ABSTRACT
Learning from 'best practices' has become popular rhetoric among politicians and policy makers. Using a recently attempted teacher salary reform in Kyrgyzstan as a case in point, this chapter aims to show the limitations of transnational policy transfer between educational systems that are structurally different. It examines two globally prevalent teacher remuneration systems, the first of which was attempted to be transferred onto the second. The first type of remuneration is found in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, which we will refer to as the 'workload system', and the second is a legacy from the Soviet Union called the stavka system, which has remained ubiquitous in the post-Soviet region. The Soviet compensation system in the education sector was highly fragmented and complex. In the Soviet era, the teacher 'compensation package' also included periodic bonuses and non-pecuniary benefits. The implementation of the 2011 reform came at the precipice of teacher discontent when teachers were earning historically low wages.
