By Rebecca Klein
Teachers should be held in the same regard as highly respected professionals like doctors, according to Sunny Varkey, the chairman of the Varkey Gems Foundation, which seeks to improve education for underprivileged youth.
But even if teachers were held in the same esteem as doctors, it would be a long way before they got paid like them.
As part of the Varkey Gems Foundation’s recent survey on the social status of teachers around the world, the group included a chart of the average salaries of teachers, converted to U.S. dollars.
The salaries range by the tens of thousands –- and somewhat surprisingly, the United States doesn’t fair half bad.
In his forward to the foundation’s Teacher Status Index, Varkey calls for teacher salary