Teachers doing off-hour work to get higher salaries 

ArmInfo. The Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports (MECS) of Armenia is introducing a new system of payment for part-time teachers and is  also changing the process of assigning qualification categories to  teaching staff.

As the head of the department, Zhanna Andreasyan, stated on February  6 during a regular government meeting, presenting a draft decision,  teachers will have to undergo certification and receive points that  give the right to a salary increase. Currently, the increase is  calculated only on the basis of teaching hours (in schools where  there are more of these hours). Now the increase will be calculated  on the basis of all hours (including in schools where they work  part-time). This, as the minister noted, is important for rural  schools, where the practice of working part-time is especially  widespread.

Touching upon the results of the voluntary certification program, the  head of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of  Armenia stated that over the past four years, more than 6,100  teachers, or about 20% of teachers working in Armenia, have taken  advantage of it and are already receiving increased salaries.

In addition, the minister pointed out, it is important that within  the framework of this program, from 2023 to 2024, 614 teachers  without higher education who have overcome the time threshold for  voluntary certification were given the opportunity to continue their  work.

, Zhanna Andreasyan said.

In general, according to her, 8.9 billion drams were allocated from  the budget for 4 teacher incentive programs in 2024.

, the minister said.

The current draft of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture  of the Republic of Armenia proposes to amend the process of assigning  qualification categories - in the near future, the document will be  accepted exclusively in electronic form. According to the new  amendments, the 1st and 2nd categories will also be assigned  automatically depending on the certification results.