Frances Rafferty and Biddy Passmore report on the potential for discord created by the profession’s new salary structure
BYLINE:BRITAIN’S leading private-school heads are to unite in their opposition to performance-related pay.
In a joint submission on the Green Paper, they will tell ministers they foresee difficulties in assessing performance and that they are opposed to any direct link between appraisal and pay.
The heads want to keep the flexibility to reward staff on their own assessment, rather than having to stick to a formal and rigid scheme.
“Criteria for determining performance are notoriously elusive,” David Hanson, education officer of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools, said: “It’s not just results. There’s a whole basket of factors, including competence and contribution to the school.”
Quentin Edwards, head of Bilton Grange school in Rugby, who chairs the IAPS promotion committee, has misgivings about the concept of linking pay and performance.
He pointed out that it was not even possible to reach agreement on the baseline assessment of children, so how was it possible to say if one teacher was performing better than another?
