TEACHERS in Northern Ireland are demanding a pound;2,000 pay rise to match the performance pay being offered in England and Wales, writes Nicolas Barnard.
Unions in Northern Ireland are yet to negotiate their own version of the threshold. Payment by results can be expected to provoke opposition, but in the meantime the Association for Teachers and Lecturers says its members are losing out.
Peter Smith has written to Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Northern Ieland - to whom control of education has returned since the Stormont Assembly was suspended - saying: “Teachers in Northern Ireland are being treated as second-class citizens”.
He later told The TES: “Teaching standards here are so high that I believe the overwhelming majority of our colleagues deserve to get the extra pound;2,000.
“It is particularly unjust for teachers to have so little opportunity for promotion, particularly in small primary schools.”
