German teachers are better paid than their colleagues in many other countries.

This emerges from the study "Education at a Glance 2022", which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) presented on Tuesday in Berlin.

Average salaries for teachers in lower secondary education are among the highest in OECD countries, more than double the average.

Tobias Schrors

political editor.

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Given the shortage of teachers, the finding is surprising.

The chairwoman of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Karin Prien (CDU), said: "The payment of our teachers is the second best in the OECD, we are behind Luxembourg there, but it turns out that the attractiveness of the teaching profession does not just depend on the payment." She named social recognition and opportunities for advancement as factors.

The OECD education director Andreas Schleicher said the payment explains "relatively little".

Three factors made the teaching profession attractive: professional work in a team, time for individual support of students and career opportunities.

The study examines in particular the tertiary education sector, i.e. degrees from universities and technical colleges, but also the master craftsman’s certificate.

In Germany, the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with a tertiary degree increased by 14 percentage points to 36 percent between 2000 and 2021.

On average across the OECD, the rise of 21 points to 48 percent most recently is significantly higher.

Kornelia Haugg, State Secretary in the Ministry of Education, said that "we cannot be satisfied".

As a further challenge, she named the high number of open training places and the high proportion of young people without a qualification.

According to the study, almost every tenth young person in Germany is neither in training nor in work.

The proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds affected rose by 1.2 points during the pandemic in 2020 and by another 0.3 points in 2021 to almost ten percent.

Prien sees one reason in the immigration of recent years.

She called the development "explainable but not satisfactory".

The study also addresses the corona pandemic.

As in most other OECD countries, schools in Germany were not completely closed in the 2021/22 school year.

With a maximum of 85 days in lower secondary education throughout the pandemic, Germany is close to the OECD average.