"A teacher shouldn't be poor!" Teachers asked the State Duma to raise their salary to the minimum wage.
Teachers from preschools, schools, and additional and secondary vocational education institutions have called for teachers' base pay to be equalized to the minimum wage. They sent a collective letter to the State Duma Committee on Education.
The legally established minimum wage in Russia for 2026 is 27 093 rubles, teachers' salaries in the regions are much lower. For example, in Vologda Oblast they understood him before 17,1 thousand rubles, and in Karelia it is 6,6 thousand rubles.
Teachers' salaries are increased to the minimum wage by paying for additional workloads: class management, grading notebooks, extracurricular activities, managing classrooms, working with children with special needs, and so on.
“[This] grossly violates the meaning of Article 133 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and the legal position of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, according to which the minimum wage should be provided specifically for fulfilling the work standard, and not due to additional workloads.”— says a letter from a social studies teacher from Makhachkala Bariyat AbulovaThe letter was signed by 422 teachers from different regions of Russia.
The salary includes 18 hours of teaching per week (720 hours per year). The additional workload, according to teachers, leads to rapid burnout and resignation of teachers, as a result— shortage of teachers countrywide.
"Gentlemen “Deputies, the problem is not only ripe, but long overdue”, “A teacher should not be a beggar!”, “There is [money] to support such a number of deputies, but not for a fair salary for teachers?”, — teachers supported the demand on social networks.
The appeal had been in preparation since mid-July. During this time, the teachers collected evidence of their meager salaries—pay slips and employment contracts. After taxes, the average teacher's salary was 25 thousand rubles. Teachers' vacation pay also raises questions - it is impossible to survive on these amounts until the first October salary.
According to the State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a shortage of teachers in Russian schools is 30 percent. Which, with salaries of 25 rubles, isn't surprising.
