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

[noblegiraffe]

In new research that will surprise no teacher ever, performance-related pay has been shown to be ineffective in schools. It doesn’t raise school standards and it doesn’t improve staff retention.

We tried to tell Gove but would he listen? Can we get rid of it now?

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/performance-related-pay-ineffective-schools-study-finds

PP itself is a blunt instrument for identifying disadvantaged students, everyone knows of the barely managing family not qualifying and the now well-off family who had a spot of financial trouble 5 years ago being on the list. At a country-wide level it has highlighted that the circumstances which lead to a child falling into the PP category do have a horrible effect on their educational outcomes on the whole, but again, individual students can and do buck the trend without teachers needing to do anything about it.
piggy that email just illustrates how ridiculous the situation is. Are you fab with PP students or crap? You could have legitimately received two emails telling you the opposite thing about the same class!

I’d love to talk to your data geek. I’d love someone to try to justify to me what is going on.
There’s a difference between being able to calculate a statistic, and knowing whether you should calculate it, and we seem to have far more of the former, and nowhere near enough of the latter.

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

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.

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.

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?

No bonuses were awarded anywhere in my MAT in our gender pay gap reporting (still a pretty hefty gap though). Performance related pay was supposed to be tied to moving up the pay scales (which used to be automatic on main scale). Giving it as bonuses instead is quite sneaky because it’s a one-off payment and doesn’t result in increased pay in future years.

Frankly the pay should reflect the quality of the teaching.

Different kids like different teachers. The ones you thought were great could quite equally have been disliked by other students. Poor teaching should be addressed by support and competency procedures but it is very difficult to identify ‘inspirational’ teaching. One maths teacher who was supposedly outstanding, an AST who ran training sessions and was generally lauded has just written a book about how he has been getting it wrong for the last ten years and has completely changed his teaching style to a far less whizzy and impressive but more academically solid type.
We know from the evidence that led to Ofsted binning graded lesson observations that lessons are more likely to be graded on the charisma and personality of the teacher than anything objective about their teaching.

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?

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?

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?

Automatic progression up the pay scale for surviving another year in teaching. Because many, many teachers aren’t at the moment. And experience is valuable.

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?

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

There are plenty of promotion opportunities for fantastic teachers who want to improve their pay ahead of the mediocre one who does the minimum.

And the government is in the situation where it should be desperate to retain any teacher doing a reasonable job.

”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.

Thing is, you are not rewarded for being a fab teacher anyway, you are rewarded for meeting your targets, which is an entirely different thing. I expect there is nothing more demotivating than working your arse off for an entire year, running clubs, doing trips, mopping tears and so on, then being denied a pay rise because a class you took over full of troubled kids didn’t make the appropriate numerical progress.

I can think of many things that have improved my performance as a teacher and only one I can think of had anything to do with my performance management. It’s box ticking and hoop jumping.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And I have read the rpoert : it clearly states tecahers are motivated , unlike other sectors, by intrinsic factors. So, if I do well by a class, or an individual in that class, I don't expect to be showered by gits (rarely happens!) or with money. I am just pleased and I don't boast to others. I think PRP has brought in a boastfulness to teaching and mania and anxiety about results that didn't used to be there. however, without PRP in my school we can actually have a decent conversation with out PMer about blips, lowered performance and s on without fear . And what happens to risk taking under PRP? No one would set up a new subject or willingly take on a new text or unit of work for fear of PRP. I have heard of teachers massaging students out of their subjects and classes and bearing grudges because of PRP

Unless a teacher is not fulfilling significant aspects of their job description they deserve their pay. I think the same about nurses, and doctors, and social workers.. So this is not teaching bias!

flowery, under PRP remuneration is often unfair (it takes a lot for a physics teacher to be refused pay progression ime) and teacher performance isn't usually assessed (pupil performance is, as though that is the same thing).

My incentive to improve isn't financial. If I just wanted to make more money I'd never have chosen this career (and I suspect many other teachers are the same).

The idea that it was based on 'time served' is a good one, certainly the first 5 years or so. Experience really does have a big impact in teaching and the (relatively) low starting salary progressing up is a way of recognising that teachers in the first few years really are still learning themselves.

It also found evidence that this increased people leaving as the bottom quartile moved out and were replaced by better teachers.

No they didn’t. I followed the studies referred to. One was a simulation, nothing to do with real life data at all. The other suggested that replacing poor performing teachers with better performing teachers was a good thing, but admitted that it relied on a supply of better performing teachers and that punitive systems could also cause better teachers to quit and they would be harder to replace.

The DfE needs to remember that for every teacher that quits, this adds 1 teacher to the 47,000 extra teachers that they already need to find over the next few years.

I don't expect to be showered by gits (rarely happens!)

I’m pretty sure that you didn’t mean what you actually typed, piggy

PRP definitely favours the self-promoters. I’m sure I saw that it contributes to an increased gender pay gap.