Chapter 1 investigates teacher wages in the South African labour market, in order to ascertain
whether teaching is a financially attractive profession, and whether high ability individuals are
likely to be attracted to the teaching force. Making use of labour force survey data for the years
2000 to 2007 and for 2010, wage returns to educational attainment and experience are measured
for teachers, non-teachers and non-teaching professionals. The returns to higher levels of
education for teachers are significantly lower than for non-teachers and non-teaching
professionals. Similarly, the age-wage profile for teachers is significantly flatter than it is for
non-teachers, indicating that there is little wage incentive to remain in teaching beyond roughly
12 years. The profession is therefore unlikely to attract high ability individuals who are able to
collect attractive remuneration elsewhere in the labour market.
Chapter 2 deals with explicit teacher incentives in education. It provides a technical analysis
of Holstrom and Milgrom’s (1991) multitasking model and Kandel and Lazear’s (1992) model
of peer pressure as an incentivising force, highlighting aspects of these models that are
necessary to ensure that incentive systems operate successfully. The chapter provides an
overview of incentive systems internationally, discussing elements of various systems that may
be useful in a South African setting. The prospects for the introduction of incentives in South
Africa are discussed, with the conclusion that the systems in place at the moment are not
conducive to introducing teacher incentives. There are however models in Chile and Brazil, for
example, that may work effectively in a South African setting, given their explicit handling of
inequality within the education system. Chapter 3 makes use of hierarchical linear modelling
to investigate which teacher characteristics impact significantly on student performance. Using
data from the SACMEQ III study of 2007, an interesting and potentially important finding is
that younger teachers are better able to improve the mean mathematics performance of their
students. Furthermore, younger teachers themselves perform better on subject tests than do
their older counterparts. Changes in teacher education in the late 1990s and early 2000s may
explain the differences in the performance of younger teachers relative to their older
counterparts. However, further investigation is required to fully understand these differences.