Chapter 6 - The teaching profession
The underlying problem is that the social status of teaching has
dropped dramatically. Every occupation that has been invented since 1970 is a
graduate occupation and has gone into the occupational hierarchy above teaching.
When I was a boy most accountants did not have degrees. Now the biggest faculty
in every university is a commerce faculty, and they are all people who are
expecting to earn more and have higher social status than teaching. The
burgeoning of the university industry in Australia is actually about the
creation of degreed occupations of a higher status than teaching.[1]
6.1
When this committee inquired into the status of the teaching profession
in 1996-97, it observed that teaching was a highly complex and demanding
activity, buffeted by shrinking budgets, alarmist media reports, unsupportive
ministers, a crowded curriculum, and the disappearance of support services. It
went on to describe how, despite what it saw as evidence of strong commitment
and innovative teaching practices, there was a morale crisis related to the
belief that the status of the profession was disturbingly low. Few teachers
recommended that their brighter students enter teaching, and the academic entry
level to university teacher training courses was notoriously low.[2]
6.2
What has changed over the past ten years? On the whole, not a great
deal, except that the political and economic context has changed. The committee
perceives that there is now an appreciation of the need for a more enlightened and
collaborative approach to schools' policy. There is more funding available than
10 years ago. The debilitating years of bureaucratic restructuring and
frustrating curriculum experiments are now a receding memory in most
jurisdictions. Even perceptions of professional status are beginning to change,
due in part to innovations like state teacher registration boards. But
fundamental problems identified in the 1998 report remain, especially in regard
to entry into the profession and teacher retention rates. This inquiry has
uncovered concerns not directly referred to in the earlier report: the academic
content of teaching degrees, particularly discipline-based knowledge; and the
quality of teaching. The committee hopes that there may be more willingness in
this first decade of the 21st century to take a more honest look at
cherished mindsets and institutional deficiencies with a resolve to fix as much
as we can.
6.3
In the meantime, across the country, a high proportion of teachers
remain under considerable strain. This inquiry does not have as its central
focus the pressures on teachers, but in noting evidence touching on teaching
quality, and the demands of the curriculum, some consideration of issues
affecting the profession can scarcely be avoided.
The school milieu
6.4
First, it is important to consider the task and operational field of the
profession. One does not enter teaching without a sense of the importance of
imparting knowledge or skills, or of bringing about some improvement or
development in the minds and outlooks of students. As Dr Geoff Masters and his
colleagues at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) have
reminded the committee, no concept is more central to the work of teachers than
the concept of growth, and that teachers have a fundamental belief that all
learners are capable of progressing beyond their current level of achievement.[3]
As another ACER researcher told the committee in relation to why people enter
the profession:
The research shows that key drivers are the pleasure and stimulation
that they get from working with children and colleagues and seeing kids develop
and learn.[4]
6.5
That is what good teaching is about, but as the committee heard,
teachers find many impediments laid in their path. They are confronted by
resistance to learning. They are often confounded by students with such a lack
of any sense of appropriate behaviour, social skills and worldly experience,
across entire classes that it is hard for inexperienced teachers to establish a
learning connection or point from which to progress. This is why teachers tend
to gravitate to middle-class schools in middle-class suburbs.
6.6
The committee also believes that a proportion of teachers, who have
spent 20 years or more in the classroom, are in danger of losing their drive
and their enthusiasm in learning new skills and knowledge. This may partly
arise from a lack of challenging professional development. It is not a
phenomenon confined to teaching, but its effects have more consequences there
than in most other jobs because of the need to be seen to perform. In
combination with low morale, which also affects teachers' performance, this
would account for what is probably an unacceptably high level of
under-performance. The committee has no evidence on the incidence of this
problem. It is an area of school and system administration which appears to be
under-researched. The committee is not concerned here with demonstrably
incapable performance, which is usually so obvious that it has to be 'managed'.
It is concerned with lacklustre teaching which relies on habit, old method and
old knowledge, and which can be safely ignored or tolerated by school
management as well as by bored and underachieving students. One correspondent
to the Ramsey inquiry into teacher quality in New South Wales (see below)
wrote:
...a teacher might well get fired for predatory sexual behaviour
with a young student, but others who mess up the lives and achievements
prospects of their students through low professional competence remain
entrenched in the system.[5]
6.7
Such teachers may be rehabilitated, but identification, diagnosis and
treatment is a challenge which appears not to be a priority. This challenge may
be taken up by the newly established teacher registration bodies, but the
committee fears that employing authorities will have the capacity to frustrate
quality teaching measures which are administratively inconvenient.
6.8
In his review of teacher education in New South Wales, Dr Gregor Ramsey
described the incidence of stagnation in schools which occurred when teachers'
long periods of 'professional passivity' weakened their morale and self-image.
This culture rewarded patience, not learning, and was an anomaly in a society
which normally rewards performance and creativity. Dr Ramsey also noted that
there are degrees of proficiency amongst teachers, and until some standards
have been agreed, and measures put in place to enforce them, the standing of
teaching in the community will not improve.
6.9
Notwithstanding this teaching milieu, in schools geared toward student
growth and achievement, it is easy to understand why Australian students do
well in relation to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In other schools,
the reasons for a long tail of under achievement are also easy to identify.
Education writer and former academic Alan Barcan has some depressing comments
to make on a sub-culture of under-achievement:
With values trending from stable and predictable to situational,
it is no longer possible to assume that students will value qualities like
application, ambition and achievement...The well-documented emergence amongst
adolescents of a deep caution, even cynicism, about institutions, authority,
government and education are, almost certainly, incrementally taking their toll
on student performance. Though certainly not universal in their impacts, the
valuing of work and the setting of personal goals is giving way to short-term
self-focused living for many adolescents and, with it, the motivation for
learning and the commitment to pursuing academic targets have both come under
considerable pressure...The inability of many families to provide basic knowledge
and values, the primitive culture of many peer groups, the deteriorating
culture pervading the media, mean that many students are no longer capable of
absorbing even a simplified version of the traditional culture.[6]
6.10
In Chapter 1 the committee recognised the issue of inequity as one which
dogged efforts to improve education standards across all schools. There is not
much that schools can do to influence the lives of students away from school. It
is the burden that students bring to school which so often disadvantages their
performance. Education authorities and schools go to considerable lengths to
perform an overall duty of care for students, but the committee believes that
teachers are already up against the limits of their capacity to substitute for
parents in areas of life skills, personal values, and behaviour. Some
submissions were critical of the failure to understand what schools are
confronted with today. As the Australian Education Union pointed out:
The students who come to school today live in a very different
world from that which adults inhabited when they were at school. Their
experiences, their environment, their expectations and the expectations placed
upon them have changed radically from the past. They are in many ways more
sophisticated, but at the same time much of what happens in their lives outside
school makes it that much more difficult for them to succeed.[7]
6.11
The committee did not receive explicit submissions on the learning
culture of schools, but there was considerable weight
put on the problems of inequity, and the failure of schools to deal with
under-achieving students, especially those in the compulsory years of schooling
who were marking time because, for one reason or another, they had reached the
end of their growth in formal schooling. The implication for teachers is
whether, if they were more skilled or experienced, and perhaps better resourced,
they might have made a difference. The committee suggests that the experience
of too much failure is a disillusioning experience for a high proportion of
relatively inexperienced teachers, and this leads to high attrition rates.
Attraction and retention
6.12
Across the country the committee heard a common refrain of schools and
systems needing more teachers and retaining them longer. Insufficient numbers
are being attracted.[8]
The effects of these shortages will become more serious problem for schools as
the more senior and experienced teachers resign or retire. The shortage extends
across the curriculum. While the shortage particularly affects rural, remote or
'difficult' schools, it is not confined to any one sector or state. There is a
severe shortage of some specialist teachers, especially in mathematics and the
sciences. As related earlier, the proportion of secondary school mathematics
teachers with majors in mathematics in their degrees is declining steadily. Such
is the shortage that teachers are often asked to teach subjects in which they
have no expertise. The Independent Education Union of Australia described it as
unacceptable that most teachers can report that during their career they have
been required to teach some part of the curriculum for which they are not
well-qualified, and then have to bear criticisms of the quality of their
teaching.[9]
6.13
Teaching quality is compromised when a teacher does not have the
knowledge or understanding of a particular subject. Some teachers may acquire it
over time, usually through formal study, and, or intrinsic interest. This is
unlikely to be commonplace. A teacher without the necessary literacies would
not be able to teach the subject with confidence or accuracy. It is also possible
that the subject is taught without depth, or alternately, greater emphasis is
given to those parts of the curriculum in which the teacher does have
expertise.[10]
In relation to this, the committee notes evidence given to the House of
Representatives committee looking at teacher education in 2005 by Dr Lawrence
Ingvarson from ACER who said:
The research indicates that you cannot use what are known to be
effective teaching techniques unless you do understand the content deeply. If
you do not understand, you are forced back on to the worst didactic textbook,
going-by-the-rule book sort of teaching. A deep understanding frees you up to
use good pedagogy, to discuss ideas, to relax, to open up the discussion, to
throw away the textbook and to throw away the work sheets because you are
interested, you understand the ideas and you know how to promote those ideas
and that discussion.[11]
6.14
This is what the committee understands to be good teaching. It begins
with enthusiasm for the imparting of knowledge and ideas, and drawing an equal
measure of enthusiastic response from students. However, there might be some
evidence of a lack of enthusiasm from the outset.
6.15
The committee heard that many new entrants into the profession see
teaching as only a temporary job. It is a port of call on the way to what many
hope will be a more desirable career destination. Young graduates, in
particular those with strong academic degrees, find it hard to imagine spending
thirty years in the classroom doing much the same thing as when they started.
The committee believes that this will always be a characteristic of the
teaching profession. Many enter the profession but only those with a strong
sense of vocation stay on.
6.16
But the committee also believes that much more should be done by schools
and systems to reduce this waste of talent. There is an important role for
principals in mentoring and encouraging obviously talented teachers. In theory,
independent schools should have an advantage in keeping teachers on because
long-term staffing policy is within their capacity to manage more effectively
than in systemic schools. Granting more staffing autonomy to public schools is an
important reform.
Quality of entrants to the profession
6.17
The committee was told that the problem of attraction and retention is
in addition to the lower intellectual quality of people entering the teaching
profession.
In 1983, the average person entering teacher education was at
the 74th percentile of the aptitude distribution...By 2003, the average
percentile rank of those entering teacher education had fallen to 61. ...Focusing
on women (who make up about three-quarters of new teachers), the probability of
a woman in the top 20 per cent of the academic aptitude distribution entering
teaching approximately halved from 1983 to 2003. Meanwhile, the probability of
a woman in the bottom 50 per cent...doubled.[12]
6.18
This information is consistent with evidence from Professor Bill Louden.
He pointed to entry scores for trainee teachers and concluded that many got
into university with very low TER scores. Universities admitting such students
ran very large teacher training programs.
When you start thinking of the size of these institutions and
multiply that by the standard, who are the big providers and what are their
standards like, you would have to say that there is a problem...People often talk
about the problems in physics and mathematics and I do too, but underlying that
the larger problem is that the genetic subsidy of women to teaching has been
withdrawn. Women used to think they could not be lawyers. They are often not
happy being lawyers either, but they used to think they could not be lawyers,
that they could do nursing or teaching. The old bursary schemes that paid for
working class people’s higher education have been withdrawn, so there is no
longer a kind of a working class intellectual subsidy into teaching. The women
that teaching attracts are nothing like, on average, the same intellectual
standard as those before.[13]
6.19
The percentile decline is not evident at every university and is
undoubtedly due to some universities having lowered their Tertiary Entrance
Ranking (TER) for education courses. Clearly, the universities have their
reasons for making such adjustments. One such reason would be the issue of
supply and demand. While universities continue to offer education courses, the
demand for places within those courses has changed. There are now a huge range
of options available to tertiary students, and those students with the highest
TERs are not usually interested in a teaching career.[14]
6.20
The percentile decline does not take into consideration those students
who enter university other than via the TER system, such as mature age
students. Nor is it wise to suggest that the TER is the sole indicator of
academic quality. The committee does, however, believe that there is a
correlation between a teacher's academic achievement and that of his or her
student. The apparent decline in the calibre of trainee teachers, as evidenced
by the TER requirements, is therefore a matter of concern.[15]
Overcoming teacher shortages
6.21
The committee acknowledges that there will be no quick and easy answer
to solving the current teacher shortages.[16]
This section of the report considers aspects of teaching conditions which could
be improved to make the profession more attractive. As a preliminary comment,
however, the committee states its belief that regardless of what improvements
to teaching conditions are made, it is unlikely that there will be significant
increases in the number of high-achieving school leavers wanting to take up
teaching. The attractions of other professions will always be more apparent
than the vocational satisfaction that teaching offers more altruistic spirits.
To compound this problem, there will be an increasing proportion of teachers who
will see their teaching careers as relatively brief, a pathway to some other
occupation. For at least two generations teaching has been a working class or
rural springboard to better paid jobs. That pathway to social mobility is now
obsolete because too many other occupations fit that purpose.
Teaching: a profession or not?
6.22
As noted at the head of this chapter, Professor Louden told the
committee that the underlying problem is that the social status of teaching has
dropped dramatically over the past 30 years, and that every occupation since
invented is a graduate occupation which has gone into the occupational
hierarchy above teaching. The result has been ambivalence over the professional
status of teaching. That is, whether teaching is a profession or not.
6.23
The questioning of school performance, and the failure to attract people
of the same calibre into teaching, has influenced current interest in teacher
certification and performance pay. The view is that teachers are responsible to
an extent in organising the salvation of the profession, even though in the
case of teacher registration agencies, state governments have led the way. The
professional status of teachers is influenced to a large extent by the fact
that they are all employees. They operate under the school and (for most of
them) systemic authority. Their autonomy at the chalkface is regulated by a
curriculum, a syllabus, and by whatever collegial or departmental agreements
guide them in their teaching. A school is a social learning organisation in
which teachers have a crucial role, and they also operate under a myriad of social
and community constraints. They are public servants in the widest meaning of
this term. They are professionals, in a more narrow sense however, in that they
must be certified as being qualified, have special expertise, responsibilities
and a duty of care, with duties extending beyond any formal hours of work, and
an obligation for continuing self-education.
6.24
The issue of morale is crucial in teaching because job satisfaction
depends almost entirely on the sense of fulfilling a vocation. It relies on
seeing evidence of intellectual and character growth in one's students. The
committee thinks it likely that most teachers give little thought as to whether
they are regarded as professionals or not, when morale and job satisfaction
levels are high. It is the stresses and strains on teachers, and criticisms of
their efforts, that have concentrated minds on this matter. The Association of
Principals of Catholic Secondary Schools in Australia submitted that:
If we want people to believe they are professionals, first of
all we must tell them they are, we must treat them as if they are and we must
provide them with conditions that enable them to be professional.[17]
6.25
But the committee believes that the professional status of teachers is much
more complicated. A brief description of a profession is one which arises when
any trade or occupation transforms itself through:
The development of formal qualifications based upon education
and examinations, the emergence of regulatory bodies with power to admit and
discipline members, and some degree of monopoly rights.[18]
6.26
There are many important characteristics of a profession which are not
present within the 'teaching profession', including, fundamentally, an
autonomous and powerful regulatory or professional body whose function it is to
define, promote, oversee, support, and regulate the affairs of its members. The
committee notes that the teaching profession is seeking to acquire some
characteristics of the more established professions, but the committee believes
that, for reasons that go beyond the capacity of any government or society to
order, teaching will continue to be buffeted as much as any other occupation.
Teacher registration bodies
6.27
The committee believes that registration and accreditation bodies will
have interesting challenges to face in their progress toward becoming the
gate-keepers to the profession. This has the potential to bring them into
conflict with employers. Currently, it appears that state registration bodies
are more often creatures of education departments. The committee noted that one
of the witnesses representing the Queensland College of Educators was
concurrently an official of the education department in that state. On the face
of it, this represents a conflict of interest.
6.28
Potentially, an independent college of educators could accredit teachers
only in subjects which they are qualified to teach on the basis of their
university qualifications or specialisations. This would be entirely consistent
with the role of any other professional accrediting agency concerned with
maintaining quality standards. However, it would be an attitude or action which
school systems and employing authorities would strenuously resist because it would
restrict the authority of a school or a principal to direct a teacher to take a
particular class. It is commonplace for teachers to be directed to take classes
in subjects for which they are not properly qualified, if only because of
schools' legal duty of care. The committee is of the opinion that it is
unlikely that state-based or national professional regulatory bodies for
teaching could ever be relied on to back quality standards of professional
teaching in the circumstance described above.
Remuneration
6.29
For many witnesses, the most essential element of professional treatment
was that of remuneration. Professor Igor Bray argued that immediately
increasing base pay would send a message to the community that teaching is
valued. The Independent Education Union of Australia maintained that if the
base pay is not right, then the profession does not have the standing and
capacity to recruit.[19]
6.30
The fact that the base pay is not right was highlighted by many other
witnesses. Professor Michael O'Neill from the University of Notre Dame provided
an interesting comparison to the committee,
We need to bring the three Rs back to teaching. But they are not
the three Rs you would think I am talking about; they are ‘remuneration,
remuneration, remuneration’. We have a very sad tale to tell in Australia. It
takes teachers in Western Australia nine years to hit a ceiling...First-year
teachers [in the Republic of Ireland] start on a salary of $55,000, while most
of our teachers start on $45,000. Over 25 years, [teachers in the Republic of Ireland]
rise to a salary of $100,000. That gives them status and a position in society.
But, first and foremost, it gives them something to hold onto; it retains them
in the profession. They can see that their career is not finished after nine
years...At my colleague’s university, students enter with a TER that is
equivalent to the TER for law students and medical students. They fight for
places in education faculties.[20]
6.31
According to ACER:
The typical salary scale for teachers in Australia does not
place high value on evidence of teacher quality. Consequently, it is a weak
instrument for improving student achievement. It does not provide incentives
for professional development nor reward evidence of attaining high standards of
performance. Thirteen of 30 OECD countries report that they adjust the base
salary of teachers on the basis of outstanding performance in teaching, or
successful completion of professional development activities...Australia is not
one of them.
While progression to the top of the salary ladder is rapid in Australia
– it takes only 9-10 years for most Australian teachers to reach the top of the
scale compared with 24 years on average in OECD countries
– there are no further career stages based on evidence of attaining higher levels
of teaching standards. The implicit message in most Australian salary scales is
that teachers are not expected to improve their performance after nine years.[21]
6.32
A table of current salaries adjacent shows the incremental stages for
government schools across the country.
6.33
The committee found general agreement between educators on how poorly
teachers are paid. Their relatively low pay affects the quality of entrants to
the profession, and this damages prospects for an improvement in education
standards at all levels. There are flow-on effects to business profitability
and efficiencies in public services. The committee is in favour of a
significant across the board pay increase. This should be implemented
regardless of whatever additional performance pay arrangement is finally
determined.
6.34
The committee is aware, however, that this would be a bold step for
governments to take. It would have the effect of elevating teachers' salaries
well over the rate paid to, for instance, health care workers generally. While
it would signal a long-term commitment to getting the basics of future national
growth right, it would also arouse some antagonism from those who would see
more benefit in alternative uses of the funding. While public schools teachers'
salaries are the province of state and territory governments, the
non-government school sector has traditionally been supported by the
Commonwealth, and additional funding avenues for teachers in this sector would
need to be explored.
6.35
Opponents of significantly higher pay would also argue—as would many
educationists—that higher salaries may not have the desired affect of
attracting a brighter cohort of trainees into the profession, because of the
peculiar nature and challenges of the job, and the fact that it makes special
vocational demands without the guarantee of corresponding vocational
satisfaction.
6.36
The committee believes that there are strong grounds for increasing the
base rate of pay for teachers across the current salary range. This should
incorporate some new scale which would spread the increments over a longer span
of a teacher's career. Arguably, the increments are now too closely grouped in
the first eight or ten years of service.
Performance pay
6.37
The issue of teaching quality, which occupied up to half of the committee's
time, quite naturally led to questions about performance pay. The issue has recently
aroused public discussion. Some witnesses were less than enthusiastic with the
idea of performance pay, as were submissions from teacher unions and other
associations. The committee recognises that the failure to elicit informed
comment was probably due to the fact that many educationists have not yet
focussed on the issue. The committee notes the ACER claim that a lack of understanding
about the complexity of developing valid and professionally credible methods
for gathering data about teaching and assessing teacher performance is the
reason why performance pay schemes have failed over the past 30 years.[22]
6.38
It is fair to report that performance pay is not opposed by many people
on grounds of principle so much as on grounds of
practicality. There is justifiable reservation about how a scheme could
fairly reward those whose efforts and achievements are not easily measurable.
This is particularly the case with teachers of students with disabilities and
learning difficulties, and where teams of teachers contribute to quality
learning outcome in ways which are difficult to disaggregate.
6.39
The purpose of performance pay is to encourage and reward excellence and
effort, provide incentive, and improve the quality of student achievement
overall. The committee recognises that there is a desire among all those
associated with school education to revitalise the teaching profession, and
this is the source of interest in performance pay. The committee is of the view
that teachers' salaries ought to be increased across the board and has
recommended that this be done. However, the view is also widespread, and shared
by the committee, that teachers of outstanding merit should be rewarded with
salary supplements, indicating to the community that the vocation of teaching
is valued.
6.40
Although the Government has a stated policy in support of performance pay,
it is at an early stage of development. This is evident from a reading of the
ACER research paper published in March 2007 which indicates the scope of ideas
for performance pay, and the need to engage in extensive investigation of
models which would be most appropriate for schools.[23]
In June 2007, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon Julie
Bishop MP announced a tender for an expert to develop models which could be
tested. The committee anticipates that this will be a formidable task and makes
the following references to important points arising from the ACER research
paper.
6.41
Dr Ingvarson and his team noted that any valid and reliable scheme for
assessing individual teacher performance requires multiple and independent
sources of evidence, and independent assessment of that evidence. No single
measure, such as exam results or a principal's assessment, would alone provide
a reliable basis for making a decision about performance pay eligibility.
6.42
There are currently three approved schemes for performance pay operating
in a number of states and territories, all of them having origins in the
Advanced Skills Teacher concept. This has been promoted by unions since the
early 1990s, but the concept is seen by disinterested observers to contain many
flaws. These flaws are evident in the various performance pay schemes.
6.43
There are three categories of performance pay schemes. The first is a
merit pay scheme, once used in many school districts in the United States. This
scheme is not standards or criterion based; evidence in support of the award is
often unreliable and of doubtful validity; and there is usually a fixed pool of
funds. In the second category are knowledge and skills-based schemes. These are
also common in the United States where bonuses are paid for the acquisition of
post-graduate qualifications. This has the merit of valuing teacher growth and
development, even though there is no evidence that having post-graduate
qualifications improves classroom performance. Finally, there is the certification
approach, which is an endorsement by a professional body that a member has
attained a specified level of knowledge and skill. An application would be
voluntary and made to one of the embryonic state certification agencies like
the NSW Institute of Teachers.[24]
6.44
At this stage of the debate, such considerations were academic to most
witnesses. The Australian Education Union told the committee:
We support a process that recognises that a teacher has met
professional standards that have been set and agreed by the profession and that
are externally assessed...It is a method that does not produce any negative
results within a school in terms of competition to the point of divisiveness or
being seen as an arbitrary decision by a school principal or anyone else...Having
said that, we are very concerned that the notion of performance pay—or
additional bonus, if you like—would become a substitute for real increases
across the board in teacher salaries.[25]
6.45
The committee would not want performance pay to be a substitute for real
increases in salaries. The Australian Education Union's conditional support for
performance pay drew attention to concerns which were foremost in the minds of
other witnesses. Dr Glenn Finger and his associates from Griffith University
highlighted issues of equity:
The opportunities for and challenges of being an effective
teacher are not uniformly distributed across schools and schooling situations.
To discriminate against teachers [who] work in schools and communities that
fail to afford support for their activities will only exacerbate the social
divide within Australia, erode the commitment and enthusiasm of teachers
working in challenging schooling situations and further demark many public
schools.[26]
6.46
Contextual factors, the complex nature of teaching and learning, and the
collaborative nature of people working together to produce learning outcomes
were concerns also echoed in the remarks of the Queensland Secondary
Principals' Association, which strongly opposed the entire concept of
performance pay, especially one based on student results. While this is almost
certainly a misconception, the committee noted that this is a common view:
In terms of taking...students from where they were to where they
were heading and achieving, the distance travelled was enormous but the results
were still poor. That to me is the basis of what is wrong
with performance pay. If you look for a simple measure of student
results, it just does not take into account context...The damage this would do to
the totality, to the wholeness, of a teaching staff would be enormous. If of a
staff of 65 you said, ‘Those seven teachers are really doing well, by whatever
measure,’ then what does that do to the rest of the staff? The product—a
student’s success—this year is attributable to the teacher of the year before,
the year before, the year before and the year before, not the person in front
of the class now.[27]
6.47
Of more significance is the point that teachers will need to have
confidence in the integrity of the system. Teachers are not to be compared with
stockbrokers or FOREX dealers: they are team players. Stated below is one
commonplace suspicion:
I feel very uneasy about [performance pay] because I know how
performance, whether it is in education or in industry at the other end of town,
can be manipulated. You can cook the books and look as if you are an absolute
whiz-bang when really there is no substance there. The other thing too ...is
that—and I saw this when they introduced performance pay [in Victoria]—other
people ride on the backs of their colleagues.[28]
6.48
The committee considers that concerns raised about the effect of
performance pay on secondary school departmental work teams, which operate on
the basis of strong collegiality, are matters that need to be treated
seriously. There is potential for individual performance pay to create
considerable tension in school communities, and lead to a serious loss of trust
and collegial spirit. This would damage rather than enhance teaching quality.
The committee believes that work needs to be done to develop credible group
performance bonus pay schemes which reward team effort and acknowledge esprit
de corps. Nevertheless, the committee believes that the difficulties
associated with introducing a performance based pay scheme can be overcome.
6.49
Another perspective on performance reward was raised in evidence from
the Association of Independent Schools of Western Australia (AISWA). AISWA
argued that quality teachers should be rewarded in a manner which re-invests in
the individual teacher and the teaching profession, for example, professional
development opportunities, teacher exchange and industry work experiences, or payment
of Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) fees for higher qualifications.[29]
Some of these schemes have been operating for many years, but should have been
more extensively offered.
6.50
Dr Ingvarson and his team expressed the view that successful
implementation of performance-based pay schemes for individual teachers is
unlikely to become a reality without the backing of a major research program to
develop the capacity to measure teacher knowledge and skill. It is unlikely
that teachers will become favourably disposed to such a scheme unless it
involves them and their professional associations. This is already beginning.
Several teacher professional associations, notably the National Council for the
Teaching of Mathematics, have developed a set of teaching standards which might
mark the way for future acceptance of performance-based pay schemes. The
committee believes that the teaching profession will need to take this at its
own pace. That way it has more chance of success in achieving the aim of
revitalising the profession.
Conclusion
6.51
Excellence in teaching must be encouraged by all reasonable means. This
is as important for the quality of education throughout Australia as it is for
the vitality of the teaching profession. The inquiry has found that higher
remuneration and some form of performance pay would be instrumental in
enhancing the quantity and quality of the teaching profession.
Recommendation 7
That the Government takes steps to improve the remuneration of
teachers so as to raise the profession's entry standards and retention rates by
providing incentives.
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