Michael Gove - wrong again: Performance-related pay in schools is crap

I agree entirely, Piggy. I can't say it ever once occurred to me to compare my pay with another teacher's on the basis of their performance, effort or achievement, Flowery. There are so many different things that go into determining a teacher's 'performance'. Many of those things have little to do with the teacher's effort.

Even those teachers I might have considered to be not great... I wouldn't be looking to pay them less than a great teacher. Not all teachers can be great. Inevitably some are average and some are below average. They are still doing a difficult and strenuous job and working the same stipulated hours as everyone else.

Also, I don't think I am underpaid. I knew I would get to the top of my potential (paywise) eventually. People should be seeking promotion because they want more responsibility, or new challenges, not so they can never stop increasing their pay. Totally wrong motivation for seeking promotion at the top levels imo.

The only perceived unfairness comes in when you do have PRP, not when you don't!

Again, I will state we don't have it in my high achieving schools and teachers work bloody hard. Sometimes I get the impression we aren't as madly overworking ourselves as colleagues in other schools, and I wonder if that's because we are rewarded for doing the job, rather than for doing more of the job.

As a teacher myself flowery I couldn't give a shit whether someone is paid the same as me who is 'worse' at their job. They may well have more difficult classes, be struggling personally, or be being systematically devalued , overlooked or bullied by a line manager.

If they have shown the same long service, they deserve their pay. We don't work on commission.

If you actually read the report in the OP here you find it measured changes between 2004 and 2011, so not sure how relevant to performance related pay in the UK.
It also found evidence that this increased people leaving as the bottom quartile moved out and were replaced by better teachers.

”The pay scale stops after about 12 years anyway, so where is the incentive for a UPS3 teacher to improve their practice?”

Agreed, but that’s another problem rather than the answer to the first one. And in fact in any industry a person will reach the top whack for that job and will either stagnate or have to seek promotion in order to increase their pay.

Promotion is fine, and it’s right that those taking more responsibility are paid more, obviously.

But IME the biggest two demotivating factors with remuneration are a) real or perceived unfairness and b) a perception that performance/effort/achievement is not recognised.

I would expect giving pay rises based only on ‘time served’ to have a negative impact on motivation for those two reasons.

I agree experience can be valuable, but surely that would lead (did lead?) to a situation where a mediocre teacher and a fantastic one get paid exactly the same just because they’ve been doing the job the same length of time? That doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Where’s the incentive to improve one’s practice if a colleague who does bare minimum gets the same financial recognition?

I can understand there are all sorts of problems with how performance is assessed and rated etc, but surely paying everyone the same based solely on how many years they’ve been sitting in the job isn’t the answer? Surely that’s likely to be demotivating for high performers and therefore have a negative impact on retention of those people?

Can I ask a question? Those teachers who think performance-related pay should be abolished, how would you propose decisions should be made about whether to award pay rises and, if awarding increases, how much each individual award should be?

I’m sure the system is flawed, but what’s the alternative?

The teacher I once worked with who was viewed as an inspiration by so many adoring students (and staff) was essentially a vainglorious bully who never did any marking (this wouldn't wash these days!) and was eventually 'shuffled out' because otherwise he may well have been faced with sexual harassment cases!

What are we supposed to do, start looking at Rate My Teacher to see whether a teacher is beloved or not?

roguedad

Frankly the pay should reflect the quality of the teaching.

Its not that easy, I have taught bottom sets that have been full of pupils that are there due to behaviour and I have taught bottom sets that have pupils that want to learn but have SEND.

How do you measure the progress when the classes (and pupils) are so completely different?

Can I ask if PrP has meant people in your schools get "bonuses"? In our gender pay gap reporting men got more bonuses than women and the governors explained that bonuses were the performance related pay. This doesn't make sense to me?

I have a distinct recollection from my own schooldays that I had some inspirational and dedicated teachers, some who should have faced a lifetime ban from the teaching profession, and a range in between. Frankly the pay should reflect the quality of the teaching. Measuring that in an objective way is difficult but I think should be addressed. I also think Gove was a cancer on our education system.

This was one of the reasons I left the profession. I was set progress targets for my music classes based on KS2 English/Maths not much use when looking at musical ability. There was no way some years I was going to meet those targets especially since I was told I had to let whoever take GCSE music so I was being set up to fail.
I do agree with performance management but as a tool for improvement and personal development. I am performanced managed in my current role but have no targets for pupil progression, observations are supportive and not graded so used as a dialogue about pedagogy and people actively ask for observations especially when they are struggling with a pupil as they know it is a sign of strength to ask for help and there is no worry of SLT putting you in capability. Targets are used to identify training needs which are then factored into our inset day programme.

Ha , well of course what I am is , on average, average!

The frustration I have with prp is when sets are changed close to an exam to target students, so I now have a class, half of which I have taught since January, the other half I have just met, and I will be expected to comment on their GCSE results. One year I was hauled in to explain why I got no C grades. On a foundation maths paper that only goes up to a D

Performance management and appraisals are fine, ask the teacher how they are approaching a class of a certain expected level, but you cannot hold teachers responsible for teenagers, or small children's, actions, especially when everyone in education knows that the other outside of school factors have a much bigger effect on attainment.

A strange thing about measuring progress is that it is still measured in so many ways, progress 8, fft (B and D), value added etc.

and although they are not supposed to affect your PRP they do if the SLT or HT deems that they should, and this also goes for PPG, FSM, SEND etc.

And all of the effort that is put in to this by the teacher gets overlooked.

How does one measure the progress of PP students, for example?

I got an email last year congratulating me on the 'outstanding progress' of a PP boy in my class and wanting my tips on how I achieved this amazing feat . This overlooked somewhat the fact that in the very same class, three other PP students all (allegedly statistically blah blah) missed their indicator by two grades!

And all in the year of the new GCSE!

I ignored the email.

Oh noble I would love to put you in a room with our data geek man and have an argument with him about these things! I have tried to put these things to him before but he starts talking about lines of best fit at me until I glaze over a bit. He is a genuinely brainy guy but I am afraid everyone is rather in awe of him and so, if he says it, it must be true. And of course he has never taught children. (he was, however, taught by me !)