Teacher performance pay: could the end be in sight for this controversial practice?

I have always refused to engage in this stupid, pointless hoop jumping exercise, administered by managers without the statistical intelligence that would have been necessary for the old O level, and who heap workload, pressure and abuse onto anyone unlucky enough to "win" this lottery.

 

I fear there are too many schools with financial constraints grasping at any little thing that cuts costs.

 

This is a key part of the problem - schools are desperate to save money so are actively looking, and hoping to find staff from whom to withhold pay progression.

Secondly, not only do you need to be doing your job but you need to provide evidence, usually in a written form, that you have met the criteria set for your pay progression. This inevitably means twice as much time spent on everything as you do it and then write about what you have just done.

 

This too

 

We had this nonsense brought into our schools about 25 years ago. As a leading teacher, I refused to sing a performance plan, for which my principal told me she would have great difficulty in rolling over my job – in the end, she abolished it completely so I couldn’t even apply for it – that didn’t matter as I got a leading teacher job in another school. When Labor was elected in 1999, the whole nonsense was abolished, but it has snuck back in as annual performance reviews rather than payments of bonuses.


The whole concept says that teachers cannot be trusted unless they are micro-managed. Its advocates have no grasp of the time, energy and money that micro-management takes from actual teaching, for both the teacher and the micro-manager.


Here are two research items showing the failure of performance payments in teaching:

http://www.saveourschools.com.au/te...y-for-teacher-teams-improves-student-outcomes

and

http://www.saveourschools.com.au/teachers/incentive-pay-schemes-do-not-change-teaching-practices.


The sooner it is abandoned the better.

 

Trouble is, life is so expensive compared to teachers' salaries that most folk have to jump when it's demanded.

 

Finally........how long has it taken to agree that not only is it unfair but grossly damaging to the emotional and physical health of teachers - after Gove forced its implementation based on the recommendation of a minority of Academy conversion ‘experts’. They saw this as one of the ways to force schools into being taken over by big trust chains in much the same way as aggressive takeovers in business.
Have a look at school OFSTEd reports in recent years. School on its own judged required improvement no matter that its last one was good or better. School taken over by bigger trust.
Headteacher and a few experienced teachers scapegoated (to force compliance in the rest) and forced out on ‘competency’.
OFSTEd comes back and miraculously school gets a good again........
Does anyone care how the abused and mistreated staff in that school survived? Nope it’s all just a game........
I’m sure a minority of schools do deserve a downgrade particularly if behaviour is a massive issue. It is usually the main reason for progress deteriorating.
But more proactive steps other than teaching the teachers a lesson needs to happen.
For example SLT models need to change and adapt.
Schools with a large number of pp and send students combined with neglect and abuse issues at home need to have less SLT on teaching and learning training and monitoring roles and more on behaviour associated directly with unstable home environments.
Either the dfe nor OFSTEd ever mention this. They are afraid of losing parent votes for their policies.
One SLT member in charge of behaviour in such schools leads to disaster.
Particularly if there is a general lack of respect for their school and their peers amongst a significant number of students (and their parents).
A team on behaviour may work better as it might prevent one person in charge from changing policies every term making life even more exhausting for the classroom teachers......
One of their key roles with all the time off a teaching timetable, should be to call certain parents in and educate them on how to support and change behaviour and that it is a shared responsibility not a ‘blame the teacher’ culture enabled by dfe and OFSTEd policies.
Get a free lunch.....throw it at the ceiling because it’s not what you wanted and blame the chef.
Instead what actually happens is this.
Students run the corridors and the classrooms, bullying peers, disrupting lessons and damaging school resources. A behaviour expert comes in and lectures teachers. CPD and insets focus on how exhausted teachers should spend more time on planning to teach ‘perfect’ lessons.......as in utopian.
Teachers phone home and are verbally abused by the parents, parent calls school to ‘complain’ about lack of support for their disruptive and extremely rude child (who also may be using the school to deal drugs, steal etc).
School asks say a maths teacher to meet with peers and collect ideas about how to make their lessons and or themselves more likeable....like the music or drama teacher who does not give any child detentions but in whose lessons a child can make noise all lesson even if it’s not of the musical or creative kind!
Teachers on a full contact timetable (no TLR non contact time) teach such unstable groups for approximately 830 or more hours a year and are given 95 hours on top of that load to plan. That is about 8 minutes per lesson. It’s exhausting...
Doing that year after year and then getting less experienced teaching staff promoted for nothing but the ability to talk loudly and reverently about themselves. ...sprouting utter nonsense about how much more time others can spend over the 8 minutes providing evidence of their leadership skills and the things they do that don’t involve actual hours teaching.... for OFSTEd!
The idea that these people are the most effective to judge a teachers performance is absolutely gobsmacking and has left the system short staffed of experienced teachers in schools that often need them the most......

 

This is the biggest ‘hidden’ scandal of the past 15 years. Performance related pay is the mechanism used to facilitate it at ground level.

 

Gonna have to fight the schools on this. I remember how quick they were to jump on board with this BS and do nothing to halt it.

Now it's ingrained, so much so, it can't go. Ever.

 

A change of Government would help. The Tories will never change it.