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?

Could they not grade the same way as school reports are done a-e based on academic success and 1-5 based on effort and then do % increases based on that I.e a1 great grades high effort big pay rise a3 great grades average effort medium pay rise c1 average grades high effort medium payrise e5 crap grades no effort no payrise. Effort to be awarded by line manager.

"My idea of what is outstanding seems to differ greatly from the CEO's."

My idea of what is outstanding doesn't involve schools having CEOs.

Argh at losing experienced and talented SN teachers.

I hope they are still teachers somewhere and that poor policy hasn't led to a loss of useful skills from the public sector.

Rubbish for the kids at your school though :(

How on earth do you measure teacher effort? Especially when a lot of their work is done at home.

retropear, so what would happen if your DH was doing a relatively straightforward project with, say, Barclays and suddenly half way through the Barclays staff decide not to bother talking to your DH or answering the phone? So instead of completing the project on time he ended up spending weeks trying to find a way simply to get through to the people he is supposed to be helping. But it's supposed to be an easy project this one and his targets for it were high!

Or how about there's one company who always behave like this. They're never available for phone conversations. They're stubborn, unhelpful, rude and uninterested despite the project being to their advantage. This may be no fault if their own and simply down to difficult circumstances. Nevertheless, your dh's IT company would rightly give an obtuse difficult company like this a miss. Too erratic, too many unknowns and variables, how can they possible deal professionally with them?

Can you see what could happen to children with a chronic illness or those with major behavioural and emotional issues?

But would their line manager not know what is done at home how they have helped students overcome difficulties brought up grades of children that were going to fail be excluded etc. How they have dealt with any Sen etc

My dp works in IT.They have hard and easier projects which they get judged on and paid accordingly.He can't just demand the easy project with the best team.

Has one of your husband's easier projects ever been raped and tried to commit suicide as a result?

Has one of his projects just undone everything everyone on his team has worked towards?

Has your husband ever had to complete a project using a commodore pet, no internet and having to back things up on magnetic tape while another team have the latest equipment?

Has your husband ever had to take a program written in a 4th/5th generation language and translate it into machine code for a computer to understand because the compiler has broken down and won't be replaced for 2 months.

Why can the teachers not be measured on the basis of their quality of teaching? Don't all teachers get regular monitoring from their HT or head of department! It seems like the obvious target to me. That takes the ability of the children out of the equation and focuses on what the teachers are doing. If the teaching is good then the children will make the best progress they can.

Quantifying a teacher's performance in the classroom is what the SLT Is trained to do surely - yes it may be hard but it is their job and a HT's objectives will be reliant on making sure quality of teaching improves so training/support/help should be provided for teachers. If that doesn't happen then the issue is with the schools not performance related pay as such.

TBH from what I have seen, you would have to be performing badly not to get a one point rise and if you do then you probably don't deserve it.

"Why can the teachers not be measured on the basis of their quality of teaching?"

Because "quality of teaching" is not something that you MEASURE.

Noblegiraffe's point highlights how the government want it both ways.
-secondary teachers much take ks2 sats as a baseline even though many of those level 5s in, say, maths will have done little else other than sats practice since the Christmas of Y6 so the result is most certainly not a true reflection of their ability.
-But on the other hand we mustn't accept that a poorly performing child at primary really is a poorly performing child because its more likely they had a crap primary teacher em, every year!

How would my line manager know what I get up to at home?

My line manager is far too busy teaching himself to micromanage his team.

And helping students overcome difficulties isn't a tick-box exercise. Sometimes it is just being in your room at lunchtime so they can have space to eat their lunch. Sometimes it's a conversation in a corridor. Things which aren't documented anywhere, or even seen by others. I'm constantly dealing with children with SEN in the classroom, it would be incredibly time consuming if I had to make a note of all my efforts just so that I could be seen to be making an effort. Pointless bureaucracy, you are then being judged on your paperwork, not how you actually do your job.

FFT 'targets' are based on prior attainment, but the 3 or 4 levels progress is often higher than the fft likely outcomes. I suspect schools are increasingly ignoring FFT and only going on 'levels progress'. The big problem is that we have an education system which is forced to jump at the whim of a single person. What do you think would happen in schools if Gove announced that from now on they'd all be judged on their achievements in Art only? English and Maths would be sidelined instantly.

It is measured all the time by observation. By the HT, LEA and when it is due by Ofsted. Does that only happen in DS's school then? I thought that was a major part of the HT's role?

Perhaps secondary teachers don't get monitored then?

If I was a teacher, I would be very concerned that PRP would be used as an excuse not increase salaries, particularly if I worked in a school which had limited budget and / or a not very competent governing body.

Quantifying a teacher's performance in the classroom is what the SLT Is trained to do surely

There is absolutely no evidence base that lessons observations (especially the current trend for 20 minute observations) are a good way of measuring teacher performance.

I know a teacher who was graded Outstanding by Ofsted who was a terrible teacher who failed their NQT year.

"It is measured all the time by observation. By the HT, LEA and when it is due by Ofsted."

No, it isn't.

All this "measuring" of pointless metrics is not telling us anything at all about the quality of teaching.

Of course quality of teaching can be measured, even when I was in school we knew who was a good teacher and who was a bad one, and if I could do that aged 10 I reckon other people could do the same. It just puzzles me that all the arguments against performance related pay hinge on the presumption that all teachers are great at their jobs, and over many years and many teachers I can tell you that ain't the case at all!

"In his talk, Prof Coe suggested that ratings given to lessons by observers could be "influenced by spurious confounds".

These included the charisma and confidence of the teacher, the subject matter being taught, students' behaviour in the classroom and the time of day.

He questioned whether the observation ratings could be consistent given so many variables.

He also listed a series of "poor proxies for learning", arguing that outward signs such as busy and motivated students and a calm and ordered classroom do not necessarily always mean that students are learning effectively and could reproduce correct answers independently."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24079951

Yeah, geekgal, why not let the students vote on who is the best teacher, and let that be the measurement?

"Of course quality of teaching can be measured, even when I was in school we knew who was a good teacher and who was a bad one, and if I could do that aged 10 I reckon other people could do the same."

:o

What kind of geek are you?!

You think 10 year olds "knowing" who is a good teacher is the same as being able to measure the quality of teaching?

Seriously?

Exactly what others have said - because there are so many variables in education. For example, a child might be on course to achieve an A grade, then suffer a family bereavement that adversely affects their progress. Another pupil might be bright on paper but rarely turn up to lessons. Should such situations be allowed to influence an assessment of the teacher's performance? As many have already stated, performance-related pay only works if outcomes directly correspond to an individual's input. This is not always the case in teaching.

I'd also be worried about who was making decisions about pay. In my time as a teacher I have come across many Heads/senior leaders who are truly fantastic, but also a sizeable minority who are highly inconsistent and somewhat power-crazed. I once worked for a head teacher who, clearly out of her depth, made increasingly erratic decisions until the school received a poor Ofsted and she was forced into early retirement. I have no doubt that that Head's approach to PRP would be both vindictive and inconsistent, based on personal whim rather than thoughtful assessment. I also second what IHeart said about internal pressure to overmark and artificially bump up levels - I've worked in several schools were this was the done thing (often carried out at the insistence of the SLT in order to meet targets) and, refusing to do this myself, have often found myself at odds with my colleagues. I feel that this falsifying of results would become more widespread under PRP.

Should PRP be introduced I can envisage a mass exodus of teachers to schools in leafy areas with supportive parents, where concrete academic results (as measured in government terms) are far easier to achieve. Schools in tougher areas, where 'pupil progress' is as much about developing social skills and overcoming personal hardship, would lose out.

Because children aren't tins of beans.

I might get perfiormance related pay due to having filled 2000 tins of beans in a day. Assuming that everything is working as it should I can manage that. Beans in tomato sauce and empty tin cans aren't that variable.

Children however vary according to how they feel that day, how able they are at your particular subject, what their home life is like, how they feel about school... the list goes on.

H teaches children with severe behavioural problems. When some of them start at the school it's a major undertaking to make them sit on a chair or talk to an adult with swearing all the time, or disagree with another child without trying to hit them, or to stop masturbating in the classroom, or taking a dump in the corner. When they leave the school by and large they can sit quietly for a period of time, they can talk sensibly, they can write sentences, they know how to co-operate as a team, they produce art work and participate in projects, they understand that there are certain things you can't do in public and that violence is not a good solution to anything. Ofsted wanted to know why more pupils weren't put in for GCSEs

Then clearly in that case Ofsted made a mistake - one example doesn't prove anything, but monitoring/ observation isn't a once every 3 years thing is it? Isn't done every half term as a minimum?

Imagine you work your butt off to improve your teaching, you pull out the stops to do the best job you can and yet your colleague does the bare minimum, trundles along not making any effort to improve, does put themselves out in any way for colleagues or pupils. Are you happy they get the same payrise as you? Is that fair? Does strike me as at all fair. I wouldn't be happy about it.

Doesn't make the effort and diesn't strike me as far?

Quality of typing epic fail!!