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| A report showed Sunday that Korea's school principals are older than the OECD average, and Korean teachers were unsatisfied with their schools. / Korea Times file |
Teachers here in general were unsatisfied with their work, and young teachers voiced negative opinions with their workplaces.
The Korean Educational Development Institute released the report based on the results of the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018, a survey conducted by the OECD every five years. In 2018, 260,000 teachers in 48 countries were surveyed, including 4,000 teachers in Korea.
In the report, the institute compared Korean middle school teachers' answers with the OECD average.
Korean middle school teachers' average age was 43, similar to the OECD average of 44. Sixty-seven percent of them were female, also similar to the OECD's 68 percent.
But the average age of Korean principals was 59, far higher than the OECD average of 52. The number of principals aged over 60 took up 44 percent of the total in Korea, more than double the OECD's 20 percent.
Of the number of Korean principals, women accounted for 20 percent, less than half the OECD's 47 percent.
Korean teachers' satisfaction with their work and workplace was lower than the OECD average, especially regarding the schools at which they currently work.
Thirty-five percent said they would move to another school if possible, a higher number than 20 percent, the OECD average. The percentage even went up among young teachers with less than five years of work experience, with 43 percent answering so.
More than 90 percent of Korean teachers said they learned how to teach their respective school subjects during their time in college. Only 26 percent said they had official or unofficial teacher training sessions when they were assigned to their current schools, lower than the OECD average of 42 percent.
