Performance based pay scale

They do this in other countries and its a bit of a logistical nightmare. It's very hard to correctly judge as schools themselves are different. We've just hit national average in my subject at honours level in a DEIS school. This took a massive amount of work but in a nice school in a nice area they would have more sitting higher level andost would be getting grinds. The grades don't always reflect the actual teacher.

I agree it is very frustrating. Generally the best teachers also end up with more exam classes, larger classes, and taking over classes that are behind due to parental complaint. I've seen good principals start the process of section 21 (completely correctly and very professionally) and the teacher just leave and get a job somewhere else. I do think having the formalised structure to hold teachers to account over time should hopefully out pressure on very poorly preforming teachers to buck up but only time will tell. It's still very new.

I think there has to be a bit of cop on too, if you are in a tough school it's mentally and emotionally very difficult, after 10 years of good teaching you might have an off year. Good principals will alknowledge this and move things are for a year, give you less exam years, maybe some small groups.

I also certainly know that there are teachers perceived as very good teachers who will always teach the full timetable of their subject, no small groups, no wellbeing
sphe, no special education even if they are qualified, no chance at BFL or Home School in certain schools. With the new interviews this actually damages their chance of promotion. Complete insanity really. Same with teachers with certain subjects. I've also seen teachers moved completely into non exam subjects, very little correcting, no mocks, Christmas test or the extra prep for JC or LC. I'd love to see a way of rewarding the good teachers but any idea I think of is very open to manipulation or would find it hard to take into account the subtleties of schools

I think supports for teacher's struggling might be the way to go. With equalisation almost complete my pay is pretty ok now, I do have a post and I supplement with correcting usually but it's fine. I'd be more interested in equity of opertuninty, not necessarily for me but for teachers coming in now so the good ones don't spend all their time teaching exam years and get a chance to experience other aspects of teaching. I'd like to see struggling teachers supported more by management (varies massively from school to school), more principals actually going through the process of section 21 and more conversation by management with individual teachers around areas of improvement.

Man with broke phone wrote: »

Hi, I'm doing some thinking out loud and I was reading about some teachers working very hard during the lockdown and some not so much and I thought to myself (out loud) should we have a pay scale based on performance.

Now I'm just a lay person so the nitty gritty would need to be kneaded out. Say for example a math teacher on grade 1 taught and motivated 80 per cent of her students to get an honour in junior cert maths surely she deserves to go up to grade 2. If she did it for 5 years in a row grade 3 would be given.

This would seriously empty out the rot in the education system. I had too many teachers just turning up and getting paid one who read geography from the book at a monotone barely audible level then crucified anybody who looked like falling asleep. For a whole year. Nobody in the whole class got above a C in the junior cert in his subject. Why should he get the same money as somebody who is there as long as them and still lighting a fire under the students.

In this world and systems Robin Wiliams oh captain my captain gets the same pay and conditions as Ferris Buellers teacher. What's the story here?

The problem with this is that it rewards one criterion namely academic results. Many would not offer to teach academically weaker ill-disciplined students. In broad terms your suggestion has merit but is problematic. It should be said that I have worked in a private sector setting where there were annual reviews based around salary but I always felt it was going through the motions and no matter what you did it was more or less preordained, though I’m sure the head honchos would convince you they were running a rigorous performance-driven remuneration system.

I remember a school Principal of long-standing in a large school telling me, about 14 years ago, that her sister who worked in a bank got a bonus larger than her Principal’s annual salary. And we now know the kind of job the banks were doing. Remuneration and performance are not necessarily commensurate. The best people are not always motivated by money, and those motivated by money are not always the best people. There are people in teaching doing amazing jobs with students who’ll never cut it academically, students who the classically “good teachers” (who’d slit your throat over homework, take no nonsense etc.) wouldn’t last two minutes with.

Bassfish wrote: »

Totally agree there's amazing teachers in deprived areas but that misses the point. Under a system of teachers being graded by their students' results, that Johnny phone it in teacher working in Dalkey will be classed as better than that miracle worker teacher working in Darndale because so many socio-economic factors are going to have a role in determining grades.

Not to mind the fact that those from more affluent families can afford grinds etc, which will inflate the grades of the 'phone it in' teacher. Prove it wasn't their work.

Make teaching a desirable career. In Ireland Medicine is hard to get into, in Finland teaching is like that. Then you get the cream of the crop and not the usual chancers you see here in CSPE.

If this crisis has taught us anything it's that we should be very respectful of those working in childcare as our economy is very dependent on them.

For some students a child care course is their dream, for some it's science, for some fintech, for other music etc. I'm in an area very like Darndale and we would have kids aiming for medicine and some delighted they already have their acceptance into their desired PLC. For most they will be the first in their family to continue their education after secondary, for a number they will be the first to sit and pass a leaving cert. As stated above the most important thing is they have a path, they have a desire for something for themselves in the future, they can see a future. Generational change is hard.

I would agree with everyone above. Another thing to note is schools are very teamwork based. It's important we all basically get along in a staffroom, I've been in toxic staffrooms and I'd leave a school over it no problem. A round of promotions nearly caused mayhem in our school and we started in a good position interpersonally. Even if I was to benefit from such a system I wouldn't want the atmosphere it would bring.

We are worryingly low on teachers as in anyway

Man with broke phone wrote: »

Yeah maybe college professors but should somebody teaching geography and music in st random in north dublin get as much money as the teacher busting a gut in jobstown putting a high percentage of his kids into decent college courses. I think a system exists that breeds toxicity towards anybody that is seen as a try hard. I was allowed do music for my junior cert. I couldn't play an instrument, I couldn't afford one I was never going to have a career in it but they needed to fill up places and had a music class, nobody even asked me why I was studying it, they were just happy a science class or tech drawing had less applicants, I learned that a song exists called ripples in the rock pool and got a high score in the junior cert. I picked music because it was an easy honour. Nobody gives a fiddlers.
Teacher I had, gave a bit of time to the few people with guitars or whatever but we had half a class that went there a few times a week to ensure she got paid and nothing else.
I had a few alcoholic teachers that came to school for a rest. One fella who was a famous spoofed with a brother who was a doctor in my local area that spent every class talking about how great he was and never once looked at a book. Probably on tablets or drugs looking back now.
For every hard working teacher there was at least one waster getting the same pay and probably holding children back by making sure other people didnt go above and beyond until they got extra pay for it.

For me as a hard working guy I'd be fuming looking at them every morning in the canteen. Talk about toxic work environment.

Would anybody know of a way we could get the good workers more pay and the bad workers a bit less.

There isnt one, not in teaching at least. Such a scheme would require intense, individual monitoring of every teacher which would be A. Unaffordable and B. Enough to drive competent practitioners out of the job because effective teaching must always be afforded a substantial degree of space, to experiment with different styles, allow for class discussions..etc.

Bottom line is every profession has those that stand out and those that coast. A handful will prove to be especially ineffective, for any number of reasons, but they are decreasing in teaching. Getting through 2 years of the Dip, or whatever its called now, is hard enough, but if you do manage to qualify and get into a school, the real challenges become clear. Parents simply wont stand for truly obvious examples of hopelessness, complaints will be made and even the most brass-necked of individuals will usually realise that they have to up their game or quit. And they usually do one or the other.

If they dont, this is what happens.
Recently qualified examples will bounce from school to school for years but never get a CID because a diligent principal will recognise that they arent cut out for teaching and that making them permanent will make their own lives harder. There are, of course, some instances where school politics and poor leadership will mean a good teacher will slip through the net, but such outcomes are rare. Truth be told, if youve been working consistently in a school or schools, and are able to show your worth, you will be made CID within a maximum of 6 or 8 years (at most). A disgracefully long wait for a competent teacher, it must be said. Enough time for a substandard one to get the message.

Permanent examples, if parent harrassment or substandard feedback from inspections arent enough, may have changes made to their timetables to try and drop the hint that things arent working out. The opinions of colleagues, as in any job, will also matter, and all but the most deluded professional will quickly realise if they no longer have the respect of their department or principal.

Of course, there are those that are deluded. As there are in every profession. It is probably one of the main challenges of every principal (assuming they themselves are competent, which isnt always the case), to either motivate and support somebody who's really struggling, or just do his/her best for the students in such a teacher's care in spite of them. That could mean allocating 'less important' subjects or initiating team teaching so that there's somebody else in the class wherever possible etc. It shouldnt come to that, but in the real world, it does and you just have to get on with it.

Removing a teacher from the register or 'firing' them does seem difficult. Looking at the minority of cases where its happened, serious breaches in conduct seem to be the main issues (drinking with, or sellotaping the mouths of, students being 2 of the more familiar examples). That might seem frustrating to the general public (and teachers too perhaps), but the truth is, it is in keeping with how most professions operate. Google cases of how employees' jobs are terminated: if youre a nurse or a doctor, youd want to have killed somebody, or at least maimed them. A lawyer would need to have robbed a client. Anybody else has probably assaulted their boss.
The fact is, civil rights trump all. It is extremely difficult to fire anybody these days, whether you are public or private sector. I know of a case where a solicitor was stealing from their own firm. They had to pay the person off to get rid of them!
With teaching, any kind of grading system designed to distinguish good from bad, is doomed to fail, for all the reasons listed in above posts. Even in a class where 99pc of students respect a teacher, there will always be a naysayer because the teacher is too strict or was unfair one time or does drama too often..etc. Rather than try to isolate and punish examples of poor teachers, wed be far better off supporting such perceived cases with intervention and top quality CPD. But when we are working with an education system that has been possibly the most underfunded in western Europe for about 40 years now (which is only now dawning on the general public), we wont be holding our breath for that kind of logic.

This would never work.

Performance based pay scale would need to run off very definite parameters that just don't exist.

am_zarathustra wrote: »

more conversation by management with individual teachers around areas of improvement.

I'd very much be of the opinion that should cut both ways.

Man with broke phone wrote: »

I believe in a system that rewards hard workers. I believe in a system that punishes terrible workers. I believe most industries have ways to deal with this but teaching doesnt. I have two children in primary school a year apart. One teacher was online every day working hard the other one sent a chapter of a book to do twice over the lockdown. Surely one should be well paid and the other should be walking around with the shovel of sand to throw over the sick kids vomit.

You do realise a hard working teacher does not necessarily mean successful learning for a student?

Man with broke phone wrote: »

Hi, I'm doing some thinking out loud and I was reading about some teachers working very hard during the lockdown and some not so much and I thought to myself (out loud) should we have a pay scale based on performance.

Now I'm just a lay person so the nitty gritty would need to be kneaded out. Say for example a math teacher on grade 1 taught and motivated 80 per cent of her students to get an honour in junior cert maths surely she deserves to go up to grade 2. If she did it for 5 years in a row grade 3 would be given.

This would seriously empty out the rot in the education system. I had too many teachers just turning up and getting paid one who read geography from the book at a monotone barely audible level then crucified anybody who looked like falling asleep. For a whole year. Nobody in the whole class got above a C in the junior cert in his subject. Why should he get the same money as somebody who is there as long as them and still lighting a fire under the students.

In this world and systems Robin Wiliams oh captain my captain gets the same pay and conditions as Ferris Buellers teacher. What's the story here?

I think you've forgotten how Dead Poets' Society ended :pac: