Implementation of the Principle of Decent Wages in Russian Education: Economic and Statistical Study

The article presents the results of economic and statistical study assessing the implementation of the principle of decent wages for employees in general education. According to the author, at present, determining the amount of funding for teachers’ salaries is caught in the trap of using the basic criterion defined as the «average salary in the region», which does not allow a significant part of specialists to receive decent remuneration for their work and provokes a high staff turnover. In order to eliminate negative trends, the author proposed adjusting the principle for payment of salaries for school teachers, with an emphasis on increasing the minimum wage rather than the average wage. The study proposes a modified method for calculating the leading coefficient. This indicator makes it possible to correlate the growth rates of teachers' salaries with the basic (starting) conditions prevailing in the regions at the beginning of the implementation of the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 597 of 7 May 2012 «On Measures for the Implementation of State Social Policy» and also takes into account the uneven distribution of the salary fund for school teachers (by comparing the achievement of the May decree target in regions with the number of specialists receiving a minimum salary or less). The modified methodology was tested on statistical data for 83 constituent entities of Russia. The approbation showed that in 2019 11 constituent entities of the Russian Federation could not provide even the minimum conditions for a decent salary for all school teachers (in 2015, they included 3 territories, in 2017 – 13). All the necessary conditions for the implementation of the principle of decent salaries are created only in three constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The conclusion summarizes possibilities of practical use of regional experience in the implementation of the «All included» model (based on the establishment of a single salary for all professional activities in the school) to improve the planning of teachers' salaries in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

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