Proposal for Performance Related Pay Scores F

Who takes the greater credit? The worker who sows the seed, or the one who harvests the fruit? If the environmental conditions are too wet, or drought sets in and the crop fails, has the farmer been any less diligent? If these questions seem too ludicrous to contemplate, consider them in the context of performance-related pay for teachers. This is the latest idea from Education Secretary Michael Gove to “reform” the performance of teachers.

 

Michael Gove is just as qualified to be Education Secretary as I am. That is, not at all. I never cease to be amazed by how successions of Secretaries of State insist on meddling & interfering in professions that they plainly know nothing about. Although the Coalition has a spectacularly wide spectrum of incompetent Ministers, actually this determination to aggravate, agitate and generally get in the way is a characteristic of most Governments. The last Labour Government certainly had its fair share of guilty fiddlers.

 

It is hard to know exactly where to start with Gove’s latest brainwave. It has so many holes in it, the concept is virtually see-through. Firstly, I don’t imagine that too many people join the teaching profession with dreams of fast cars, riches and international travel. Historically, like most of the other Public sector professions, teaching was considered a vocation; a way of life. This may be a difficult concept for any politicians, let alone Tories, to grasp. Alien as it may be to Gove and his cohorts, there are people to whom the contribution to society is primary, and fiscal concerns are secondary. This is not to canonize teachers or to paint them as beyond the lure of pecuniary reward – after all, they have families and needs as we all do. My point is that these are intelligent, well-meaning and articulate people. If they had wished a high-paying job above all else, they would have worked in a bank, or anywhere other than in a school.

 

If ever there was a situation which was ripe for visitation by the law of unintended consequences, this is indeed it. There are any number of ways one might predict this playing out, and probably a few that we won’t predict. Nonetheless, permit me to hazard a guess at a few probable outcomes.

 

Schools in deprived areas will find it harder than ever before to recruit, and retain, teaching staff. If a sizeable percentage of their income is directly linked to results, then teachers will want to be at the best schools in the most affluent areas.

 

Schools in deprived areas will find that they are only able to attract newly qualified teachers, who will depart to a better school at the first opportunity, or teachers with longer service who aren’t good enough to get interviews at leading schools.

 

Any extra-curricular or sporting activities which are currently staffed by teachers out of goodwill, will cease. These will be replaced by work aimed at professional development for the staff, or work for the pupils. There are already complaints about children being taught to pass exams, instead of being given an education, and why does this happen? It’s caused by the pressure created by school league tables. Now, these same chattering classes are driving education further along that road that they say they despise.

 

What is patently clear from all of this is that Gove, the Department of Education, and the Conservative Party, do not understand education. Education is not a factory process, where you take some raw material, apply some rigid processes which have been shorn of all flexibility in the name of efficiency, and at the age of 16 out pops a rounded, well-educated young adult. Education defies any simple analogies, but the best that comes to mind is that of a relay race. Each teacher that touches the life of a child, runs with them for a year before passing the baton onto the next teacher. It’s true that not every race comes out as any of the participants might have wanted it, but the key thing is that it is a team effort. Each person can run the race of their life, but that does not guarantee results. If Gove was running a factory, he would be poking each employee with an electric prod whilst taking a cleaver to their pay, terms and conditions. He would make a Victorian workhouse owner blush.

 

Alistair Campbell stated on Radio 4’s “Any Questions” on Friday and wrote in his blog (http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2012/12/15/the-media-love-michael-gove-but-the-any-questions-audience-was-not-so-gullible/) on Saturday that Gove was deliberately attempting to provoke a confrontation with teaching unions in order to further his own political profile, whatever the effects on children’s education. That may or may not be the case, but Gove is well on course to becoming the most despised and notoriously incompetent Education Secretary in history.