Scottish teachers have some of the lowest starting salaries in Europe the OECD has found

That means teachers in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Itlay, Ireland, Slovenia and Korea have higher salaries when they start work.

The report comes just weeks after Scottish teachers accepted a 1.5 per cent increase backdated to April this year, with an additional one per cent uplift from April next year.

Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's director of education and skills said , overall, teachers' salaries were "going backwards in real terms" in Scotland.

"Pretty much for the first time in history, the last 10 years have not been so great for teachers in terms of getting more pay," he said.

"Both Scotland and England are actually going backwards in real terms when you look at the salary between 2005 and 2013."

This was not the case for most countries, where salaries have gone up in real terms, the OECD found.

He added: "If you add all that up, actually teachers are quite wealthy relative to their colleagues in other countries, but not relative to workers with similar qualifications.

"You want to attract the best and brightest into the profession and that, I think, is really the challenge."

The report found the salaries of teachers in England and Scotland are comparatively low at both the start and end of their careers.

After 10 years of experience, salaries "increase considerably", but this then slows down again so that, with the exception of pre-primary teachers in England, salaries at the top of the scale at all levels of education in England and Scotland are below the OECD average.

While the starting salary for a primary school teacher was given as US $27,768 in England and US $27,576 in Scotland, the OECD average was US $29,807.

The figures were the same in England and Scotland for a teacher starting secondary school while the OECD average was US $31,013.

Chris Keates

Chris Keates, general secretary of teachers' union the NASUWT, said: "The report confirms the problems the NASUWT has highlighted consistently regarding teachers' pay.

"Starting salaries are 20% lower than other graduate professions. At the end of their careers the remuneration does not reflect the years of dedication and commitment.

"It should come as no surprise that low-pay, year-on-year pay cuts and excessive workload have resulted in over two-thirds of teachers having seriously considered leaving the profession, and one in 10 of newly qualified teachers who are only in their first term say they will be leaving within 12 months."

The report also found that the UK has some of the largest class sizes of all the countries analysed.

While the OECD average for primary schools was 21, it was 27 in the UK, behind only China (37), Chile (29) and Israel (28).

But in secondary schools the UK, at 20 pupils per teacher, was below the OECD average of 24.

Mr Schleicher said an "unusual" finding was that while primary school class sizes are very big, teachers have very little time for doing things other than teaching, such as lesson preparation or professional development.

"Most countries it goes the other way round," he said. "Japan, Korea, China, have large classes but they use that resource to give teachers more time for other things than teaching.

"There's a lot of effort in many countries to make the choice - give teachers more kids to teach, but we use those resources to create a work environment where teachers have more room to sort of foster their profession as a whole, and that is where the UK is an exception, according to this data."

As well as analysing the 34 OECD member countries, the report also takes data from Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.