PERFORMANCE RELATED PAY:
THE WRONG WAY FORWARD FOR
TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND SCHOOLS
The Government is attacking the school teachers’ pay structure and seeking to impose
performance related pay (PRP) on all teachers. NUT members oppose PRP in teaching
because they think it is unfair and won't work. This NUT briefing considers the evidence.
WHY THE NUT OPPOSES PRP IN TEACHING
Teachers founded the NUT in 1870 in order to campaign against "payment by results". NUT
members have opposed PRP in teaching ever since. They think it is unfair and won't work - and
the evidence suggests they are still right.
The three basic reasons why NUT members oppose PRP are that:
 PRP won’t improve teaching or educational standards or motivate teachers;
 PRP will undermine and disrupt effective school improvement - and lead to narrower choices
and opportunities for young people; and
 PRP decisions are going to be unfair, subjective or even discriminatory.
The Government tries to argue that its proposals are all about paying good teachers more. That’s
just not true. Pressures on school funding mean that for every teacher who is paid more, several
will be paid less. This will lead to lower pay and worse pay prospects, hitting teacher recruitment,
retention and motivation.
PRP will not just affect teachers. It will harm students as well. It is simply inconsistent with the
ethos that makes schools and teachers work best. PRP for teachers is not the right way forward
to help schools to get better outcomes for students.
WHY PRP IN SCHOOLS WON’T WORK
The evidence shows that performance related pay systems fail in most situations - and schools are
a particularly difficult place to make them work.
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PRP won’t improve teaching and educational standards or motivate teachers
PRP doesn’t improve outcomes. In 2012, OECD researchers1 examined the PISA study’s
findings to look at the impact of PRP in teaching across all OECD countries and concluded that
“the overall picture reveals no relationship between average student performance in a country
and the use of performance-based pay schemes.”
Other recent research includes a 2011 study of New York City’s bonus pay programme for
teachers2 which said it had “very little effect overall, positive or negative”, another US study3 in
2010 which said that a three year experiment providing PRP bonuses to a selected group of
Tennessee teachers had found “no overall effect on student achievement”; and a 2009 study
which argued that an increased focus on teacher PRP in Portugal4 had led to a significant
decline in student achievement, particularly in terms of national exams.
Does performance-based pay improve teaching?, PISA in Focus (May 2012 issue), OECD (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development)
2 Does Whole-School Performance Pay Improve Student Learning? Evidence from the New York City Schools
Goodman et al, Education Next, v11 n2 p67-71 (Spr 2011)
3 Teacher Pay for Performance - Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching, Springer et al,
NCPI Vanderbilt University, Sept 2010
4 Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation, Discussion Paper No. 4501, School for
Business & Management / Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn – Pedro S. Martins (2009)
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PRP doesn’t motivate teachers either. Professor David Marsden’s 2009 study, ‘The Paradox
of Performance Related Pay Systems: Why Do We Keep Adopting Them in the Face of
Evidence that they Fail to Motivate?’5 summed up its conclusions in its title. And teachers
aren’t alone in failing to be motivated by PRP - a 2005 OECD study6 of PRP across the public
sector in 14 countries found that workers thought its impact had been limited, ambivalent and
often negative, while the CIPD’s latest annual survey7 says that still only one in three UK public
sector workers support their pay being linked to individual performance.
What does work is paying all teachers better. Another study looking across OECD countries in
20118 concluded both that “higher pay leads to improved pupil performance” and that the
highest performing countries have well paid teachers whose status in society is high. We
won’t achieve this by focusing on PRP for the few.
It’s hard to disagree with the conclusion of the 2012 OECD study’s authors - that only countries
which do not have the resources to pay all their teachers well should consider introducing
PRP. Pay prospects in teaching must be certain and basic pay must be adequate. Michael
Gove’s proposals will undermine this.
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PRP will undermine and disrupt effective school improvement - teachers work best
when they work collaboratively, not for individual gain
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PRP encourages teachers to work for themselves rather than for their students, colleagues
and school. Teaching isn’t a competition. Schools are learning communities - expertise is
pooled and good teachers build their students’ achievement on foundations laid by other
teachers and support staff.
Teacher appraisal will be fatally undermined by linking it to pay. Teachers and appraisers
should work together to improve and develop teachers’ professional knowledge and skills, and
teachers should share the benefits of training with colleagues for the good of the school - but in
the competitive world of PRP, why would teachers admit that they wanted training or share its
benefits with others?
Imposing PRP will damage collaboration in schools. If we are serious about school
improvement, we should instead focus on the lessons of proven successes - such as the City
Challenge model in London and the Midlands, declared by researchers9 to have produced
school improvement which is not only “measurable and sustainable” but also “more cost
effective than other strategies”.
PRP will distort teaching and lead to narrower choices & opportunities for students
Teachers must be encouraged and empowered to take risks in relation to their teaching
practice and classroom projects. They should not be placed in the position of choosing
between their financial self-interest and the interests of the students they are teaching.
A study of PRP proposals for teachers in Canada10 concluded that teachers would be likely to
focus on matters relevant to their pay at the expense of other matters, “whether those are
different subject areas or soft skills or relationships with students”. This isn’t motivation - it’s a
distortion of good teaching practice, which will harm all students’ breadth of education and
some students’ achievement.
All pupils, regardless of ability, should have the right to expect to be taught by the best
teachers during their time in school. But students do vary enormously in their abilities and rates
of progress. As a 2013 study for the Local Schools Network11 argued, PRP will encourage
hierarchies being established with regard to teachers getting the ‘best’ classes (the easiest to
teach and highest achieving) and ‘worst’ classes (hardest to help succeed).
from Paradoxes of modernisation: unintended consequences of public policy reforms, ed Hood & Margetts, OUP 2009
Performance Related Pay Policies for Government Employees, OECD (2005)
7 Employees’ attitudes to pay, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), 2013
8 If you Pay Peanuts, Do You Get Monkeys? A Cross Country Study of Teacher Pay and Pupil Performance, Dolton &
Marcenaro Gutierrez, Economic Policy 26(65), January 2011
9 Evaluation of the City Challenge Programme, DfE Research Report DFE-RR215, Prof M Hutchings et al, Aug 2012
10 Eight reasons merit pay for teachers is a bad idea, Ben Levin, October 2010
11 Performance Related Pay: The Problem, Not the Solution, Roger Titcombe, Local Schools Network 2013
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Quality of teaching can’t be measured, quantified or ranked in the way PRP demands
It is not possible to determine the quality of teacher performance in an absolute manner –
teaching is a professional skill rather than an exact science. Evidence suggests12 that, in
seeking to assess teacher effectiveness, schools should rely on a combination of approaches
to gain a full picture - and that teachers should never be assessed on data from a single year.
It is impossible to isolate and quantify the specific contribution of any one teacher, however
skilled and able, to any student’s education. Their achievement draws on the contributions of
every teacher who taught them that subject - and good teaching in one subject will have
helped achievement in others as well. Furthermore, students don’t learn only at, and from,
school. Parents, carers and family all support and reinforce their education. Exam outcomes
or test scores should not be used to determine teachers’ pay.
PRP will lead to unfair and discriminatory outcomes
PRP decisions will be based on personal likes and dislikes, the school’s funding position or a
host of other reasons unrelated to performance. A 2012 study13 of PRP in Swedish secondary
schools found that teachers were concerned at the impact of PRP. Most teachers thought the
link between performance and pay was arbitrary and unintelligible - but they also believed that
PRP was used to punish or silence teachers with challenging opinions.
Pay systems with PRP also lead to increased inequality and discrimination. The European
Commission’s 2013 paper, Tackling the gender pay gap in the European Union recognises
that PRP contributes to unequal pay between men and women. A 2009 inquiry in the UK by
the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that under performance pay and bonus
systems in the financial sector, women had earned 80 per cent less in performance pay than
their male colleagues. In schools, early evidence from the performance threshold system
showed that black and minority ethnic teachers were disproportionately likely to fail to progress
compared to their white colleagues.
The OECD says that “deciding whether to have a rewards based pay scheme is only the first
step… it is crucial to know how implement the system effectively.” The Government has not
set out detailed criteria for implementing PRP in schools - it tells individual schools to arrive at
their own models. Schools are being encouraged to relate pay progression to matters
completely outside the appraisal process, including pupils’ or parents’ opinions. The
Government’s advice to schools could allow them to find any argument they like for denying
progression.
In effect, the Government is promoting the adoption of pay practices which will not only be
unfair, they will lead to further discrimination against older employees, women and black
minority ethnic teachers alike.
PRP won't lead to "the best teachers being paid more" as Gove claims
Since school funding is not being increased in line with inflation, there is no extra money to
‘pay the best teachers more’. Michael Gove made it clear14 that he was delighted that schools
could now “ensure that their overall pay bill is affordable within their budget”. This means, in
practice, that schools can ration or withhold progression or block progression beyond a
particular pay level. Faster pay progression for some teachers will only happen at the expense
of others. In schools where every teacher is performing well, that will make no sense at all.
The absence of set standards and criteria for progression will also mean that teachers in
different schools who perform at the same level will be treated differently. Schools could deny
pay progression even to good performers by setting unfairly high targets or deciding that only a
fixed number of teachers will progress irrespective of whatever others achieve.
Testing Teachers: what works best for teacher evaluation and appraisal, Sutton Trust, March 2013
Teachers’ Perceptions of Individual PRP in Practice: A Picture of a Counterproductive Pay System, Ulf Lundstrom,
Educational Management Administration & Leadership, Umea University 2012
14 Remit letter for the 24th Report of the School Teachers Review Body, 24 October 2013
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PRP will make it harder to recruit new teachers and retain teachers in the profession
PRP will encourage teachers to compete to work in schools or classrooms where they will
most easily secure pay progression. It will also deter graduates from entering teaching by
creating uncertainty about pay prospects. Unsettled staffing is not in the interests of students
or schools. The pan-OECD study mentioned earlier makes it clear that student outcomes are
highest in countries which make teaching a reasonably paid, high status profession overall.
PRP is an unnecessary and bureaucratic burden on school leaders
There is no consensus within the evidence about how to measure teacher performance - so
how can it be right to require school leaders to administer a system of performance related
pay? It’s clear that the system imposed by the Government is cumbersome, bureaucratic and
above all open to challenge and appeal. School leaders and governors will find themselves
involved in lengthy discussions and time consuming appeals - diverting time away from the key
challenges of securing improvements in teaching and learning.
PRP will turn Ofsted into the Government’s pay police
Ofsted inspectors are now expected to ask school leaders about rates of pay progression for
teachers and also ask them to justify them. This will undermine the already tenuous trust
between schools and inspectors and obstruct any good outcomes from inspections. Also,
even though inspectors will have no basis for challenging individual decisions, school leaders
are bound to be tempted into failing a quota of teachers for self-protection purposes.
Teachers reject PRP, whatever the Government and its supporters say
Teachers have declared their opposition to PRP in their responses to NUT member surveys.
Over 90% of NUT members have told us that they reject linking pay to performance, while a
similar proportion of NUT members under 30 have told us they think graduates will in future be
less likely to enter teaching. They have also confirmed that teachers regard PRP as arbitrary,
unfair and unlikely to motivate or raise outcomes for students.
Even studies carried out by PRP’s proponents confirm that teachers don’t favour PRP. A
recent YouGov survey commissioned by Policy Exchange found that only 16% of teachers
said they would be more likely to work in a school where pay is explicitly linked to performance
- compared to 40% who said that they would be much less likely to do so. This must have
disappointed Policy Exchange, which nevertheless tried to spin the survey results by heading
its press release "Teachers back performance related pay"!
SUPPORT THE NUT'S CAMPAIGN
Performance related pay in teaching will not help raise standards. It will undermine teachers’
sense of common purpose and hamper school improvement. It is unfair, obstructs equal pay and
makes pay determination much more bureaucratic.
The Government's pay reforms are actually all about cutting the pay bill for teachers - by ending
fixed pay scales, making pay progression harder to get, ending pay portability for returners and job
movers and introducing temporary responsibility payments. The proposals for PRP in teaching alongside their attacks on pensions and plans to attack working conditions - are why the NUT is
continuing to campaign to defend teachers and protect education.
National Union of Teachers
September 2014