Page 5 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Dana Ondrušková , Richard Pospíšil: A Comparative Study of Teacher’s Salary Formula
Methods, Case of Regional School Funding

INTRODUCTION:

Public school systems have limited resources with which they try to achieve their
objectives. The overall budget level of school funding to provide a high quality
education for everyone matters, but the proper allocation strategies are likely to be
more important. The mechanisms through which school funding is governed,
distributed and monitored play a key role in ensuring that resources are evenly
directed to where they can make the most difference.

As per International Student Assessment research: „Among the countries with
higher overall levels of school funding, there is no observed relationship between
cumulative spending per student and student´s performance”. What matters more is
not the aggregate level of expenditure, but rather the design of educational policies
and the mechanisms through which funds are allocated (OECD, 2017b). Whereas
even in countries where the overall level of funding for schools is comparatively
high, there may be underinvestment in certain parts of the school system, which can
result in serious educational inequalities (Yilmaz & Jafarova, 2019). Thus when
talking about school funding it would be a mistake to focus merely on either budget
increase or cost savings. The thing is to implement the strategies to achieve greater
efficiency in a school funding system that would go in line with a focus on
improving quality and equity. Various educational funding policies aim at reshaping
the organisational structures and changing institutional habits in school systems. In
general, it takes time to accept the changes and consequently to develop and
implement carefully (Suleymanov, 2020).
In the Czech Republic, there is a number of different sources of funds for school
budgets, depending also on the type of school and level of education. These include
the state budget (coming through the regional budget), additional funding from the
regional budget, additional funding from the municipality budget (especially for
basic schools), funds earned by the school itself, donations and parental
contributions. Since January 2020, the new mechanism used for the distribution of
the assigned funds for funding Czech public schools from the state budget has been
introduced. The newly introduced so called school funding reform focuses on the
setting of the main part of the assigned funds intended for educational work that
include mostly salaries of teachers. It derives from the amount of financial means for
tariff salaries in the given school and additional per capita amounts per teachers. The
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) states that the new method allows
taking into account the real needs of the schools better than the previous formula
funding per pupil. It is applied in nursery, basic and upper secondary schools and
conservatoires.

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