A post-grad year at teachers’ collge taught me that I was not cut out for teaching.
However, one thing I gained in that year was an admiration for good teachers.
That’s why I’ve always struggled with the idea promoted by teacher unions, and many teachers, that all teachers should be paid the same.
The suggestion made a couple of years ago by John Hattie, author of a study on education, that’s it’s time to revisit performance-based pay for teachers was met with the usual response from Kate Gainford, head of the secondary teachers’ union:
Gainsford says it would be “extraordinarily problematic … on so many fronts” to work out an excellence-based pay formula. She would like to see the focus on supporting “all kids, in all classes, in all schools”, rather than on a sorting mechanism for teachers.
This is one of the arguments that is being brought out again in opposition to the idea of charter schools which would have the ability to pay good teachers more.
I doubt if there is any profession which puts more time and effort into evaluation than teaching. If it works for their pupils, why not for teachers?
Their fears appear to be based on the mistaken belief assessment of teachers will be based solely on narrow criteria like exam results and the “excellence” of their pupils.
There is much more to being a good teacher than that. Helping a pupil who starts with disadvantages, be they intellectual, physical, emotional, cultural linguistic or social, take small steps could be much more an achievement than helping a more able pupil take giant leaps.
Then there are other factors like mentoring other staff and contribution to extra curricular activities.
With the current tenure-based system of pay rises teachers generally only get get paid more for promotions which take them out of teaching and into administration.
Wouldn’t it be better to pay good teachers more to stay in the classroom?
Simple question
Simple answer
Yes
and sadly the teacher unions can’t, won’t, figure that out.
” Their fears appear to be based on the mistaken belief assessment of teachers will be based solely on narrow criteria like exam results and the “excellence” of their pupils. ”
Exactly and I would suggest that it is a very valid fear. I remember one of my contemporaries at school who performed worse in his second attempt at school cert. than his first.
He is now a successful farmer and doesn’t inhabit our prison system I would suggest that is due to having a successful education despite failing academically.
Another friend from the same year group did well academically I lost touch with him after school but ran into him painting the Dunedin court house from ANZAC Avenue, He was an inmate in the prison behind, I next ran into him on campus at Otago Varsity where he was checking out his option. A year later I ran into his brother in the Captain Cook pub who was over from Australia to sort out his funeral he had died from a drug overdose.
You need a critera Ele but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that is.
Your last para Ele highlights just one of the unfortunate consequences of the rigid teacher pay scale system.
To get to a higher pay scale a teacher must enter the field of school management whether that is desirable for the school or the pupils or neither.
How many VG teachers lament when progressing to management how they miss the amount of teaching contact due to the Bureaucracy requirements.
The people skills required of a Principal or the assistants are completely different to the relationship skills of a good teacher with students so why not allow a system that rewards a good teacher who stays in that role equal to what a good manager is paid.
Basic utilisation of resources I would have thought.
I have an out of the box idea (not sure this will work just musing) teachers could be paid a percentage of their former pupils current PAYE take. Think about it, if you educate your pupils to be succesful you will be paid more than just gettting them through exams. I did well at school, my boss left at 16 to milk cows and now I’m working for him. Book learning is not everything in the real world so you need to also take into account how you prepare students for the workforce.
In the 1990′s I facilitated an altenative (to tenure-based) pay progression for Dental Therapists working in Otago as part of collective contract negotiations for the Health Board. So alternative pay approaches can be achieved in a highly unionised environment. Dental Therapists work with children – just like teachers. As far as I know the implementation of the new pay scales did not result in an increase in dental procedures, nor any other practice that might disadvantage children. True professionals, those who care about their clients, would not let this happen.
These employees received no more % increase (overall) than other professional groups represented by the same agreement. But they were happier with the outcome because it rewarded what was important to the therapists – within the range that could be afforded by their employer. This was a goal-based pay progression. Some goals were operational and some were professional. It deliberately favoured those newer to the profession because everyone recognised that this was the end where high staff turnover was a problem. Staff turnover caused a multitude of problems for everyone and I believe, from personal experience, that it is the same in education.
Personalised remuneration plans can help to reinforce committment to an institution. Health professionals are normally very committed to their profession (as are teachers), rather than to the particular institution employing them. This can mean that they move around in order to get the experiences they need, but this comes at a great cost to employers, and to those whom they serve, due to discontinuty of service.
My daughter has had two different teachers in two years. One left for career advancement and the other left for family reasons. It is really insettling for everyone when the school is frequently in recruitment mode and I believe that if the school had more flexibility in the way it remunerates staff then many staff changes could be avoided to the benefit of all.
Ele
Teachers as a group tend to do the job for the joy of it (I know crazy to believe!). And in general as long as they are earning enough to not be worrying about money teachers want the autonomy to do job they love.
Perhaps instead of asking how teachers can be rewarded for doing a good job the question that needs to be asked is ‘how can the government assist teachers in doing a good job?’
There are plenty of teachers out their with ideas to implement but need money and help to get them off the ground. Given the amount of their own cash that teachers put into buying supplies etc. for their classes you are effectively paying for performance without buying a huge political fight.
Stephanie
Stephanie – I am sure a lot of teachers do the job for the joy of it because the pay isn’t that good. But how many potentially good teachers don’t even consider it because their skills and qualifications enable them to do other jobs which pay far better?
More money to help implement some of the good ideas could be worthwhile too, though.
Wouldn’t it be better to pay good teachers more to stay in the classroom?
Maybe. All of us would like to see the best teachers getting paid more than they get now, both to keep them in the profession and to attract the best applicants. However, set against that is the fact that teaching is a collaborative profession and inciting competition between them would hinder that. Add to that the complexity of figuring out a satisfactory performance measurement system and the bureaucratic cost of measuring it, and the fact that unions look on National govts involving themselves in industrial relations about as favourably as employer associations look on Labour govts doing it, and it’s a big can of worms.