From September the new School Teachers’ Appraisal Regulations will come into effect in England. With Ofsted’s interest in performance management, has the time for a new system of rewarding teachers arrived?
The need for schools to demonstrate a clear link between appraisal, performance management and pay progression has never been greater.
From September, inspectors will want to see anonymised information on the performance management of teaching staff, its relationship to salary progression, and how this is shared with governors.
Education minister Michael Gove has made it clear that he favours the idea of relating pay to performance. We are expecting any time now, that the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) will return with its conclusions from the teachers’ pay review.
The STRB has been asked to consider “how teachers’ pay could be better linked to performance and whether there are existing barriers to this within the current system”.
The Sutton Trust claims that there is support for performance-related pay from most teachers. As part of the NFER Teacher Voice survey earlier this year, the charity asked how scale points should be awarded and found:
- 26 per cent thought they should be awarded to all teachers.
- 23 per cent to those judged to have performed well.
- 52 per cent to all teachers, apart from those judged to have performed poorly.
Most teachers would agree that it can seem unfair when evidently “coasting” colleagues appear to be rewarded by pay progression. However, there is a difference between capping progression for those performing poorly and increasing pay solely for those judged to have performed well.
Does performance-related pay work?
Performance-related pay might be a controversial subject but does it actually work in practice? The paper, Performance-related Pay and the Teaching Profession (Chamberlin, Wragg and Haynes, 2002), suggests: “Performance-related pay works best in situations in which there are easily measured outcomes, such as in manufacturing, but the outcomes of teaching are many and varied and there have been problems related to measuring teachers’ effectiveness.”
Having a performance-related pay structure does indicate clearly what the employer considers to be most important and may be an advantage in recruitment.
However, it can lead to the neglect of unrewarded tasks, disagreement about goals, lack of openness about failing, and can be demotivating for those who are not rewarded.
Chamberlin et al point out that the last time such a system was introduced into education, “teachers taught to the test, were confined to a narrow, boring curriculum, attempted to arrange the school intake, cheated, ignored bright children and drilled and beat the slower ones until they could satisfy the all-powerful inspectors”. Hopefully we won’t see this replicated if it is reintroduced.
A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that there is no relationship between performance pay and test results. Instead it suggests that where countries invest more in their teachers, outcomes are better. A recent edition of the OECD’s PISA Update states: “The bottom line: performance-based pay is worth considering in some contexts, but making it work well and sustainably is a formidable challenge. Countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so not just through pay, but by raising the status of teaching, offering real career prospects, and giving teachers responsibility as professionals and leaders of reform.”
Trials
In spite of the reservations expressed in research, government policy seems to reflect the view that money can improve results. There are pilot schemes already in place which are providing financial incentives. For example, the government has pledged to give local authorities £4,000 for every “troubled” family they are able to intervene successfully with.
Mhairi Aylott, researcher for the Young Foundation, points out that although there is potential to save money in the long-term there are problems in this approach: “Defining what counts as success for the intervention is a challenging process. Complex families have often already participated in a range of interventions, making this link hard to calculate.”
In a similar way, pupils achieve because of the combined efforts of more than one member of staff. Teaching is a co-operative activity and children may benefit from a number of different interventions and strategies, including the support given by parents at home. We might feel that rewarding the efforts of one individual while neglecting the cumulative support of colleagues could undermine one of the main strengths of our schools.
Further information
• PISA Update: www.oecd.org/pisa.
• NFER Teacher Voice poll: www.suttontrust.com.
• The Education (School Teachers’ Appraisal) (England) Regulations 2012: www.education.gov.uk.
• For more primary education best practice and advisory articles from Headteacher Update, click here.
From September, inspectors will want to see anonymised information on the performance management of teaching staff, its relationship to salary progression, and how this is shared with governors.
Education minister Michael Gove has made it clear that he favours the idea of relating pay to performance. We are expecting any time now, that the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) will return with its conclusions from the teachers’ pay review.
The STRB has been asked to consider “how teachers’ pay could be better linked to performance and whether there are existing barriers to this within the current system”.
The Sutton Trust claims that there is support for performance-related pay from most teachers. As part of the NFER Teacher Voice survey earlier this year, the charity asked how scale points should be awarded and found:
- 26 per cent thought they should be awarded to all teachers.
- 23 per cent to those judged to have performed well.
- 52 per cent to all teachers, apart from those judged to have performed poorly.
Most teachers would agree that it can seem unfair when evidently “coasting” colleagues appear to be rewarded by pay progression. However, there is a difference between capping progression for those performing poorly and increasing pay solely for those judged to have performed well.
Does performance-related pay work?
Performance-related pay might be a controversial subject but does it actually work in practice? The paper, Performance-related Pay and the Teaching Profession (Chamberlin, Wragg and Haynes, 2002), suggests: “Performance-related pay works best in situations in which there are easily measured outcomes, such as in manufacturing, but the outcomes of teaching are many and varied and there have been problems related to measuring teachers’ effectiveness.”
Having a performance-related pay structure does indicate clearly what the employer considers to be most important and may be an advantage in recruitment.
However, it can lead to the neglect of unrewarded tasks, disagreement about goals, lack of openness about failing, and can be demotivating for those who are not rewarded.
Chamberlin et al point out that the last time such a system was introduced into education, “teachers taught to the test, were confined to a narrow, boring curriculum, attempted to arrange the school intake, cheated, ignored bright children and drilled and beat the slower ones until they could satisfy the all-powerful inspectors”. Hopefully we won’t see this replicated if it is reintroduced.
A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that there is no relationship between performance pay and test results. Instead it suggests that where countries invest more in their teachers, outcomes are better. A recent edition of the OECD’s PISA Update states: “The bottom line: performance-based pay is worth considering in some contexts, but making it work well and sustainably is a formidable challenge. Countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so not just through pay, but by raising the status of teaching, offering real career prospects, and giving teachers responsibility as professionals and leaders of reform.”
Trials
In spite of the reservations expressed in research, government policy seems to reflect the view that money can improve results. There are pilot schemes already in place which are providing financial incentives. For example, the government has pledged to give local authorities £4,000 for every “troubled” family they are able to intervene successfully with.
Mhairi Aylott, researcher for the Young Foundation, points out that although there is potential to save money in the long-term there are problems in this approach: “Defining what counts as success for the intervention is a challenging process. Complex families have often already participated in a range of interventions, making this link hard to calculate.”
In a similar way, pupils achieve because of the combined efforts of more than one member of staff. Teaching is a co-operative activity and children may benefit from a number of different interventions and strategies, including the support given by parents at home. We might feel that rewarding the efforts of one individual while neglecting the cumulative support of colleagues could undermine one of the main strengths of our schools.
Further information
• PISA Update: www.oecd.org/pisa.
• NFER Teacher Voice poll: www.suttontrust.com.
• The Education (School Teachers’ Appraisal) (England) Regulations 2012: www.education.gov.uk.
• For more primary education best practice and advisory articles from Headteacher Update, click here.