Comments from Sir John in today's Gazette http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051012/NEWS/110120061

He recommends modernising the pay structure of teachers with a focus on skills or competency-based pay, as in the US and Britain, to encourage a higher standard of performance in the public school system.
"We need to raise standards, prestige and compensation so that our best and brightest young people choose to enter the teaching profession, and teachers who can't meet the standards should choose to enter a less demanding line of work,"

Sounds like a plan. Seems to me that no teacher confident that they're doing a good job would need to be worried about this. Competency based - now there's groundbreaking.

Oh must respond! This is a bad, bad, bad idea!!


While I understand the reasoning behind this popular train of thought, there are so many other factors that have to be taken into consideration.
- Where is the motivation for teachers to be collaborative with one another?  An effective education system is one where the teachers share resources, ideas and expertise with each other. This way, all the students benefit and reap the rewards.  However, if you bring in skills or competency-based pay, it ends up being selfish.  Who wouldn't want to make some extra money after all?  Can't you just see teachers then keeping their wealth of knowledge to themselves?  After all, then their students will do better than the others.
- This inevitably leads to "teaching to the test".  If you know that the skills or competency-based pay is based on standardized tests, teachers would begin to teach to this test.  This would ensure that their students would do really well.  However, other important parts of the curriculum would be missed as a result.  And especially, teaching students to think for themselves.  Standardized tests are factual by nature and do not require opinions or personal interpretations. 
- Not every child/student will do well on tests and standardized tests in particular.  Exam anxiety is very common.  Imagine how much more apparent it would be if the teachers were pressuring the kids!!!  As that would determine their bonus!
- Not every child will become an A student.  That is a fact.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  Teachers are concerned with how far children progress under their care and how well they are learning the curriculum.  If your pay is based on skills, it is just unfair!  Especially if you end up with a class full of students who have special needs or learning disabilities.  Well, then I suppose that there would be an outcry for the segregation of those students.  And then all the work that has been done in terms of integration over the years would be lost!

You want a great education...then hire great teachers.  As has already been mentioned on this site, teachers in Bermuda do NOT necessarily have an Education degree.  Bermudians only need to have a teacher-training course to be hired.  An education degree MUST be mandatory.  Besides, Sir John made a horrible statement when he implied that education is a path chosen by weaker students.   Education programs at universities (in Canada for example) are very intensive and turn out strong teachers. 

Eeeks, Captain Canuck! I might have gotten a little carried away in my last post!
The point that I was trying to make is that a skills or competency-based pay scheme sounds great in theory, but is not feasible in practice.  I didn't mean to give the impression that it is already happening here.  It was recently brought forth as a suggestion by Sir. John.

The irony is that all the GREAT teachers that I know are completely against this type of plan and it is the POOR ones that are for it.  Why? Because great teachers know that learning is so much more than being able to answer test questions and teaching is more than just a pay cheque to them.

BTW, I think that the way to weed out bad teachers is to have performance reviews/evaluations every year (or at least every two years).  Then rather than getting the customary raise due to experience/years served, it would be waived for that year.  Now isn't that an incentive to buckle down and start working hard?  Plus, if one was put on probation they would have to either step up to the task at hand, retire (if they are at the age) or leave for another profession. 

And then maybe fix something about the complaints procedure... http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051017/NEWS/110170135
Parents have been withdrawing their children from school because a staff member who had been suspended for hitting a child returned. The staff member has been on maternity leave and the case was never investigated. Surely that doesn't help any child or teacher?