Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Share of teachers in secondary education who are qualified

See all data and research on:
Global Education

What you should know about this indicator

  • Trained teachers are essential for delivering quality education — this indicator shows what share of secondary school teachers have the minimum required qualifications.
  • It captures the percentage of lower and upper secondary teachers who have received at least the minimum organized pedagogical training, either pre-service or in-service, required to teach at their level according to national standards.
  • The indicator is calculated by dividing the number of trained teachers in secondary education by the total number of teachers at that level, and multiplying the result by 100.
  • A high value indicates that most students in secondary education are being taught by teachers who are considered pedagogically qualified to teach at that level.
  • The data comes from administrative records collected at the school or national level and typically includes information on teacher training credentials and employment status.
  • This indicator is disaggregated by sex and level of education (lower and upper secondary), allowing for a closer look at training disparities across groups.
  • Limitations arise from the fact that national standards for minimum teacher qualifications vary widely, making it difficult to compare levels of training across countries.
  • Additionally, in many countries, data may not distinguish between subject-specific training and general pedagogical training, which can affect how meaningful the figures are for judging teacher preparedness.

Percentage of teachers by level of education taught (pre-primary, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education) who have at least the minimum academic qualifications required for teaching their subjects at the relevant level in a given country, in a given academic year. A high value indicates that students are being taught by teachers who are academically well qualified in the subjects they teach. For more information, consult the UNESCO Institute of Statistics website: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/

Share of teachers in secondary education who are qualified
Share of qualified teachers in education represent those with the necessary academic qualifications to teach at that level in a given country.
Source
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 1, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1999–2024
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official and trusted source of internationally-comparable data on education, science, culture and communication. As the official statistical agency of UNESCO, the UIS produces a wide range of state-of-the-art databases to fuel the policies and investments needed to transform lives and propel the world towards its development goals. The UIS provides free access to data for all UNESCO countries and regional groupings from 1970 to the most recent year available.

Retrieved on
May 1, 2025
Retrieved from
https://databrowser.uis.unesco.org/resources/bulk
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Education, https://uis.unesco.org/bdds, 2025

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of teachers in secondary education who are qualified”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Natasha Ahuja, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2023) - “Global Education”. Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-teachers-in-secondary-education-who-are-qualified [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of teachers in secondary education who are qualified” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved May 18, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/percentage-of-teachers-in-secondary-education-who-are-qualified