Higher pay for teachers is among the demands of unions behind recent protests in France, alongside more staff and better working conditions.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Their concerns reflect a wider challenge across Europe: making teaching financially attractive. Teachers are generally paid less than similarly educated workers, according to the OECD, and experts warn that salaries are not competitive enough to attract and retain staff.
So, which countries pay the highest teacher salaries? And how do teacher salaries rank when purchasing power is taken into account?
Teacher salaries vary widely across Europe, according to the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2026 report. Among the 28 education systems compared, actual salaries for primary school teachers in 2025 ranged from €18,669 in Turkey to €74,086 in Denmark.
Actual salaries refer to the annual average earnings received by full-time teachers aged 25-64 before taxes. They include all work-related payments, such as the base salary, performance-related bonuses, extra pay for holidays, and other payments.
Iceland (€73,752), Ireland (€69,747), Germany (€69,453) and Austria (€65,851) complete the top five, all above €65,000.
Teachers in Norway (€59,453), Belgium’s Flemish Community (€59,105), Northern Ireland (€57,838), Scotland (€57,619), Belgium’s French Community (€55,689), Wales (€52,894), Finland (€52,272) and England (€50,727) also earn more than €50,000.
Major economies: Germany highest, Italy lowest
Among the major European economies, Germany pays teachers the most. The four UK nations follow Germany, all with salaries above €50,000. Teachers earn €41,968 in France, while Italy has the lowest salaries at €32,100.
A figure for Spain is not available.
Several countries below €25,000
Actual teacher salaries are below €25,000 in seven countries: Czechia (€24,457), Hungary (€23,181), Slovakia (€22,936), Romania (€20,805), Latvia (€20,516), Greece (€18,746) and Turkey (€18,669).
“Large differences in European teacher salaries reflect differences in national income levels, salary structures, qualifications and career progression, rather than one single factor,” Daniel Wisniewski, secretary general of the European Federation of Education Employers, told Euronews Business.
“Differences in taxation, social benefits and allowances also complicate comparisons between countries.”
Teachers at upper secondary schools generally earn more than those at primary schools, except in Turkey and Northern Ireland. Salaries are the same at both levels in Scotland, Lithuania and Estonia.
Upper secondary teacher salaries range from €17,615 in Turkey to €93,938 in Iceland. They are also above €80,000 in Denmark (€85,999) and Germany (€80,163).
The largest gaps in favour of upper secondary teachers are seen in Iceland, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Austria and Germany, where they are paid at least €10,000 more than primary school teachers.
What can teachers buy with their salaries?
Salary figures alone don’t tell the whole story. If prices are high in a country, even relatively high teacher salaries could buy less than in another country.
To account for differences in living costs, Euronews Business adjusted the OECD’s salary figures in national currencies using Eurostat’s purchasing power parities for household final consumption expenditure.
The results are expressed in purchasing power standards (PPS), a common unit that can buy the same amount of goods and services in each country. The PPS measure uses average EU prices as a benchmark, while the OECD expresses its purchasing power comparisons in purchasing-power-adjusted US dollars.
On this basis, teachers in Germany have the highest purchasing power — meaning their gross salaries can buy the most goods and services — among the education systems compared.
Primary school teachers’ average annual pay after adjusting for price differences is lowest at 21,456 PPS in Greece and highest at 64,143 PPS in Germany.
Wisniewski noted that sizeable differences remain after adjusting for purchasing power, showing that living costs cannot by themselves explain the salary variation.
“National pay policies, qualification requirements, career scales, experience and the earnings available in alternative graduate professions also contribute significantly to the remaining gap,” he said.
Germany is followed by Austria (58,265 PPS), Denmark (53,036 PPS), Ireland (51,226 PPS) and Belgium’s Flemish Community (50,846 PPS), completing the top five education systems where primary school teachers’ salaries buy the most.
At the other end of the ranking, Greece is joined by Latvia (24,670 PPS), Slovakia (26,916 PPS), Czechia (27,349 PPS) and Estonia (28,197 PPS), where primary school teachers’ salaries buy the least among the education systems compared.
For upper secondary school teachers, Germany also tops the overall purchasing power ranking at 74,034 PPS, while Greece ranks lowest at 23,289 PPS.
Among Europe’s largest economies compared, Italy comes last at 36,964 PPS.
Three UK nations follow Germany, while England (43,091 PPS) ranks below France (46,058 PPS).
Professor Mihails Hazans of the University of Latvia noted that countries at the top of the teacher salary rankings in PPS also have GDP per capita well above the EU average.
“The factors behind these differences include traditions and social norms, strength of teachers’ trade unions, as well as actual workload covered by the statutory salaries,” he told Euronews Business.
Significant changes in PPS rankings
When nominal salary and PPS rankings are compared, some countries change position significantly. For primary school teachers, the biggest risers are Turkey, up six places, and Poland (up five). Belgium’s French Community and Romania both move up four places.
This means that these countries rank higher once differences in price levels are taken into account.
Iceland records the biggest fall, dropping from second place to 12th. Sweden and Estonia also fall by three places.
The OECD’s purchasing power rankings, which are based on US international dollars, differ from Euronews Business’s calculations using Eurostat conversion rates.
Turkey ranks significantly higher in the OECD rankings. It is 11th for primary school teachers and 17th for upper secondary school teachers.
Pay is not competitive enough to attract and retain teachers
Daniel Wisniewski pointed out that across OECD countries, teachers’ actual salaries at primary and general secondary levels average only 87–95% of the earnings of tertiary-educated workers, meaning that similarly qualified people can often earn more outside teaching.
“Teacher pay is not consistently competitive enough to attract and retain teachers across Europe,” he said.
Jelmer Evers, European director at the European Trade Union Committee for Education, suggested that teachers should be paid at least as much as other workers with comparable qualifications and responsibilities, reflecting the complexity and societal importance of their profession.
Source: www.euronews.com
