UPDATE: Please see the bottom of the post for Union reactions.

The DfE have posted this news item today:

All schools to get freedom to pay good teachers more

This post is my initial reaction as not all of the details are available as yet.

Does Gove really think that performance related pay will work in education? Insurance sales – yes, education – no.

Here is why:

How will they rate performance? Being a teaching is about far more than results!Will every sch have set requirements or can they make it up?

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 Matt Britland (@mattbritland) December 05, 2012

How does one rate performance? Yes, results are important (and measurable), but being a teacher is about far more than letters. What about the positive influence teachers have on young peoples lives? You cannot measure that. What about the teachers who go the extra mile everyday? You can’t measure that.

Will HoDs allocate themselves the best children to get the best results?

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 Matt Britland (@mattbritland) December 05, 2012

I am sure many HoDs will not do this, but certainly a point that should be raised. If your salary is dependent on performance, will some HoDs allocate the ‘best’ students in order to get the best results? Teachers have kids and families to support. Could you blame them for wanting more money?

Will performance be based on value added? If so that is open to abuse.

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 Matt Britland (@mattbritland) December 05, 2012

Value added could be a way of judging performance. However, if you have a class of students who are predicted A*, there is only so much value you can add. If many of your students are predicted C’s and D’s, you have more opportunity to add value.

This tweet from Sam is worth thinking about:

@mattbritland improvement may also be down to a muti-team eg youth inc or youth offending team. In which case how to measure and pay whom ?

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 Sam the Westie (@samthewestie) December 05, 2012

This is spot on and a great point.

Performance related pay for teachers is a bad idea! Richer schools will have more freedom to recruit as poorer schools cannot pay as much.

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 Matt Britland (@mattbritland) December 05, 2012

Some schools have more outside donors or sponsors, these can provide funds to all sorts of things. This could free up extra money to pay more for staff.

Its common sense that teacher pay should be consistent. Imagine a situation when two teachers in the same department, doing the same job, find that one of them gets paid more. It will not be a good.

Schools are already under pressure about results and some are accused of helping students more than they should. Do you really think performance related pay is going to help this situation?

Think of the financial uncertainty for our future teachers.

Finally, it is a horrible to think of our students being treated like commodities.

I am sorry this may seem like a rant and possibly not brilliantly put together, I just wanted to get it out there.

Update:

Teachers’ performance pay ‘does not raise standards’ – Interesting article from the BBC.

Update 2:

NUT Reaction

NASUWT Reaction

ATL Reaction