was judged by how closely it matched the template, and alternative answers were not awarded points. It was a nerve-wracking ordeal.”

Hatuna managed to pass the exam. “That’s good. But not enough,” she was told. She now had to defend her portfolio.

“I had sleepless nights. I had the materials ready, but I needed time to organize them and write the presentation. And I didn’t have the time.”

Hatuna defended her portfolio in July. In September, she was informed that she had become a lead teacher. With the added pay, her salary increased by 1175 lari ($433). However, a year later, the ministry introduced a new formula, nullifying her status and resulting in the loss of the additional pay:

“So much effort was put into achieving the lead teacher status, and now, with this new formula, my salary is only 120 lari ($44) more than that of senior teachers.“

Senior teachers

Under the new formula, which calculates pay by the hour, the earnings of teachers working 18 to 25 hours a week have indeed increased.

Primarily, this applies to senior teachers, whose bonuses for their status were much smaller compared to lead and mentor teachers, making the new formula more favorable for them.

These are the teachers the Ministry of Education refers to when discussing the unprecedented rise in teacher salaries. In some schools, senior teachers have seen an increase of 300-500 lari ($110-184).

However, there are nuances.

The Ministry of Education acknowledges that a full workload for school teachers is 18 hours a week. Yet, it uses its new formula to calculate salaries for teachers with a 24- or 25-hour workload.

“Salary for a 25-hour workload is indeed high. But 25 hours is overtime, which should be compensated accordingly,” teachers explain.

Besides the impact of overtime on teaching quality, there’s another issue: in many Georgian schools, the teacher workload does not exceed 18 hours a week. Therefore, they cannot surpass this threshold to earn more.

Nino Melikishvili teaches English and French in the small town of Kazreti. At her school, English is a mandatory subject, while French is an elective for upper grades.

Nino’s workload is nine hours a week, and she cannot increase it even if she wanted to. The school has three English teachers, and there aren’t enough teaching hours for each to have at least 18.

Nino is a senior teacher. Currently, she is on maternity leave and isn’t sure how the new formula will affect her salary, but she suspects that given her limited hours, she might not earn much more, or possibly even less.

Last year, Nino created an online magazine, “Kazretipress,” managed by her students. She also founded a French language club for children and an English language club for teachers (where students teach English to teachers). Besides teaching her subjects, she is involved in organizing informal education. This is crucial for the youth of the town to remain competitive with their peers from larger cities and participate in exchange programs. For instance, two students working on “Kazretipress” are heading to America in August. Another two are currently in Estonia attending democracy development training. This is a significant achievement for a small town.

But Nino will no longer receive any compensation for all this socially beneficial additional activity, as the bonuses for her status (under which she previously carried out these activities) have been eliminated, along with the status itself.

“What am I supposed to do now? I created these clubs, I made a promise to these kids. Seventeen teenagers come to school early to learn the language and apply to universities in France, Switzerland, and Belgium. What am I supposed to say now, ‘sorry, I changed my mind’?”

Primary school teachers

The new salary calculation formula has placed primary school teachers in the most unequal position.

Nana (name changed) is a primary school teacher at one of Tbilisi’s schools. She holds the status of a leading teacher.

Nana explains that the principle of hourly workload in primary education is different:

“Primary school teachers took an exam that included three subjects: Georgian language, mathematics, and natural science. We work only in primary education and, no matter how much we want to, we cannot add another subject and work in other classes. Therefore, a full workload for primary school teachers is considered to be 13 hours, not 18—6 hours of Georgian, 5 hours of math, and 2 hours of natural science per week.“

In other words, a primary school teacher has no opportunity to work more than 13 hours a week; that simply doesn’t happen. The Ministry knows this very well but does not account for it in its new formula.

Primary teachers were given a bonus for their status at full workload, but their working hours are too few to earn a high salary.

At the same time, the Ministry knows that primary school teachers often conduct lessons in sports, music, and drawing. However, the certification exam for these subjects is not ready yet, so teachers are compensated according to the old formula (23-25 lari [8-9 dollars] per hour).

“In fact, I can work 19 hours a week, but these hours will not be paid according to the new formula. It turns out that I suffered twice: I was stripped of my leading teacher status and disadvantaged as a primary school teacher,” says Nana.

After the introduction of the new formula, Nana’s salary decreased by 160 lari [about $59] (although she received compensation from the Ministry for the cancellation of her status).

Why is this not just a change in salary policy?

However, according to teachers, the problem lies not only in the unfair salary policy. Many believe it has revealed the Ministry of Education’s lack of a systematic approach, vision, and stable policy, which changes with each new minister.

And ministers of education in Georgia change very often: over the past 16 years, there have been 11 changes. Each new minister has altered the professional development and career advancement scheme. For example, between 2011 and 2023, this scheme was changed five times.

Teachers say that the new salary policy will cause even more harm to an already struggling education system. They list several potential problems that may arise.

Competition among teachers

Competition for teaching hours will intensify, making it harder to hire new staff.

“Now the salary will depend on the number of hours, and this is a bad approach that causes disagreements,” says Diana Tsurtumia, predicting that especially fierce competition will unfold in large schools where there are many teachers who barely know each other. If the current teachers don’t have enough hours, hiring new ones is out of the question.

Decline in teaching quality

All our respondents agree that the quality of teaching heavily depends on whether a teacher works 10–12 hours a week or 24–25.

“When there was a shortage of staff, I also worked 24 hours a week. In my case, it wasn’t difficult: I moved to this remote village and preferred to be in school rather than sit at home. But we don’t only have lessons. What about extracurricular activities? Informal education? Grading, feedback, lesson planning, and so on? When do we find time for all this?” wonders Tsulina Malazonia.

Decreased teacher motivation

All our respondents predict a decrease in teacher motivation, including those whose stories were not included in the article.

“I was considered a leader in the school and respected. I even received calls for advice from other schools in the district. Having my salary cut is humiliating. It’s as if they said: there’s nothing special about her work; she’s just an ordinary teacher. That’s how it felt to me,” says Tsulina Malazonia.

Reduction of informal education

Informal education will disappear because teachers, focused on hourly work, simply won’t have time for it.

According to Nino Melikishvili, within the framework of traditional school education, the ministry cannot give students everything they need and what they receive from their teachers through informal education.

No response from the Ministry of Education

Teachers have not yet received any feedback from the Ministry of Education. But they are not giving up. Last week, they sent a long letter to the prime minister of the country listing 15 arguments proving the unfairness of the new salary calculation formula and are persistently demanding a change in salary policy.