On October 7, 2025, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the international survey results of TALIS 2024 in Singapore. Titled The State of Teaching Today, the report highlights emerging challenges and developments for teachers in a rapidly changing era.
I. Overview of the TALIS Project
The Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), following the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), is another flagship international education research initiative by the OECD. It examines teachers' professional development, teaching practices, and working environments to provide policy recommendations for governments worldwide. Since 2008, four rounds have been conducted, with participating countries and regions growing from 24 to 55.
Shanghai has participated in the survey in 2015, 2018, and 2024. Results from the first two rounds revealed strengths and characteristics of Shanghai's teachers, offering valuable international insights for local education development and significantly enhancing the global influence of education in Shanghai and China as a whole.
Selected through international sampling, 205 junior high school principals and 4,078 teachers in Shanghai completed the survey in April 2024, with the sample providing good representation of junior high school teachers.
II. Key Findings of Shanghai's TALIS 2024 Survey
The survey indicates that Shanghai's junior high school teachers rank among the global top in multiple indicators, including age structure, professional learning, high-quality teaching, new technology adoption, school climate, quality resource support, and professional attractiveness—outperforming major OECD economies.
1. Favorable Teacher Workforce Structure
The average age of Shanghai's junior high school teachers is 39.5 years, 5 years younger than the OECD average, making them one of the youngest teaching cohorts globally. With an average teaching experience of 16.2 years, 21.4% of teachers have less than 5 years of service—surpassing the OECD average of 17.9% and representing a 5.1-percentage-point increase from 2018, indicating rapid workforce renewal. Additionally, 22.4% of Shanghai's junior high school teachers hold master's degrees or above, a 13.3-percentage-point surge over the past decade.
2. Sustained Enhancement of Professional Learning
Some 92.4% of Shanghai's teachers rate their pre-service education as high-quality. In terms of induction training, Shanghai has the highest participation rate in formal onboarding activities (91.4%), and all local schools have implemented a teacher mentorship system. Shanghai's teachers also lead the world in in-service professional learning participation, with content covering traditional areas as well as fast-growing fields like digital technology and students' emotional competence. Most notably, Shanghai's teachers demonstrate the strongest willingness to engage in professional learning globally, with particularly prominent demand for digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) training.
3. Explicit Instruction as Core, with Focus on Thinking Stimulation and Adaptive Teaching
Over 90% of Shanghai's teachers regularly use various explicit instruction methods. An increasing number employ student-engagement strategies, including encouraging questioning, group activities, and assigning critical thinking tasks. Teachers prioritize adapting teaching to student needs, with over 90% considering learners' progress across all instructional stages. More than 90% also emphasize students' social-emotional development and express confidence in supporting this aspect. In student assessment, compared to 2018, the proportion of teachers who regularly or always have students self-assess progress jumped by 35.4 percentage points to 78.8%, while those who observe students' task processes and provide immediate feedback rose by 9.7 percentage points to 92.7%—both far exceeding the OECD averages of 47.5% and 80.7%.
4. Active Embrace of Digital Technology and AI
Some 53.5% of Shanghai's teachers use AI for various teaching tasks, well above the OECD average of 36.3%. They strongly recognize AI's positive impacts: 96.8% believe it boosts learning interest, 95.5% that it develops planning and monitoring skills, 94.7% that it promotes effective collaboration, and 93.4% that it enhances academic performance. At the same time, teachers express concerns about potential drawbacks, including online content plagiarism (79.0%), health risks (70.7%), reduced in-person interaction (69.4%), and distraction (66.3%).
5. Positive Professional School Climate
Shanghai's teachers value in-depth professional collaboration with colleagues, spending 4.4 hours weekly on team cooperation—1.3 hours more than the OECD average. The city has the world's highest rates of peer classroom observations with feedback and collective learning, with the proportion of teachers participating in monthly collective professional learning surging by 41 percentage points. Interpersonal relations in schools are strong: 90% of teachers affirm their principals' professional leadership, 98.6% report harmonious teacher-student relationships, and 99.3% note that teachers prioritize students' holistic development—all ranking among the top globally.
6. High Classroom Autonomy and Teaching Goal Achievement
Around 80% of teachers have significant autonomy in student assessment, curriculum implementation, and learning objective selection—exceeding the OECD average. While autonomy in curriculum and institutional decision-making remains below the OECD average, it has improved significantly from the previous round. Over 60% of teachers are confident in achieving diverse classroom goals, with more than 90% capable of stimulating cognitive engagement, providing learning feedback, and delivering clear instruction. Additionally, 80% of teachers report high teaching self-efficacy. Compared to OECD peers, Shanghai's teachers show greater confidence in reducing achievement gaps and motivating learning interest. They spend 82.4% of class time on instruction—far above the 74.9% average in developed economies—with minimal time spent on discipline and administrative tasks, making Shanghai one of the regions with the highest classroom efficiency globally.
7. Improved Educational Resource Allocation
The proportion of Shanghai's schools constrained in delivering quality teaching by issues such as shortage of qualified teachers, understaffing, and inadequate teaching spaces is significantly lower than the OECD average. Only 4.3% of junior high school principals reported being hindered by a lack of qualified teachers—the lowest among all TALIS 2024 participants and well below the OECD average of 23.1%. Compared to TALIS 2018, constraints related to insufficient teaching spaces and hardware facilities have improved markedly over six years.
8. Rising Social Status and Professional Attractiveness
Over the past decade, the proportion of teachers perceiving their profession as socially respected has risen by 24.4 percentage points—the largest increase globally. Some 70% of teachers consider the profession respected, outperforming most countries and regions. Meanwhile, respect from policymakers (73.3%) and the media (68.7%) has increased by 19.7 and 12.2 percentage points respectively over six years. Professional attractiveness remains strong: 93.1% of teachers chose teaching as their first career— the highest globally. Only 5.6% of teachers under 30 and 7.0% aged 30-49 intend to leave the profession within five years, far below the OECD averages of 20.4% and 15.0%.
Authors: Zhu Xiaohu, Xu Jinjie
