To not understand why teachers should object to performance related pay?

[Dolcelatte]

After all, it happens in most other sectors, so why should teachers be any different. I am not trying to be controversial and there will undoubtedly be others with a better understanding of the issues. However, I don't understand the objections in principle. Why shouldn't remuneration be dependent upon performance?

Surely you can link it to actual progress,not hard and no harder than in other sectors.

But with children progress can be affected by so many factors.

I probably didn't make the progress I should have at secondary school if you go off SATs results compared to GCSE results. But I missed half of year 10 due to glandular fever, I missed chunks of year 11 due to needing 3 operations. My poor progress wasn't down to the school but down to circumstances out of anyones control.

You're not just working with computers in IT,you're leading,teaching,creating with and managing people.

No, I don't see performance just in terms of academic results although, of course, this is important. I though that schools were now judged partly on 'added value' ie the pupils were assessed at school entry and subsequently, so that what was being evaluated was the improvement and progress relative to a pupils' ability.

A lot of jobs could be said to be subjective. In my sector, for example, which is law, you couldn't judge a lawyer's performance wholly upon how many cases they win, because it depends upon the calibre of the cases they start with. Similarly, an individual lawyer may or may not have a rapport with a particular client.

But surely teaching, like other jobs, does have a number of components which can be assessed, such as clarity of teaching, overall contribution to the welfare of the pupils etc

Agree with MadeofStardust, every job I've ever had have us performance reviews, and all of those were tailored individually - it didn't take the bosses long as they mostly know the strengths and weakness anyway, and it mostly wasn't down to business targets because you can't attribute that to individuals anyway.

in one department I worked for we were working towards an overall target (like say "the education of children") but staff believed there was NO way of measuring success without the final result (like say "the child's GCSE grade").

We were eventually persuaded that - ok that is the end target - BUT that is not measurable at this point -

what we want YOU to do PERSONALLY is produce X,Y,Z and show a,b,c... these are the measurable points - complete this d,e,f level of training and produce this bit of work for so-and-so in this timeframe....

All successful PRP performance related pay - schemes work this way - personal objectives unrelated to others' performance - it would not matter if YOU had a great class or a disruptive one etc... because you would agree YOUR objectives - let's call them objectives rather than targets - maybe that would change the mindset....

In a commercial environment, better performance brings more money into the system.

If a teacher earns more money for better performance, where does that money come from? Wouldn't it come from the potential increases in pay for their colleagues? So a teacher being awarded higher pay would mean less available for others? Great.

Also true that teachers on high PRP are likely to price themselves out of ever moving schools, which they might not want to do...

It's a myth that there is more money in business.

My dp has had a fab year.He has worked really hard and achieved great results.The company however has had lukewarm profit so he won't be rewarded this year.

Teachers already have performance management objectives. How much is a good teacher worth?

RetroPear - you would do well to read the post just before yours, from Chelvis. That's the reality of what so many teachers are dealing with day in, day out, up and down the country.

Interesting MadeofStarDust - because I now work for local Gvmnt, and that is not our experience of what really happens at your Performance Management meetings at all.

'Added value' is tricky though Dolcelatte. Pupils take a test (or group of tests) on entry to school as a baseline. But it's just one test on one day, the the possible outcomes expressed as GCSE grades are percentage chances of outcomes for like pupils in a cohort, not a prediction (although that's often what they're erroneously called). If you measure results against that you get your value added 'score' but that doesn't reflect all the trials and tribulations of real life that so many posters describe above. And I worry too that too much adherence to those scores and tests might limit such pupil's ambitions, as long as they're over that all important C/D boundary at GCSE.

I believe that some professions are not suitable for performance related pay and teaching is one of them, because it reduces and essentially human interaction to points of data. You can (and should) use that data as a tool to inform your practice, but not to measure 'success'.

I'll ask again, would you impose performance related pay in medicine? And how would you measure 'success'? I think it's much the same ...

I'd be interested to know if other countries are as interventionist as England and Wales appear to be when it comes to education, and what their broader attitudes are towards teachers and education practice. I'm from Ireland, from a teaching family, and the attitude to teaching and education seems to be entirely different. Lots of room for improvement in the Irish education system, obviously ,but the rage that seems to affect teachers and parents alike here just isn't present.

I did and I have taught children like that.Many teachers do and many teachers produce great progress from the starting point they were given.

Because you'd be basing their pay on other people's performance.

Everyone should object to performance related pay, because it has been shown not to work and it created bizarre incentives that disimprove performance.

The last thing I want it my child to be taught by someone who is motivated by increasing their wages rather than by being a good teacher.

I suppose it' similar to how schools are ranked depending on the number of a-c grades etc.

School A can get a fabulous ranking by selecting pupils and only offering piss-easy subjects, thereby getting 95% of the pupils getting As and getting a fantastic ranking. But that doesn't mean they've actually achieved anything.
School B could be accepting pupils with a wide-range of abilities and backgrounds, only offering more challenging subjects, and only getting 70% of a-c grades, but still managing to educate/develop children who otherwise may not have developed in the same way. Which is actually the more successful school?

Well said AuntieStella and MadeofStardust

To put it another way: say I'm a brilliant talented dedicated teacher who really goes the extra mile to inspire my pupils. Why shouldn't I be rewarded for that? Otherwise objective setting's a bit of a waste of time isn't it? I may as well coast along doing the minimum I can get away with to get the job done.

I've always had a mixture of "hard" and "soft" targets at work, by the way. It doesn't have to just be a case of make £x m in business and it doesn't have to just be achieve average progress of y APS for teachers either.

Surely performance-related pay further diminishes the concept of teaching as a vocation.

Absy I think it's now widely recognised that those sorts of rankings are problematic, which is why there is much more focus on children's progress from their individual starting points.

"I'm a brilliant talented dedicated teacher who really goes the extra mile to inspire my pupils. Why shouldn't I be rewarded for that?"

You are.

It's called your salary.

Are you really so greedy that the only thing that motivates you to do a good job is a bit of extra money?

You take no pride in your job? You don't care about your students?

Then you're not a brilliant teacher and you don't deserve any extra rewards.

In a word Ofsted

Teachers already get their performance assessed in a formulaic, the data is king way.

Ofsted don't give any credit for pastoral care, support for students beyond the call of duty, impossible external circumstances.

The teachers don't trust any new system to be any better.

I though that schools were now judged partly on 'added value' ie the pupils were assessed at school entry and subsequently, so that what was being evaluated was the improvement and progress relative to a pupils' ability.

There are two major problems here:

1. secondary schools are measured against progress from KS2 results. However, primaries are measured on KS2 results and therefore these are often over-inflated due to binning PE and Art to concentrate on SATs, hot housing and tutoring. So secondary schools are measured on progress from an unrealistic start point. Aside from that, targets in PE are set based on performance in maths and English, with no thought as to whether this makes sense.

2. you think that targets are set relative to ability, however I have recently had a row with an Ofsted consultant who says that the same 3-4 levels of progress should be expected from all pupils (I think they made an exception for clearly diagnosed SEN, which they have made harder to register). So a child who has made poor progress in primary is expected to make the same progress in secondary as a kid who aced a level 6. This is clearly stupid. However, Ofsted argue that we can't lower expectations based on poor performance in primary because the slow progress may be because of crap teachers, not a pupil who simply works more slowly than others. They have a point, but it just shows how a system like this applied generally to all students isn't a good way to measure teacher performance at secondary.

Because there are still some teacher who want to teach rather than work in an exam factory. Actual learning would come second to exam prep, this doesn't prepare that child for real life; nor does it offer a good measure of that child's intelligence, more their memory skills and their teachers knowledge of past exam papers and 'keywords'.

This is how it will work for me. My target is to get 80% of ks3 students to reach their target grade.
Here are my issues:

I don't get to set the targets. I teach a performing arts subject and the targets are based on CAT tests, KS2 SATs and lit/num teacher assessments.

Due to gove's dislike of arts, my teaching time has been cut by 1/3. But kids have to make same amount of progress as last year.

As we are now teaching in a rotation, I have to agree a level with another member of staff. It's not just me inputting my assessments. They are often wildly different and result in a meet in the middle grade that doesn't accurately reflect anything.

How is it possibly fair that my pay is linked to 3 things I have no control over? I'm currently arguing the toss and will be going to my union if it can't be resolved in school.

Can you imagine what it would be like in areas with poverty? No teacher would want to work there because those areas have lower results...in Scandinavia, schools with high proportions of children from poor backgrounds get more money than those in middle class areas and teachers get more money as their job is harder. That's what it should be like.

but if it was an individualised PRP system, schools' TARGETS and individual staff OBJECTIVES are related but not the same....