When I talk to teachers in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Thailand, Rwanda, Uganda, I often get asked how much a teacher earns in the UK. This is a really difficult question to answer. I mean, it is easy, there is a published list of the salary bands for teachers in government schools in the UK. So I can find that number for an entry level classroom teacher and I can multiply it by the exchange rate to give a figure in the local currency. Except, if I do that, I tell the truth whilst leaving my interlocutors with a false understanding. Because those figures are enormous, and they immediately think of what that money would mean for them. And that’s not how it works.
One thing to consider is the comparison between these roles. Now a teacher is a teacher, and having taught in all of these countries, yep, they are basically the same. Except they’re not. It’s not that it’s harder in one place than the other, it’s just that they are different. It is possible for a classroom in the UK (with people in it) to be silent. I don’t think this ever can happen in Sri Lanka – not because the people are unruly, just because it is a noisy country, the windows are open, the dogs are barking, the bus horns are going crazy, the monsoon rain is deafening, the chanting from the nearby temple / mosque / church is loud. Teacher attendance and punctuality requirements are significantly more stringent in the UK than in Sri Lanka. Female Sri Lankan teachers need to wear a sari (they should be paid danger money for that!!). Other jobs will have even greater differences in the nature of the role in different places, so comparing them can be a little fraught.
The cost of living in the UK is significantly higher than in most parts of Asia and Africa. So I can look up on the Tesco website the cost of a loaf of bread and we can compare that to the cost of a loaf of bread locally. But that doesn’t really work either. Because what is a cheap staple in one country might not be in another. That’s fine, we can handle complexity. I can talk about rents in the UK. Except that doesn’t work either. In many parts of Asia and Africa renting isn’t that common. People own land, or they don’t have to pay for it, or something. But getting land is reasonably affordable. And building a house on it is reasonably affordable. Especially since building codes aren’t quite the same. So often in Sri Lanka, people will build the first few rooms and live in them while they save up enough money (or sell some gold, or get a loan, etc) to buy the materials and labour to then build the next bit. Lots of people live in places that are effectively building sites in very slow progress. Mortgages don’t really work in the same way. And I don’t understand enough about any of the systems to be able to make reasonable comparisons or adjustments. And regardless of how you finance the right to live in the place, you then need to make sure the place is kitted out appropriately. Is an oven provided, or needed at all? Do you need a washing machine? Does the place need to be cooled or heated? How do you keep it clear of pests? How do you dispose of waste? Does that cost money?
And I mentioned selling gold. Wealth, in the form of assets are held differently in different countries (bank account, gold jewellery, stocks and shares, pension funds, etc). And the liquidity of these varies. In many places the gold that is given to a bride for her wedding is a source of wealth to be pawned or sold in an emergency. It’s much harder to get ready cash from a toaster oven (if you happen to live in a place where that is the wedding gift of choice.)
The cost of living is also affected by the governmental services that are provided. Do you need to pay to see a decent doctor? How costly is education (school fees, books, materials, uniforms, school meals, transport to and from school, other school expenses)? And related to this is how you respond to economic shocks. Can you simply get a loan? Do you have insurance that pays out in the event of a catastrophe? Do you have a cow that gives milk (a regular income) and can then be sold in extremis to pay for emergency medical bills etc? Other services and infrastructure matter too. How expensive is a 20 min bus ride, or a 10 mile bus ride, etc? How expensive is the fuel you need for your private vehicle (if you have one) and what sort of mileage do you get for that fuel and what sort of distances are you having to travel on a weekly basis? How much is your mobile phone bill for calls and data each month?
From a social point of view things vary as well. Is it the norm for people to go out for dinner once a week (or 5 times a week or twice a year)? And if you do go out for dinner (or to a pub, or a coffee shop, etc) to socialise with friends, what sort of cost does that incur? And can you walk there, or do you have to drive / get a bus / get a taxi? Because if you think of living your life in a different society because it will be cheaper for you, you need to ensure the quality of your life is going to be the same, or, if it is going to decline, it’ll decline in ways you are prepared for. But to move somewhere only to discover the only way you can make and maintain friendships in this new place is by going to a pub and spending £20 once a week, then this becomes not the luxury it might initially appear, but a necessity. The same function may be served by a £1 cup of tea from a tea stall in the market square in a different country.
And within any country, or village, or street, there are different people with different levels of wealth. How much one person earns and spends and saves is very different from what someone else earns and spends and saves, even if the two people appear statistically to be exactly the same.
Of course there are economists and websites who do calculations on cost of living and average incomes and purchasing power etc, but they’ll struggle with all the same things, they’ll just smooth them out by making some assumptions that they plug into a model with very large datasets representing lots of different households.
So the easy answer for my friends in Sri Lanka is that teachers in the UK earn an absolute shedload more than teachers in Sri Lanka. The more complex answer is that the streets in the UK are not paved with gold, and poverty does exist and is real (even among people who work). However, I do believe, from a poverty / wealth point of view, that one is much better off, on average, in the UK than in Sri Lanka. One of the indicators for this is the amount of foreign remittances sent to Sri Lanka from Sri Lankans working in the UK. But I don’t think it is as easy a life as some might think it is, mind you, neither is looking after a family as a teacher in Sri Lanka right now.
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