Pay teachers according to performance, MPs propose (in UK)

[alp227]

Last edited Wed May 2, 2012, 08:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Teachers' pay should be more closely tied to the value they add to pupils' performance so that the best are rewarded while the weakest are discouraged from staying in the profession, MPs on the education select committee are to recommend.

The MPs say there are "huge differences" in the performance of teachers but express concern that the pay system rewards poorly performing teachers at the same levels as their more successful counterparts.

In a report, the committee urges ministers to develop proposals for a pay system that rewards the teachers who add the "greatest value" to pupil performance.

The report says: "We believe that performance management systems should support and reward the strongest teachers, as well as make no excuses (or, worse, incentives to remain) for the weaker."

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/may/01/pay-teachers-according-to-performance

Now even the UK wants to do what US Edu. Secy. Arne Duncan wants to do. Thoughts?

[Turbineguy]

1. I don't think that works.

If it were easy to come up with a performance metric it would have been done years ago. I suspect that the best time to cull is during the learning period, not the teaching period.

[RobertEarl]

2. Oh yeah?

Pay MPs according to performance, teachers propose

MPs pay should be tied to the value they add to government's performance, Schoolteachers are to recommend



MPs pay should be more closely tied to the value they add to government performance so that the best are rewarded while the weakest are discouraged from staying in the profession

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Let's test it on MPs first.

They should be enthusiastic to try it, right ?

[LeftishBrit]

5. Same thought occurred to me!

If this government were 'paid by results', they'd be getting pretty thin pickings! Fortunately for them, they're mostly rich anyway.

[LeftishBrit]

4. History repeats itself, both as tragedy AND farce

At the beginnings of state education in the UK in the 19th century, teachers in state schools were paid by 'results'. As Robert Lowe, essentially our first and perhaps worst Education Secretary, remarked in the 1860s: 'If education is not cheap it shall be efficient; if it is not efficient it shall be cheap.' This almost strangled state education at its beginning.

Here are some fascinating excerpts from the 1867 'General Report' by Matthew Arnold, well-known English poet *and* school inspector, referring to the effects of this system, introduced in 1862. (Part of the report was reprinted in Stuart Maclure's "Educational Documents"; Chapman, 1986.)

'The mode of teaching in the primary schools has certainly fallen off in intelligence, spirit and inventiveness during the four or five years after my last report. It could not well be otherwise. In a country where everyone is prone to rely too much on mechanical processes and too little on intelligence, a change in the Education Department's regulations, which by making two thirds of the Government grant depend on a mechanical examination, inevitably gives a mecahnical turn to the school teaching, a mechanical turn to the inspection, and must be trying to the intellectual life of a school...

More free play for the inspector, and more free play, in consequence, for the teacher, is what is wanted.In the game of mechanical contrivances, the teacher will in the end beat us... by ingenious preparation (of children for tests).'


Some things never change!