Performance pay: individual contracts for teachers

Issue 

On February 21, the federal education minister Julie Bishop announced a proposal to introduce "performance-based pay" for teachers in public schools.

Bishop proposed three models for the new payments: one based on students' results, the second on assessments by principals, parents and students, and the third mimicking a system operating in NSW private schools wherein teachers are paid on the basis of satisfying certain "objective" criteria set by the NSW Institute of Teachers.

Bishop's proposals have been widely condemned. The NSW Teachers Federation described the proposals as "harebrained". Angelo Gavrielatos, NSWTF deputy president, told the February 22 Sydney Morning Herald that Bishop's proposals were "about forcing the government's industrial relations agenda on schools by placing individual teachers on contracts, forcing teachers to pit themselves against each other". NSW education minister Carmel Tebbutt decried Bishop's proposals as "unfair" and "a recipe for disruption in schools".

However, both the NSWTF and the NSW government have welcomed a federal Labor proposal to "reward" some teachers with a $10,000 bonus for achieving "rigorous standards for professional excellence". The NSW government also has its own performance-based pay plan for experienced teachers, with the compulsory, quasi-professional standards body, the NSW Institute of Teachers, established by the state government in 2004, currently drafting guidelines for assessing experienced teachers' performance.

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle called for career paths for teachers, not bonus payments. "Teachers deserve more pay", she said on February 21. "They also want more career path options. They do not want gimmicky performance pay bonuses." Nettle also called for greater public funding to public schools from both state and federal governments.

"The purpose of performance-pay models is to erode the solidarity between teachers", Vivian Messimeris, a NSWTF member in Sydney, told Green Left Weekly. "Whether it's the Liberal or Labor scheme, performance-based pay is about dividing teachers from one another, and breaking the resistance of an industrially important section of workers.

"Just imagine the impact where you have two teachers in the same staff room, with the same experience and doing the same job, but one is being paid more than the other. It's a system designed to sow distrust, break down cooperation and leave teachers open for even more attacks.

"Teachers should be better paid", Messimeris said. "But they also face a whole range of other problems. Classes are still too large, there are not enough teachers' aids and resources are woefully inadequate.

"What's needed is a massive injection of funds into the public system. Nothing else will do."

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