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

Now, only a few years ago there was a different massive problem - NQTs were struggling to find first posts because there were too many teachers. Where did they all go? Did the number entering training gomdown at the point when all everyone was talking about was over supply?

I’m not sure what your point is here @Moggy. Do you think we’re lying about the retention crisis? If you genuinely don’t know, let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time there was an education system. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working. It was staffed by a pretty passionate bunch. They were people who really cared about others and who wanted the best possible outcomes for them.

Then along came a man. We’ll call him Michael, for that was his name. Michael was also pretty passionate and he had Power. He decided that because this education system wasn’t exactly like the one he’d experienced back in the 1950s, it couldn’t possibly be doing any good so he set about changing it.

Now, a sensible person wanting to improve something might think it through, talk to the experts, make ‘A Plan’. They might decide to introduce changes slowly, perhaps consult with the teachers who would be delivering this plan, allow lots of time for exam boards and schools to prepare, but not Michael. Oh no. He made a few rash decisions for the sake of headlines, tried to get his name known for creating a more ‘robust’ system (y’know, so that we might remember that name he next time he applied for a Big Job) and generally went about pissing of all of those passionate people, who found it very hard to speak out because Michael and his cronies criticised them in the press and said they just wanted more money). He also totally screwed with the education of thousands of teenagers, not least the classes of 2014 (changing the English specifications TWICE part way through their course), the class of 2017 (guinea pigs for the new 9-1 English and maths) and 2018 (guinea pigs for all of the other 9-1s)

Alongside this, Michael introduced prp, despite knowing it was going to be impossible to measure progress effectively as he’d messed with the system so much.

So yes, some teachers started leaving, then their friends saw that the leavers seemed happy, so they left. Then graduates started asking around before signing up for teaching courses (seen the threads on the Staffroom? They give brutal accounts of what teaching is like now) and decided it didn’t sound much fun...

So there’s a retention crisis. A serious one. Most teachers aren’t actually against the idea of prp, they just haven’t seen a fair way of measuring performance.

Performance related pay is common in most other professional sectors

And are those sectors experiencing a critical recruitment and retention crisis?

If not, this argument tends to shows that PRP isn't a major factor in retention.

And massive learning curves in the first six (or so) years is common in many careers.

This isn't seeking to bash teachers, btw. It's pointing out where there are commonalities with other careers.

Now, only a few years ago there was a different massive problem - NQTs were struggling to find first posts because there were too many teachers. Where did they all go? Did the number entering training gomdown at the point when all everyone was talking about was over supply?

but you can measure them by how much progress their students are making against their targets, or by whether a more than x% of their form-group are encouraged to do after-school activities, or by whether they contributed to the extra-curricular life of the school by running a club, whether they organised a school outing, or various other more reasonable measure

Ugh. This is ridiculous. The targets are bullshit. Let's be honest about that. I've heard of schools with huge numbers where students have a 9 as their targets. In exams that've never been taken before....
The basis for the targets is such a tangled mess and is different from school to school. That's not really fair. Anyone who thinks this is a fair way of judging teachers does not really understand the profession.

Last year I had 2 classes go through gcse in the same subject. One a really high achieving top set. Almost every student met their target. Many exceeded their target.
The other class had around 10 students in it. I say around because of the social , emotional and behavioural issues which meant some weren't consistently there. They were struggling to get good passes in maths and English. They were never going to do extra MFL. For some of those students, their targets were ridiculous to begin with. I think 2 met their targets.....
I worked harder with the second class. But if they were my only class I could have been refused PRP/ not met my target. To me that's a flaw in the system.

And don't even get me started about encouraging after school activities and running clubs. That REALLY shows a lack of understanding. My best Form tutor work recently has been with a girl with mental health issues which manifest sometimes in behaviour issues. Sometimes she comes to me at break, lunch, before school to let off steam, talk, try to avoid a blow up in a lesson. These meetings aren't recorded or quantified. But they make a difference. That's a form tutor role.

So the form teacher with the top stream dedicated pupils who join every club going (who is already privileged) gets further rewarded and I with a more difficult form group (suicide in 3 families, some living in hostels, 2 in care, 1 School refuser) get the harder job and no pay rise. Lovely!

I have done both; private sector and teaching, in state and indie schools. PRP in my current job is fair, because it relates to how well I do my job. PRP in schools is not fair, because it depends on how well 400 children feel on the day of an exam..... The issue is schools is also that the managers (for want of a better term) are not trained to be managers, and do not generally have any experience of implementing systems like PRP. My current manager in my non-teaching job does and it is checked by their manager too. In school this never happened. It was based on the say so of one person, who unfortunately didn't like me.

It is not performance related pay. It is progression up a payscale based on appraisal. Once you reach the top of the payscale, excellent performance is not rewarded.
No, and appraisal meetings become tedious tick box exercises.

backforgood
In my sector, we are designing appraisal frameworks and trying to make them the default best practice.
It could be done in education too
and these are all 'non proit 'public sector' 'taxpayer funded' roles
where the stakeholders are often contrary and the decision makers are clueless

it comes down to trying to share best practice
something that SLTs at schools have often been very poor at
but genius compared with the NHS

@rubybluesunday
What are these ‘fair and realistic’ targets based on? I’ve held management roles in three different schools, using three different systems for target setting, and I’m yet to see fair and realistic targets. I’d genuinely love to know what your school does.

So long as the objectives are reasonable and agreed at the start of the year with senior leaders who have a good relationship with the staff

Therein lies the problem for so many teacher though

Trilbydoll Thing being, I don't see many private schools dealing on a daily basis with children whose home lives are so chaotic, or even traumatic that even arriving at school is a real achievement for them. It's like comparing apples and pears as they say, but sadly those in Gvmnt that make those decisions, have no idea.

Another reason to walk away from pay scales :-)

It is not performance related pay. It is progression up a payscale based on appraisal. Once you reach the top of the payscale, excellent performance is not rewarded.

My sector is not schools, but as employers we are actively encouraging organisations to move away from scale points to numeric salaries
and then all increments are based on merit
with the contractual right to appraisal

even in the public sector I am not in favour of automatic increments
but I understand that appraisal has to be much more 360 in the "infrastructure" part of the public sector
eg schools

noble
quite happy to chat with you in much more detail via PM
but "performance related" is in principle a good thing that I would not want to get rid of

The best tangible things about teaching were the pay scale, the final salary pension and the holidays. Two of the three don’t exist anymore so there is no wonder people are leaving in droves or not even bothering in the first place.

You can compare the pay and conditions of teaching favourably or unfavourably with the private sector until the cows come home, but ultimately we need to have enough decent teachers in classrooms. And we don't.

Completely agree that we need more money in the overall budget for teachers' pay, but performance related pay in itself won't drive good teachers away from the profession.

Performance related pay doesn't exist in FE where I teach.

A F/T lecturer where i work is on around £24,000 a year.

Shame it's such crap pay. I don't mind saying that I am part of a fantastic department who are passionate about teaching and learning and frequently get asked to share our good practice. But no real pay rises in years.

There was an economist on R4 one morning this week who had retrained as a teacher. Said she had never known how many things a teacher had to do all at the same time! It's a tough job and is time it was given the salaries we deserve.

Do state schools not use value added for targets?

Yes, they do. Schools make a distinction between progress and attainment. Student and teacher targets in our school are related to progress.

I used to audit private schools and one Bursar told me about value added - that basically that was the service they were selling, they could get a mediocre child better grades than a state school. Do state schools not use value added for targets? That would mean bottom sets were not necessarily disadvantaged as presumably they start from a lower point.

And I also disagree that another year experience = automatically better. I'm certainly no better than I was 3 years ago!

The £50k reference was in response to Kazzyhoward's post, not a suggestion that secondary heads only earn that much.

If you have been teaching for a full extra year, then that experience is valuable and should be rewarded even if it can't quite be quantified

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but I don't think I agree with your final point, quoted above.

I once went on a course to do with improving writing software (bare with me). The trainer who was very well respected, talked about some engineers having 10 years' worth of experience, where as other engineers had 1 year's worth of experience repeated 10 times . i.e. They weren't really learning from their mistakes and improving. (We then went on to do practical exercises which showed this could well be true in lots of respects).

I am not convinced that a teacher who has taught for 20 years is de facto better than one who has taught for 10 years, or even necessarily better than they themselves were after 10 years.

I can see that there will be a massive learning curve for the first 5-8 years, but after that not so much, and to be honest after a certain point I suspect there may well be a decline if a teacher doesn't for whatever reason adapt well to change.

Also, I as a parent know certain teachers who missed / not done some key things with my DD1. If these same teachers also missed other things with other children then I would be thinking maybe they aren't as good as the teachers who understood and taught DD well.

On the other hand, teachers are reliant on a bunch of teenagers actually listening and working to show results. It doesn't seem great that pay should be dependent on whether Mark from 11C bothers to revise for GCSEs. So it may well be that there isn't a method better than time served + responsibilities to pay teachers.

In our school the targets are agreed and just basing it on one year groups oeffirnsbce is very narrow.

A secondary head around here gets £85,000 minimum and some are £125,000. If anyone thinks a secondary head gets £50,000 they are very out of date or their head has had crap performance related pay rises!

How small is your practice? Ifrom you ran a firm that employed as many people as a secondary school, would you expect to earn more than £50k?

I have been a secondary teacher for five years and I have never had a performance related pay rise.

This is because my target always relates to my year 11s and (no doubt because I am not good enough to organise a piss up in a brewery) they have never all hit their (unrealistic IMO) targets.

In August some of a group including half a dozen from a very bottom set in KS3 got F/G when their target was C. They got similar grades in most other exams FWIW. So I am guessing all the shit teachers in humanities, science and maths didn't get their PRP either.

Nice way for the school to save money then.

Running a very small accountancy practice is not equivalent to the job of a secondary head.

I know, but what I was trying to say was that had I chosen teaching instead of accountancy, I'd have expected to be a secondary head by this stage in my career, after 3 decades, and having progressed through the management ranks in accountancy practice & industry up to Board level, all without any gaps in work and working full time throughout.