12th December 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A survey commissioned by the Varkey Foundation education charity has shown that in China and Malaysia the profession of teaching is most respected by the general public. Reported on the BBC, 35 countries around the world were surveyed, and the UK is in the upper half of the list, ahead of the United States, France and Germany.
The survey described a ‘culture of respect’, which seems to be particularly strong in Asia; Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, India and Singapore also all feature in the top ten. There appears to be higher levels of pessimism in Europe and South America about the level of respect shown by students towards their teachers. In China, 81% of people believe that students respect their teachers, compared with an international average of 36% among the 35,000 people surveyed.
A correlation was found between the perceived levels of respect and the performances of students in International tests. This has leant weight to the theory that an education system performs better when the teachers in the system are respected. This is possibly because it is easier to attract talented individuals into the teaching profession when they see schools which are well organised and well respected.
One of the questions asked was whether people see teaching as a desirable profession for their own children, and this was an area where the UK did not do so well. The majority of parents in China, India and Ghana said that they would encourage their children to take up teaching, but only 23% of UK adults said the same thing, the ninth lowest in the survey.