Debating: "That we should have performance pay for teachers"?

Question

has any one got any good ideas for affirmative which is that we should have performance pay?

thanks

Answer 1

Let's say a factory worker gets performance pay for the products he/she produces. I think this would be fair only if the worker could reject parts that were defective. It would not be fair to judge how well he/she manufactures a product from inferior parts.

As long as teachers have to "deal with the kids they get," I do not think that merit pay is a fair way to compensate. Would teachers be penalized for students who did not acheive for reasons beyond the control of the classroom?? Kids learning is helped by teachers, but a HUGE factor in how well a student learns is his/her experience outside of the classroom (family, nutrition, amount of sleep, etc.).

A short answer to your question would be...NO, I can not think of any positive reason to have perfomance pay for teachers.

Answer 2

The British government brought in Performance Related Pay a few years back, and called it the Threshold.

My parents (who both had lifelong careers from their early 20s) both had to spend a week filling out forms proving as to why they deserved to 'pass the Threshold' and merit the performance related pay. This took place just a couple of years before they both retired.

However, they were only allowed to use the last 3 years of teaching from which to draw examples of why they should pass the Threshold.

This from people in their late 50s who had been teaching since the age of 22. They found it insulting that they had been dedicated professionals for so long but that most of it apparently counted for nothing.

They both passed it, and it pushed my dad into the next tax bracket so he saw about £10 a month more than he had previously earned.


There is an argument for performance-related pay (ie that it can be an extra motivator for teachers), but this assumes that everyone is starting from the same point. As other people have pointed out, if you're teaching in a school that has a quota of pupils from deprived areas or backgrounds from the lower social spectrum, how can grades be used as a fair measure of performance, when many of these kids will not aspire to Higher or even Further Education?

Those who think performance-related pay can be a fair and equal motivator across the board need to look again at our current education system and wake up.

Answer 3

If anyone can actually show me a practical way of assessing the performance of an individual teacher, or indeed an entire school then I am all for it.In a factory with many identical tasks then productivity can be judged objectively. Not quite so simple in a school however. Taking for instance my own area Manchester as an example. My local primary school has in the past year had an influx of immigrants including several French speaking Africans, two Chinese, and some Urdu speaking children. Add to this that it is an area with several itinerant travelling families and a high proportion of one parent families and the problems become obvious. While in no way am I criticising the current pupils it is obviously not easy when your first task in reception stage is to teach English. Compare this to an area like Wilmslow, home to many professional footballers , Doctors Lawyers, etc and the schools there have an obvious advantage. How can you judge the performance of two teachers in such different environments. It simply is not practical.

Answer 4

Performance pay is workable if the measurement of performance is considered appropriate and relevant by all concerned.
It should not be solely reliant on results and, where it is concerned with the results, baseline data on student entry must be accurate.
PRP should also reflect work done outside the classroom in terms of extra curricular/preparation/marking etc.
The issues we have with result based PRP is the lack of evidence in demonstrating levels of students at start, and that it does not always take into account social and economic factors. Also, how do you reward teachers who do not teach exam classes?
The problem with the old system of management points is that once you had them, you could do very little and still be paid for the responsibility. There are teachers who take advantage of this - they are very much in the minority and it does cause resentment from the rest of the staff.
However, I know I'm biased, but teachers do deserve more pay and PRP could be used to reflect the contribution a teacher makes to their students' progress - if the country wants top quality professionals teaching their youth they should recognise that and pay appropriately.

Answer 5

As a dedicated teacher I like to think I already do my best, but honestly I would probably try to work a little harder if my pay was based on my students' test scores. Would it matter? I doubt it.

Last year I taught two history classes. I taught them exactly the same way--same lectures, same activities, same assignments, same tests--but the results couldn't have been more different. In the first class 12 out of 30 students failed, and only 1 received an A. In the second, there were 10 A's and only one F. The students in the first class weren't dumb; they just didn't care about school or grades.

Merit pay won't significantly improve our schools, because teachers aren't the problem. What we really need is a better way to motivate all students!

Answer 6

For affirmative. Well if you encourage teachers to perform better by performance based pay, it could result in increased student performance as a result of better teaching.

Answer 7

you can onlywork with the kids you got,if they are from a dodgy area with poor parents then you are on a hiding to nothing.Is it fair to be paid less than a school based in the stockbroker belt with parents who want their kids to achieve.
If anything a supplement should be paid to inner city teachers for any kids who get more than 4 qualifications as the task is much harder ... so i suppose that is performance related

Answer 8

Lets also have performance fee structure for students.

Answer 9

Yes peformance related pay and 13 wks holiday a year. plus a full benefits package and then you can retire at 50 due to stress and be fully pensioned and then decide that you can work for another few years after all on your pension and full salary.

Answer 10

How would you measure performance?