You can't get used to prosperity: in which regions teachers' salaries are being reduced

Ekaterina Maximova

The «top ten» leaders in the number of vacancies posted in 2023 included Moscow (11.5 thousand vacancies), St. Petersburg (6 thousand), Moscow Region (4.5 thousand), Krasnodar Territory (3.6 thousand), Tatarstan (2.9 thousand), Sverdlovsk Region (2.4 thousand), Nizhny Novgorod region (2.2 thousand), Novosibirsk region (1,9 thousand), Samara and Rostov region (1.5 thousand each). The share of these regions alone accounted for a total of 36.5 thousand ads, that is, more than 50%.

Most often, schools lured math teachers (6.6 thousand vacancies). The education system clearly lacks primary school teachers (3.8 thousand vacancies). Teachers of subjects such as Russian language and literature (3.6 thousand vacancies), physics (3.4 thousand), computer science (3.3 thousand) and chemistry (1.4 thousand) are also in short supply.

At the beginning of the last academic year, the Minister of Education of the Russian FederationSergey Kravtsov did not confirm the shortage of teaching staff. According to him, in September, educational institutions were «maximally staffed».

Experts did not agree with the minister: according to approximate calculations, the Institute of Applied Economic Research of the RANEPA alone, Russian schools lacked about 250 thousand teachers. And in the whole country, the number of vacancies in secondary education is 3,1% higher than the number of its employees.

The load is growing faster than wages

Teachers are fleeing from schools because of low salaries, constant overwork, paper and bureaucratic burden.

And no matter how many years in a row officials have been saying that teachers' work should be adequately paid, it still does not work out to bring teachers' salaries even to the average salary in Russia.

According to Rosstat, in Russia in May 2023, the average monthly salary in nominal terms was 72,851 rubles (+16%).

If we talk about school teachers, then approximately this level in 2023 was offered to them by units of regions. For example, vacancies with a salary of 74 thousand rubles per month can be found in Moscow.

According to hh online recruitment. In addition to Moscow, Surgut (62 thousand rubles), Kaluga (57.8 thousand rubles), St. Petersburg (56 thousand rubles), Vladivostok (54 thousand rubles), Sochi (53.6 thousand rubles) occupy the first lines of the rating of Russian cities by the level of average salaries offered in the specialization «Teacher, teacher, teacher».), Belgorod (51.8 thousand rubles) and Tyumen (51.6 thousand rubles).

This is the end of cities with average salaries over 50 thousand rubles.

Less than 40 thousand rubles are offered to teachers in the cities of Cheboksary (36.9 thousand rubles), Yaroslavl (38.2 thousand rubles), Orenburg (39.4 thousand rubles) and Krasnodar (39.7 thousand rubles).

Special attention is paid to the «salary» list, which was provided by analysts for Novye Izvestia hh.ru, deserve cities in which, on the eve of September 1, 2023, the salaries offered by the employer turned out to be even lower than last year.

These are Ulyanovsk (-3.1 thousand rubles), Belgorod (-2.8 thousand rubles), Izhevsk (-2.4 thousand rubles), Stavropol (-2.2 thousand rubles), Tver (-1.3 thousand rubles), Naberezhnye Chelny (-1.3 thousand rubles), Tula (-1.2 thousand rubles), Volgograd (-1 thousand rubles), Samara (-733 rubles), Ryazan (-109 rubles), etc. But the biggest reduction in teaching salaries was shown by Omsk (-6.6 thousand rubles), Vladimir (-5.8 thousand rubles), Orenburg and Cheboksary, where teachers were «cut» almost 4 thousand rubles.

According to Rosstat, at the end of the last academic year, the average salary of teachers in Russia amounted to 51.7 thousand rubles (84.4 thousand rubles for institutions of federal ownership, 76.7 thousand rubles for regional and 45.5 thousand rubles for municipal).

The breakdown by federal districts and within districts is extremely heterogeneous. Thus, the average salary in the Central Federal District varies from 107.3 thousand rubles (Moscow) to 32.1 thousand rubles (Tambov region). Southwest — from 73 thousand rubles (St. Petersburg) to 32.8 thousand rubles (Pskov region).

In the Southern Federal District, teachers have the largest salaries in Sevastopol (43.3 thousand rubles), and in According to Rosstat, teachers in Adygea and Kalmykia work on average for 34 thousand rubles a month.

In the regions of the North Caucasus, the salary level is even lower: from 35 thousand rubles (Stavropol Territory) to 25.2 thousand rubles (Ingushetia). The Volga district can also be attributed to the «low-budget», there are the highest salaries in Tatarstan (45.4 thousand rubles), and the «minimum wage» in the Penza region (33.4 thousand rubles).

In Siberia, for teaching work, you can count on income from 60 thousand rubles (Krasnoyarsk Territory) to 37 thousand rubles (Omsk region). As always, the motley picture develops into The Ural Federal District, where the gas-bearing Yamal with salaries of 120 thousand rubles and the impoverished Kurgan region with «receipts» for teachers at the level of 35 thousand rubles. In the Far East, teachers have the most modest incomes in the Trans-Baikal Territory (38.3 thousand rubles) and the EAO (47.5 thousand rubles). This is against the background of salaries in the Chukotka JSC (136.9 thousand rubles) and on Sakhalin (106 thousand rubles).

In general, the poorer the region, the poorer the teachers there, since the per capita standard for a child is set by the subject of the Russian Federation itself (the amount that the region allocates to the school for the education of one student). In Russia, this indicator, depending on the well-being of the region, region or Republic, may differ significantly.

In the summer, State Duma deputies once again worried that teachers were underpaid. Parliamentarian Yaroslav Nilov said that a bill on raising teachers' salaries to 2.5 minimum wage is in the works, regardless of the region. Now the minimum wage is 16,242 rubles. In 2024, the authorities promise a record increase in the minimum wage (+18.5%) — up to 19,242 rubles.

It is possible that Russian education will switch to a financial system tied to a double minimum wage from January 1, 2024.

As the co-chairman of the Teacher trade union Vsevolod Lukhovitsky clarifies, now the minimum wage for teachers is set at one rate. And in some regions, salaries at the minimum wage level can be achieved only by increasing the number of hours and performing additional work by a teacher.