We need to get rid of performance-related pay for teachers

Not the case at the school I am governor at (had Ofsted and church inspection) or the one I work at (just had Ofsted!)

I am genuinely non plussed. I know in theory it exits. don't get me wrong; we have appraisal and some evidence is required to get through the threshold but otherwise it's all just automatic .

Piggy I was a primary governor for four years and we were hauled over the coals by Ofsted in 2013 for not having a clear link between pay progression and pupil attainment.

I am amazed that so may teachers on here seem to be in schools with PRP. My understanding is that the decision about whether to even use it is at the discretion of the head (and his or her governors). I am a governor at one school, have children at two others and work in another..None of them operates a PRP system.

I believe that in a minority or sectors/situations they can be positive, but so often they do not achieve what they were supposedly designed to achieve.

Halle-bloody-fucking-lujan! A voice of reason! I'm so sick to death of the 'everyone else has to suffer this pile of shit at work so why shouldn't teachers?'

Well, I spend so much time every year listening to my non-teacher friends bitching about their performance related pay, so why should I suddenly think it's such a great and fair system in teaching? I defy anyone to go through their entire career without thinking the performance related pay system has done them over without lube on several occasions.

DH had one year when the average inflationary pay award was announced as 2.6%. He got he dreaded "You have exceeded all your targets but you have been red-circled as you are at the top of your pay grade so will have no pay rise at all".

I worked for a FMCG company who introduced a 'fair and objective' system based on achievement of objectives. My numerical score said that I'd categorically either achieved or exceeded all my objectives but because my 'face didn't fit' I got Needs Improvement. Lucky for me I got to walk away with a bit fat payoff (which paid my way through PGCE) and the company announced the factory was closing three months after I'd left.

Performance related pay is a deeply flawed system wherever it is implemented and is no better or worse than automatic pay progression. It always has to have a degree of human intervention which means it is always open to fudging based on the whims of a manager.

Let's face it though - teaching just isn't an attractive profession in any way, shape or form at the moment.

I work in primary so slightly different targets, but the same effect. Mine one year were set at "100% of children achieving level 4B" ( the old SATS expected level. When I explained that some children had joined me working at level 2, I was informed that the school couldn't be seen to be setting targets which were below the expected level for each child! So I was expected to produce 4 years progress in nine months. No wonder year 6 teachers are hard to find!

One year a kid who barely showed up and when there hardly did any work got an E. Everyone else got the A*-C the sector holds dear. On that kid alone, despite extensive documentation showing efforts by myself, her tutor and the school as a whole taking action as she was failing all over the place, I was denied pay progression. This is sadly, pretty common.

Needless to say I found another school to work in.

Bubbles I absolutely didn't expect them to change the meetings for me, just stating the fact that I was clocking up 9 hours 'overtime' every half term (my head likes to do half termly governors meetings instead of the required termly) for a role that a) fell to me because no one else wanted to do it because b) it is unpaid. It seems to me that it is a shame that parents have such unrealistic requirements of teachers that poor relationships are fostered. Believe it or not, I like to have good relationships with parents.

I came relatively late to teaching and all bar one of my previous jobs have been minimum wage, it may surprise you to know. For the ten or so jobs I've had in the last twenty years that are not teaching, I have always been paid for any time spent in work over my allotted hours.

Pensions are a perk, yes. However, as a part time teacher I cancelled my contributions because they took me to below £1k take home a month.

Again, I love my job when I'm in the class with the children. All the rubbish around it and the sheer weight of time that I spend actually on site and unpaid, without even counting the time I spend working at home, means that I am handing my notice in. I do have a degree, a first in fact, and am heading back to minimum wage work where I felt more valued and less pressured!

Performance management isn't so much of an issue in professions where performance can actually be measured.
But in the sector I deal with, measurement is also darned hard to measure have the public ranted about you on facebook or not, have they contacted the office with queries, have they bothered to vote
but there are ways - it takes lateral thinking and sharing best practice
but it can be done
in ways that comply with
Realisable

Understandable
Measurable
but in a school situation, exam grades will often not be a good target

NoSwsF: what a great shame you didn’t manage to persuade the Governors about their strategic role. Why did you expect them to change the times of meetings for you? I guess many of them worked full time and maybe had a struggle to get to meetings. It seems a shame that teachers and Governors have such a poor relationship in some schools.

Many part time people work more hours and who goes home on the dot of their allotted time? Even, it may surprise you to know, people who earn the minimum wage.

Also starting salaries for an NQT don’t have to be at the rock bottom salary. Many teachers, historically, have not had a 2:1 or better. In fact some don’t have degrees at all. High quality graduates are a decent phenomenon as a requirement.

Anyone who leaves teaching and goes into another job will, almost certainly, be subject to performance management. Also the pensions are still way better than many in the private sector and it is largely the private sector who pays for them, not the individual teacher.

pengwynn - the average graduate salary in the UK is about £23k

I also gave up hope on governors when I became a teacher governor. Again, contracted to finish at 12, governor meetings rarely finished before 9. We had parent governors raise complaints along the lines of speeding cars on the road outside school and the fact that their children ran along the road athome time instead of walking nicely... after the children had been dismissed and turned over to the care of their parent.

I have extensive experience with setting and managing bonus schemes, both inside and outside of the education sector.

I believe that in a minority or sectors/situations they can be positive, but so often they do not achieve what they were supposedly designed to achieve.

When I was involved in HR and setting bonuses in the education sector, every now and then someone would suggest teachers should receive bonuses based upon various criteria, which would usually include: student progress, student results, student and or parent feedback, etc. I am proud to say, that on my watch, none of these was ever implemented. This didn’t gain me many friends and I was looked upon as being very backward thinking. On occasions I would direct others to various research that shows that individual bonus schemes do not usually work.

In nearly all circumstances I suggest making fair salary schemes that do not include individual bonuses.

NB: I have never worked in a K-12 school, but can’t see my opinions changing if I ever did.

This is one of the many reasons I'm leaving teaching. In actual fact, i handedmy notice in a week ago Monday and HR have called or emailed every day since to ask me to change my mind and said they won't accept my resignation till Wednesday, and I'm in primary not secondary.

I work fivemornings a week, my contracted hours are until 12 every day. Staff meetings are aftrschool so I stay until 5/6 every week on that day -5/6 unpaid hours. At least three times a half term we hold after school
Events which finish at 7 so that's 3x7 lots of unpaid hours, and that's without staying later for displays etc and the work I put in at home.

For a PP to say that PRP should be based on whether we encourage pupils to go to after school clubs and whether we organise school trips is ridiculous. Out of this world. For a start, do you think teachers are paid to hold clubs? Many teachers have children in childcare, so you'd be expecting them to pay for childcare while working for free. School trips - if I want to organise a school trip (which I have done) I don't get given classroom time to do that, I have to go after school or atthe weekend, again unpaid.

Inmy previous school, we got given one pack of paper per half term. Everything else, more paper, laminating pouches, pens, everything came out of our own pockets. For inspection week I spent £40 on resources alone. They went through nursery teachers on such a frequent basis that there were no resources there because they were taken with them, so I had to buy dressing up clothes, books, paints, you name it I bought it.

This year my teacher friend got her 1% pay rise which amounted to £22 extra a month. Because this pushed her over a bracket with the pension company, she is now £12 worse off a month.

I work(ed) in a school with 4 teachers. In three years, 4 have been off with anxiety and depression, 3 long term. Of those three, two quit in the end and now I'm quitting. Of the many many supply staff that covered those 4, some have been good, two were kept on a longer term and ended up turning down the offered permanent jobs citing stress.

Teaching is a crap profession which is a shame because he job itself is fabulous.

Governors not governess!

Kitty I agree with you, this is the sort of thing governess think when they don't really have a clue about what actually goes on. As if SMART objectives are somehow a new an foolproof idea. In my opinion there's nothing wrong in principle with performance related pay (not that this actually really exists in schools) but it's the problems that piece relays above that makes the whole system a mockery. Turning children in to statistics quite often just doesn't work and thus it is very difficult to set decent targets.

In the school where I'm a governor pay progression is decided by setting staff SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, timebound) objectives. If they meet their objectives they progress. If they don't then they don't. Simples.

Oh my goodness, just stopped laughing about this! This is so off the mark and typical of some Governors to spout this rubbish

And to go on and on about your Staff’s fair targets makes it even worse. Are they set by FFT? ALPs? Our school had an INSET from FFT where they admitted that the ‘similar schools and pupils’ were often made up and never existed and only showed a ‘likelihood’ of matching scores. Thank goodness my Head scrapped them very shortly after but sadly most schools still use them and not only that, but they bump another grade on top of that to make them ‘aspirational’.
What about ‘Life without levels’? How do your Staff do this uniformly across all subjects when OfQUAL don’t even know yet. What happens when some pupils are tutored and some are not? What about the ground work a previous teacher put in in past years? What about a teacher taking over from a poorer teacher? Makes a complete mockery of the term SMART and I truly feel for your Staff. You say most meet them but that is not all and I wonder how anxious this all makes them feel.

noblegiraffe I think PRP should go in its current form.

My school sets two targets for pupils a minimum (their actual target) and a higher . All pupils are expected to reach their higher which is the 25 percentile - so only 25% expected to reach it.
I have a set 5, core subject. All predicted 3 as minimum target (as in target) and 4 as higher. In the mock exams three got a 5, the rest 3. As a result of this I am on a special plan where I have to provide every lesson plan, have had to meet with various SLT to explain what I am doing and have extra lessons with these pupils every night. Based on these results I will fail PRP. Yet every child would have reached their actual target ...

My dd is in year 12 at school and from her starting secondary in year 7 to now I've seen how the recruitment crisis has affected her school badly. Kind of started off ok and has got progressively worse. No chemistry teacher during her gcse year, the PE teacher is teaching French, four different English supply teachers in year 10 as they all kept quitting (2 walked out mid lesson, one after throwing a pen at a kid and then collapsing on the floor crying). Her HOY said they just couldn't find science or maths teachers.

My Sister was a science teacher and was told she would have to teach maths as well, so she quit and hasn't gone back to teaching. Decided to be a dinner lady at the local primary instead.

My friends husband hasn't progressed up his pay band as he's been told all the kids in a certain class need to pass their gcse/or maybe make enough progress (can't remember which) and one kid arsed about all year and didn't work - so he doesn't get his pay rise. How is that fair?