On Tuesday, 21 June, Latvia’s government passed the new teacher pay calculation and distribution model, which allocates additional funding to municipalities that have an organised network of education institutions.
The new order that governs the method under which state budget grants for teacher pay is calculated and distributed among municipal schools and universities. From 1 September onward municipal schools will switch to the model Student in municipality, which means decentralization of decision-making and change how grants are calculated.
The new model states that grants will be calculated for municipalities, not each individual education institution as it was in the past.
This will provide municipalities a bigger role in the organisation of the education network and provision of competitive wages to teachers. Additionally, the new model states municipalities are to divert at least 7% of allocated financing towards additional personnel and no more than 15% towards administrative workers.
To motivate municipalities to organise their respective education networks, all municipalities with reorganised school networks are to receive increased bonus pay to 2.5% starting from the next school year. If student/teacher relations become above average in the country in 2022, additional funding is to be increased by another 2%.
On top of a new financing model, the government also plans to increase the funding for state gymnasiums.
According to the Ministry of Education and Science, changes will approve three demands for municipalities – first of all, the duty to ensure quality education process in each education institution; secondly, ensure the ensure the application of the established minimum monthly wage rate when determining the remuneration of teachers; thirdly, ensure allocation of aforementioned finances towards wages of support personnel and administrative workers.
The requirement to guarantee teachers at least a minimal monthly wage rate is set as a mandatory condition for the provision of grants to municipalities.
According to the ministry, the current situation does not have much of an effect on the reorganisation of the school network and the insufficiently active initiative in finding solutions to ensure full workloads for teachers. With that, politicians concluded that the current situation does not promote major changes for average wages of Latvian teachers.
Excessive centralization or decision-making on the level of the ministry is also mentioned as one of the causes for ineffective distribution of state budget grants. Existing regulations do not provide founders of education institution sufficient flexibility when it comes to using state budget financing. This is why it is necessary to adopt a new model for municipalities.
As it is known, LIZDA has announced plans to ask teachers in Latvia to go on an indefinite strike this September.
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