Merit pay

This report will seriously unhinge teacher unions. In Canada debate has moved to discussing merit pay for teachers:

Education minister Jeff Johnson got the attention of the Alberta Teachers’ Association when he recently mused about introducing merit pay for Alberta teachers. Predictably, the ATA harshly condemned Johnson’s proposal and vowed to fight any attempt to incorporate merit pay in teacher compensation.

Typical response from unions, more interested in patch protection than excellence.

One of the main arguments the ATA gave for opposing merit pay was that it does not boost student academic achievement. However, there is no evidence that the current salary grid promotes student achievement.

Under the current salary grid, only two factors matter in teacher compensation—years of teaching experience and years of university education. John with six years of university and fifteen years of experience gets paid more than Doris with five years of university and six years of experience. End of story.

It doesn’t matter whether Doris happens to grade more papers, teach better lessons, coach more sports teams, or serve on more committees than John. Even though most people would agree Doris is the better teacher, John is higher on the grid and consequently receives a higher salary. In the ATA’s view, that is exactly how it should be.  Read more »

Hekia Parata should be implementing this rather than wondering which schools to close in Christchurch.

The simple fact is this, the teacher unions will go to war with National over almost anything…so why not go to war over something that matters…like performance pay for teachers.

In the UK that is precisely what is coming down the line:

Salary rises should be based on performance in the classroom, rather than just time served

Good teaching matters. Talented teachers change lives, but are not sufficiently recognised or rewarded. And too often good teaching is not available where it is most needed, particularly in deprived areas. That’s why the School Teachers’ Pay Review Body, in its report published yesterday, recommends that teachers’ pay should be based on the impact made in the classroom rather than time served.

There are many factors that make a good school, but the best teachers are not always paid as they should be, nor is the sector seen by graduates in the profession as offering the status and rewards available elsewhere. Successive governments have begun to tackle this, with the Teach First initiative and the introduction of appraisals to inform pay decisions for senior teachers.

The independent review body recommends in its report that the Government should simplify the national pay framework and extend pay awards based on appraisal to all teachers. This is what happens in most sectors. Pay for all teachers should be based on their contribution to pupils’ progress. Individual schools are best placed to understand pupil needs and local circumstances and should be free to spend their money as they see fit, within the national framework.

Every other industry in the country pays for performance…it is high time that the same applied to teachers. The UK review recommends:

-) Performance-based progression for all teachers, based on a school’s own priorities and the single teaching standard already in place, with freedom for the most successful teachers to move faster up the pay scale.

-) More freedom for schools to create highly paid posts for the very best teachers, to spread good teaching skills and provide a classroom career alternative to leadership.

-) Simplifying hundreds of pages of detailed central guidance which it is clear that few fully understood.

The teacher unions constantly tell us we already have a world class education system, but one which is beaten by Finland and South Korea…we are top at rugby in the world, we dn;t settle for third or fifth or anything but first when it comes to that…so why settle in education.

The time markers and the indolent need to be encouraged to leave.