Nine in ten teachers report being satisfied with their jobs overall, on average, across OECD education systems, according to a new OECD report.
Based on the OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), the report, The State of Teaching, says that almost three-quarters would choose to work as a teacher again, on average, if they had the option to do so. Almost 95% of teachers surveyed also say they often feel happy while teaching.
Conducted by the OECD, in 2024 it sampled about 280 000 teachers and school leaders at 17 000 lower secondary schools across 55 education systems (see list at end). TALIS aims to help policymakers and education leaders craft informed strategies to improve teaching quality and learning environments.
95% of teachers said the opportunity to make a worthwhile social contribution was important to them. Globally, teachers feel most valued in Viet Nam, where over 92% say they feel valued by society. Since 2018, Bulgaria, Denmark and Saudi Arabia have increased their share of teachers who feel valued by society by at least 19 percentage points.
"Skilled teachers are the foundation for high-performing education systems," OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said. "By continuing to strengthen teacher training and the tools available to them, we can ensure that students are well-prepared for a bright future in our evolving economies and societies."
The report finds that ageing populations and migration patterns have changed the demography of teachers in many education systems. The average age of teachers across the OECD is now 45 and 50 or above in Latvia, Lithuania and Portugal.
In response, many governments are recruiting teachers from other sectors to ensure a sustainable supply of qualified educators. Second career teachers now make up 21% of the total teaching population in Iceland and 17% in Australia. These systems have also made it easier for mid-career professionals to enter teaching. Roughly 47% of teachers in Australia and 27% of teachers in Iceland completed fast-track or specialised teaching training programmes.
Mentoring to help new teachers has also increased, with the share of novice teachers with an assigned mentor increasing in about one-third of education systems. Across the OECD, about one in four novice teachers now have an assigned mentor, on average. More than 50% of teachers with less than five years' experience have a mentor in Bahrain, Israel, Poland, Shanghai (China), United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
One in three teachers now uses artificial intelligence for work but seven out of ten worry that it facilitates plagiarism and cheating among students. Around three-quarters of teachers in Singapore and United Arab Emirates report using AI in their general work. Some 29% of teachers indicated they need further professional development on the use of AI, more than for any other professional development topic surveyed. Reported teacher participation in AI training is highest in Singapore (76%) and lowest in France (9%), with an average of 38% across the OECD. And among teachers who use AI, some 73% report leveraging it to efficiently learn about and summarise topics, and 69% use it to generate lesson plans, on average.
In almost half of the education systems,1 young teachers aged under 30 disproportionately report working in the most demanding classroom environments. The highest differences are observed in Bahrain, Colombia, Israel and United Arab Emirates, where the share of teachers under 30 who report working with students with language difficulties is 15 percentage points higher than that of their older colleagues.
