Czech teachers' salaries should rise by 9% in 2021, says Education Minister

Prague, Aug 19 (CTK) – Education Minister Robert Plaga (ANO) will demand a year-on-year rise of 12.5 billion crowns for the salaries in the education sector in the Czech Republic in 2021, he said in an interview with CTK today.

The teachers’ salaries should rise by 9 percent as of January, on which he agreed with Finance Minister Alena Schillerová (for ANO), and the salaries of non-teaching staff by 7 percent, Plaga said.

This year, the budget of the Education Ministry is about 214 billion crowns, 148 billion of which go to the regional school system, that is nurseries, primary and secondary schools and colleges.

Plaga said teachers definitely deserved the pay rise.

The coalition government of ANO and the Social Democrats (CSSD) pledged in its policy statement that it would raise the teachers’ average salaries to 150 percent of their 2017 level by 2021. Next year, they should get a monthly gross salary of 47,000 crowns.

Last time, their salaries increased in January 2020, by 10 percent.

The average monthly salary of a teacher was 38,951 crowns in the first quarter of this year, compared to the national average of 34,077 crowns in the Czech Republic, while a non-teaching school employee earned 21,589 crowns on average.

The 2020 state budget deficit rose to the record 500 billion crowns due to the consequences of the coronavirus crisis.

However, Plaga said the state should not economize at the expense of the education sector.

He added that universities, too, deserve more money. Their budget for this year is some 27.4 billion crowns.

Plaga said in June they should get up to another billion more.