What are your views on the Pay Changes for teachers?

[lougle]

I went to a pay change briefing for governors last night and I was wondering how much teachers have been told about the changes and what you all think of it?

I think that most heads will maintain the current pay structure, or an approximation of it, for a couple of years and then the real changes will come.

I agree, not enough teachers are aware of what's about to happen.

Yes, I don't really understand what is happening
I do wonder though how performance related pay will work for the huge sector of teachers like myself who work part time. If a part timer is doing a brilliant job but their job share isn't - that will affect the class results, if they are covering PPA or management time there will be no results to prove they are doing a good job etc
Of course observations by a member of the SMT should fill in the gaps to verify a teacher is doing a good job but of course teachers aren't capable of moderating themselves, that's why we have Ofsted....

Our County is formulating a pay scheme and taking it through the Unions. Then we as individual schools can choose to adopt it, with localisation, or if we want to do something different, we'd have to take it to the Unions and go through the whole consultation process.

I think the biggest change is the move to a salary range for posts, and no protection of pay when moving between schools.

I think it's a bloody disgrace. The tories have wanted to put an end to national pay for teachers and they are doing just that. I do not trust heads at all when it comes to pay. All schools have their golden boys and girls and staff who are viewed less favourably for no apparent reason. It is too easy already to find excuses not to award UPS to staff, it will be just as easy to twist results of observations etc. I find it very worrying the whole lot of it and wonder how we have let it happen. Has your school consulted with staff e.g? How many teachers are brave enough to speak and, voice
concerns / views without being seen as a loony lefty? Yet another blow for teachers.

My first thought was that it is has huge potential for corruption.

However, I'm a governor and we will be forming a Pay Committee. Not quite sure what that entails yet but I really hope it will make the process fair.

I also agree that it invites unscrupulous heads to set criteria too high for staff to advance on the pay scale in order to save money.

I also think that movement from school to school will be 'interesting' if local rates of pay vary between schools.

I wonder how schools will be held accountable for their pay criteria (Ofsted I presume).

I think line management and HTs in different schools will have different views on successful performance - for instance, HT in school A may insist on all criteria being met exactly - HT in school B may be more reasonable and listen to a teachers' reasons for not meeting PM criteria on the basis of the cohort.

It's good that young hard-working teachers can be rewarded, but, on the other hand, an early pay rise based on performance actually leaves a very weak career incentive.

Interestingly our new pay structure doesn't reward good practice as such- all the same, it is fair, I feel, with a certain 'percentage' of teaching and results to be in line with experience. Past M4 all teaching has to be 'good' or better. :) Also, results have to be a certain percentage of targets which is a bit daunting but we do generally reach them, so hopefully we'll be OK.

DH says they will have 11 pay points and you can move up to 3 in one year. He said the targets will be similar to ones he used to have in industry and are development-based. But his HT is quite reasonable so he seems ok with it at the moment.

One of the biggest problems is that we will no longer be able to 'port' pay.

So I'm on UPS3. If I fancied a change of school, they could offer me MPS (or whatever they thought I'd accept really); which effectively means that my current school is stuck with me for the next 26 years.

I'm quite happy there fwiw, but it will reduce mobility generally, & drive down pay overall, eg. for the teacher who re-locates for family reasons & finds themselves only able to attract the pay they had 5 years before. This will also depress employment prospects for new teachers - there'll be a pool of more experienced applicants available at the same price.

In theory, a HOD deciding on timetabling for next year might feel inclined to give a team member with a pay review coming up a nice over-achieving top set or a tiny & well-supported bottom set, whilst giving someone like me, as an old lag, a lower/middle ability group who are less likely to hit target. This might not match our respective teaching strengths - tail wagging the dog to students' detriment.

A suitably Machiavellian HOD who wanted rid of a teacher in their department might even deliberately give them teaching groups who are unlikely to hit target, thereby denying pay progression or triggering capability procedures in the case of an experienced teacher.

It also allows for some schools (chain Academies, anecdotally) to employ a crop of NQTs, deny them progression & then replace most of them annually - the good ones will go elsewhere, the rubbish ones will hang in there on NQT pay - creating a situation where the staff is mainly transient & overwhelmingly young & inexperienced. Not that our young, inexperienced staff aren't brilliant & shouldn't be valued - but these schools aren't ever going to establish the stability of having experienced staff with a long term commitment to the school. Schools need both.

It will discourage the 'collegiate' system whereby if I've spent all summer writing awesome resources I email them to my Dept. as I go, & present them at our first meeting back. Why would I share my stuff if we're competing for an arbitrary bonus, which will go to whichever of us gets the best y11 results?

Finally - monitoring teachers' performance is nothing new. I've had two PM meetings each year with my HOD for as long as I remember. The extra powers being suddenly given to Heads to determine pay aren't designed to 'reward' good teachers; you'd have to be awfully naive to believe that.

chicaguapa, you sound like your DH is in Hampshire? That's the system they are adopting.

I've always had ridiculous targets, but they never mattered: my children always had better progress than any other class, and my head was at least satisfied with that. Now I'm at the top of my pay scale, so I'm not too bothered about this atm, but what will happen in the future? Will they be able to demote you down it? And if so, why not? Would be easy to say 100% of children must get x number of sublevels in the year, give you the class with 40% SEN, a TA with no training, that is 3/4 years different in age to the one you had last, and just watch you not achieve that target! Am very uneasy about the future. I love teaching, and am passionate about seeing children progress, but that clearly will no longer be enough.

Another issue is the number of classes taught. For example I teach a bigger number of classes than other departments, which means more pupils to monitor and intervene with, but less time for each.

They can't demote you apparently - if you're at the top of UPS & don't satisfy your PM requirements, you get put on capability instead...

Yes, he's in Hampshire. Didn't realise the LAs were doing it differently? The school's an academy too but seems to toe the LA line.

Each school is free to do as they please. In Hampshire, they've gone through a consultation with the 5 unions and are formulating a 'Hampshire payscale', with a few key areas for localisation (ie. whether the school wants a TLR 3 in their payscale, etc.). Then, individual schools in Hampshire can choose to either adopt the 'Hampshire payscale' or formulate their own. The caveat being, that if they choose to formulate their own, they would then have to do their own consultation process with the 5 unions, etc., which Hampshire have already done.