LIZDA surveyed 10,000 teachers.
Five years ago, educators assessed their professional life quality on a scale of 1 to 10 at 6.85. A year ago, the score was 6.33.
Right now, educators have assessed their quality of work life at 5.25. This is 1.08 points less than a year ago.
More than half of respondents consider that they are not paid for a number of responsibilities - meetings, cooperation with parents and other educators, preparations for olympiads, competitions and organization of events.
Teachers pointed to shortcomings in the current teacher pay model, such as a different pay for the same workload in different educational institutions. This data will be used when creating the new pay model.
“Of course, we would be very happy to be like in Estonia, where there is a very high degree of trust and autonomy [for educational institutions]. Until then, let us be honest, Latvia has a long way to go,” said Inga Vanaga, head of the trade union.
The survey also found that 27.3% of teachers suffered from professional burn-out syndrome, 19.3% experienced exhaustion, unwillingness to continue work, anger, 8% felt hopeless, 6.5% felt helpless.
Only 3.9% of the teachers surveyed have seen progress in working life.
Work is ongoing on the creation of the new teacher pay model, which is scheduled to be completed by April but to be introduced from 1 September 2022.
