Teacher pay affects school performance, according to a study by Carol Propper at Imperial College, University of Bristol and Jack Britton at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The English public school system has a centralized pay system for its teachers that results in flat wages across the country, which creates a gap between teacher pay and private sector wages. The researchers found that a 10% increase in the gap between average wage and teacher wage results in an average loss of about 2% in average school performance on the key exams taken at the end of secondary school and a 5% loss in a key metric by which school quality is assessed by the national school regulatory body. They also found that a measure of teaching quality from inspections by the national regulator is lower where wage shocks are higher.
Source: Teacher pay and school productivity: Exploiting wage regulation
