Performance-related pay for teachers

[noblegiraffe]

Performance-related pay for teachers was introduced in 2013 despite teachers everywhere pointing out it was a crock of shit and teaching doesn’t work like business.

It turns out that it has no impact on pupil outcomes and negative impact on teacher workload and retention. Which we could have told you from the start.

Well done Michael Gove, you fucking idiot.
www.tes.com/news/exclusive-heads-turn-away-teacher-performance-pay

Last time we posted about this issue a governor came on here to tell us we were all wrong.

Taps foot and waits....

Lots of people at the time said that of course teachers should be paid based on their performance. I wonder if they’ve changed their mind given the current state of teaching.

Remember the line that it gave heads the freedom to pay good teachers even more?

Sure do!

I never intended to become "one of those" old teachers who barely disguises their cynicism every time a "new" shit initiative is introduced, but.... yep. hand up. That's me. Guilty as charged.

What I’ve certainly noticed is that it has given heads the ability to pay less on spurious grounds.

Quite handy in these times of austerity.

Just like Gove said that allowing state schools to hire unqualified teachers would allow them to hire the brilliant Oxford professor who didn’t have a PGCE.

But actually it has led schools to hiring anyone with a pulse who is cheap and doesn’t have a PGCE.

I'm not a teacher (though I am in another struggling branch of public services). Jesus what a complete crock of shit that idea is. It is SO obvious to anyone who works with people that performance can't be measured in the way they mean. You can't quantify kindness, good humour, patience, approachability and all the other bits that make a genuinely great teacher who promotes love for their subject and a love for learning.

I'm a new governor at a primary school; please tell me what I should be asking.

I don't know our current arrangements

Who'd have thought.
Nobody saw that coming.

@NewNameGuy start with the pay policy.

But yeah performance related pay is a pile of....

@NewNameGuy if the performance management policy involves targets based on pupil performance, burn it.

If the pay policy involves only allowing teachers a move up the pay scale based on successful completion of all performance management targets then burn it.

I had a target that 85% of the summer-born boys in my class had to meet their reading expectations.

All 2 of them.

The one who had EAL, having been in the UK for

It turns out that it has no impact on pupil outcomes and negative impact on teacher workload and retention

Can we file that with the fact that the Pope is apparently Catholic and a little known fact about where bears defecate ?

Well, there's an election coming up...

You can't quantify kindness, good humour, patience, approachability and all the other bits that make a genuinely great teacher who promotes love for their subject and a love for learning.

Watch from about 2.10 to see the best summary of lesson observations ever.

All performance related pay in teaching has done is allow heads to get rid of older (expensive) teachers by deciding that they haven’t met the targets that SLT arbitrarily set them!

Combining performance related pay with severe school cuts has meant that even teachers who perform well don’t get a pay rise.

I don’t see any talk of scrapping it to improve retention though, which is stupid as it’s a really quick fix.

But it's just down to how the school chooses to implement them.

I have not been denied a pay rise once ,even though I have failed one of my targets fairly regularly. So long as you have sufficient evidence for what you have tried to do to meet them.

And that’s the problem with immoral govt policy isn’t it. It relies on individuals interpreting it in a reasonable way.

Some obviously will. However, human beings particularly those with the god complex required to aspire to senior leadership are not universally reasonable.

Performance related pay... Unless you're a future NQT in which case have £30,000 just for standing there. 🤔

It also relies on individuals being able to interpret it in a fair way. If there’s very little money in the budget, then pay rises are going to be a ‘luxury’. Wasn’t there a school where the staff took a pay cut in order to keep on a TA?

As a civil servant and school governor I would rather performance related pay hadn’t been introduced for teachers as I’ve spent over 20 years witnessing it not working in my own workplace. However as it was, being a governor gave me a small and enjoyable opportunity to undermine it.

On the pay committee I took the approach that I would vote, every time, for a teacher professing, unless there was a very good reason not to. So if you’re doing okay, you go through. If you’re doing badly - and there were no numbers to be met, so that doesn’t count - you don’t.

End result - teachers progressed as they would have done anyway (we never refused anyone), but a lot of time was spent crafting evidence and having pay meetings.

Half a good result I guess.

An earlier iteration of PRP (80s) had a head of a school in London take the pay himself because he couldn't decide who to give it to. :o

This was told to me by a DH in the the school, a person of impeccable credentials who would have gained nothing by a more equitable sharing.

it gave heads the freedom to pay good teachers even more

I'd laugh but I can't even muster a cynical one... SLT get pay rises but that's about all in our school as we're 'so poor, don't ya know'. I've given up on the 60 hour work weeks I used to put in - why should I bother when there's no progression, no future, no actual acknowledgement of the work for me?