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

[noblegiraffe]

We need to get rid of performance-related pay for teachers and reinstate automatic pay progression up the pay scale don't we?

1. Any attempts to measure teacher perfomance are flawed. Payment by results? Top set teachers are laughing, bottom set teachers crying. Payment by observation outcomes? We know these are subjective nonsense to the point that Ofsted have scrapped them. So what could be realistically used that would be fair?

2. In times of extreme budget restraint such as now, schools will be more likely to hold people on lower pay points for spurious reasons

3. Potential lack of pay progression could put off new entrants to teaching in a time of a severe teacher shortage

4. If the only realistic way to see your pay increase to reasonable levels is through promotion, then we will see teachers taking promoted posts without the relevant experience and before they are really ready

5. 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

Any objections?

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

Look at the graduate salaries for people with STEM backgrounds. Why are we severely short of STEM teachers do you think?
Giving them a bursary of 25-30k to train doesn't help with retention when the year after that they're on 22.5k.

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.

Performance management isn't so much of an issue in professions where performance can actually be measured.

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

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!

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.

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!

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 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.

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.

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 .

MN doesn't half make me realise the grass is not greener...

You should not agree to the inclusion of numerical targets relating to pupil outcomes in your
objectives, as this would present a system of ‘payment by results’ that has no place in the
performance management process.

Union guidelines

Piggy here's a screenshot of the paragraph from the report. Leadership and Mangement got RI (as did the whole school). Ironically, the LEA had only published the final model Pay Policy document one month earlier (end of September and too late for annual pay awards for that year to go through). Governors had to approve the school's policy and had chosen (foolishly) to await the final LEA model one before adopting it. Ofsted didn't give a shit though.

Needless to say the policy was firmly in place before the next full inspection (despite us knowing it was a load of shite and likely to cause a high turnover in teachers between M1 and M6).

Hmmmm... looks like the unions didn't get very involved then!

The only measures of "success" should be student progress within their capabilities (so top/bottom set should not make a difference) and the happiness and confidence of the pupils (measure that one?!).

The purpose of PRP was to deal with poor teachers, but the means of assessment is flawed - as are the means of assessment of the pupils of course.

I do not know what the answer is - sorry.

You get automatic progression Piggy?

Oops. Just seen that you do. You have been in an outstanding school haven't you? With good results under the old performance measures? That probably makes a difference. When a school's results need to improve, OFSTED seem to be far more keen to check the link. Both the RI school I was in a few years ago and the good one I was in last had their appraisal records looked at during the inspection.

noble-I’d get rid of these god awful targets on children for a start. Children are not a ‘one-size-fits-all’. With numerous different subjects they lose sight of what target is for what anyway and don’t get me started in split grade targets!
I would also do away with forced whole school targets imposed on Staff. They are never agreed despite what some Governers seem to think and always mandatory and don’t take into consideration any internal/external factors.
Appraisal targets agreed between appraiser and appraisee only based on realistic data would be a good start.

As with most things brought over from the private sector, schools always seem to completely mis-interpret them and rarely implement them in the way they were organically intended for.

Piggy realistically, what do you think would happen if you refused numerical targets? Union guidance is not statutory.

Kitty what would be reasonable targets for an M1 to M6 teacher that aren't simply getting on with the job?

Under our previous Head, we used to have one annual target based on pupil progress. As a teacher, you could agree with your line manager which class you would use and what data you would use to measure attainment/progress.

Now, appraisal targets are based on the average progress versus targets for every exam class.

Our department really suffers with this. We have historically done fantastically well at GCSE and students perform above expectations (one of my sets this year achieved an average points score higher than their FFT aspirational targets +1). However, this then leads to a lower than average ALPS achievement at A level. Basically, we screw ourselves over by getting really good GCSE grades. If I wasn't already on M6, I wouldn't have progressed.

Interestingly, the physics A level group achieved really well. The teacher 'disappeared' midway through the year and all the parents paid for private tutors. The ALPS score looked brilliant despite non-existent teaching. Also, the weak biology teacher who was never given A level classes because she wasn't considered good enough achieved her progress targets because they were only based on GCSE.

noble so, because pupil don’t make linear progress and that has been proven, I’d do away with any objective that is dependent on the pupils themselves. I would like to see a drive towards appraisee targets that a teacher has a much larger control over but that has a positive side effect on improving the experience of the pupils.
For example,

1. Rewrite the Geography scheme of work for year 9.2.
2. Improve questioning skills by introducing a “no hands” policy.(not saying this is perfect but is just an example)
3. Ensure Y10 tracking grids are in place

These take into consideration teachers with no exam classes or teachers who share classes. It also allows for teachers to take more of an active role in driving their own performance management in a way that is more positive for all. This returns to the original A for ‘achievable’ rather than the made up ‘agreed’, which makes a mockery of SMART.

Oh well. The above will never happen across all schools though, due to many SLT’s/Governors/Parents/Government’s desire for stats that make their jobs look better

realistically noble our school is not very unionised. We do have numerical targets 9I did bleat about them a bit this year) but out appraisal process in emphatically not linked to pay progression..

I don't think it is to do with being outstanding. We are an academy but have never changed our name and are on good terms with the LA. Our head always has said a school's best and most precious resource is its staff - so I guess he has stood by that. But I genuinely don't know of any local school that has linked targets to pay, other than perhaps by lip service.