India ranks 6th most positive about teachers in the 35-country survey

Vinod Kakumanu
Oct. 31, 2020, 2:23 p.m.

India ranks among the world’s top 10 countries when it comes to valuing its teaching workforce, according to a new 35-country global survey-based report.

A global report on how positively nations perceive their teachers has placed India in the top 10. The number of countries that were surveyed is 35.

The report titled Reading Between the Lines: What The World Really Think of Teachers was released by the UK-based Varkey Foundation. The report ranks the countries based on their populations’ implicit, unconscious and automatic views on the status of teachers in their country.

The salience of the report lies in the tracking of people’s perception of teachers. In what is called the Implicit Teacher Status analysis, the automatic impressions are analysed after asking rapid answer questions like do you think teachers are trusted or untrusted, caring or uncaring and other such questions that tap into other associated ideas with the word teacher. The analysis of the survey results put China, Ghana, Singapore, Canada, and Malaysia ahead of India.

The founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize is of the view that positive perception of the teachers is positively correlated with the educational outcomes, therefore progress.

The report bases has used the data gathered by the Global Teacher Status Index (GTSI) 2018. The index is derived from the survey that included 35 countries, with 1000 respondents each. The teacher status index is positively correlated to the educational attainments of the students.

The new report attempts to explain for the first time as to why the teacher status index varies between nations. There are some interesting and intuitive conclusions like teachers enjoy a relatively higher status in richer countries and also in the ones with higher per capita expenditure on education.

The time of the release of the report coincides with the announcement of the Global Teacher Prize. Ranjitsinh Disale is among the winners of the prize, also instituted by the foundation.

Some renowned academicians and analysts are of the view that the implicit teacher statuses which the report derives and compares is positively correlated with the international student assessment like PISA results.