ACER’s recently released report on performance pay, Research on Performance Pay for Teachers, reviewed current pay systems for teachers, and evidence on the impact of different kinds of performance pay arrangements in Australia and several countries around the world, and considered further investigation required of performance pay possibilities in Australia.

Despite the sometimes negative response to performance based pay in Australia – as witnessed by the failure of Federal, State and Territory education ministers to reach agreement on the issue at the recent MCEETYA summit – the researchers argued that a suitable scheme can and must be developed for Australian teachers.

One highlight of the report’s conclusions was that a valid and reliable scheme for assessing teacher performance must draw on several types of evidence, possibly including evidence relating to class environment, the teachers’ knowledge about the subject and how to teach it, student learning outcomes, and contributions to the school and profession. Any single measure, such as measures of student achievement on standardised achievement tests, can’t provide a reliable basis for making performance-related pay decisions about individual teachers. Among the report’s conclusions was that different approaches to performance pay have had different levels of support within the teaching profession and different levels of support among stakeholders.

The research paper noted that teacher pay systems in Australia are in need of reform if the best teachers are to be retained by the profession.

Australia stands out as a country in which teachers’ careers plateau very quickly and at a relatively modest salary. On average, it takes only 9 years for teachers to reach top of pay scale, compared to an average of 24 years among OECD countries. Beyond that, main career pathways for Australian teachers often involve leaving the classroom for leadership and administrative positions.

At present, progression up the pay scale is usually based on annual performance reviews. These tend to be concerned with teachers fulfilling contractual obligations, rather than evidence of attainment of higher standards of professional knowledge and performance. It is rare for annual increments to be withheld.

Current salary scales and career paths send a strong message to ambitious teachers that the most important thing for them to be doing is preparing to move out of teaching into executive positions if they wish to further their career. Many young teachers leave the profession after only a few years in the classroom.

In order to halt the exodus from the classroom and attract highly capable and motivated young people to the profession, there is growing interest among stakeholders in Australia in pay systems that provide incentives for highly accomplished teaching. ACER reviewed two broad approaches in which this has been or could be done.

The first approach involves “merit pay” systems, which has been tried in several other countries, evaluates teachers against one another. Teachers essentially compete for a fixed pool of funds delivered in the form of a “bonus” by school administrators. It was noted that this approach often led to staff dissatisfaction and dissention, and teachers were concerned that they eroded the collegiate and team-based nature of teaching.

The second approach involves knowledge- and skills-based systems that base pay increases on demonstrated improvements in teacher practice– in particular, improvements that will lead to enhanced learning outcomes for students. Research suggests that schemes of this kind are more likely to lead to improved student learning. They have also received more support from teachers overall, especially when teachers themselves played an active role in developing standards and assessment procedures, and in the assessment process itself.

The latter approach is already in practice in three Australian states, whose systems pay teachers for systematically gathered evidence of accomplished teaching performance. The Level 3 Classroom teacher in WA, Advanced Skills Teacher in SA, and Teacher of Exemplary Practice in the NT involve application to a central agency, gathering and submission of evidence in a portfolio, and assessment of this evidence by a panel that includes assessors external to the school.

One of the major obstacles facing the implementation of performance pay systems in Australia is deciding on a way to determine how to recognise highly accomplished teaching. Nationally, Australia lacks a rigorous advanced certification system that provides teachers with clear direction as to what it is exactly that they should strive for excellence in, areas for improvement, and strong incentives for teachers to reach high standards of practice.

However, there are promising examples of embryonic certification systems developed by the mathematics and science professional teacher associations, which may be further developed and built on.

The researchers suggested a national pilot project on standards, performance assessment and certification in two or three well-defined specialist teaching fields, such as primary teaching, and secondary mathematics and science teaching, be initiated with the purposes of conducting research and development work on standards-based methods for assessing teacher performance; trialling these assessment methods with teacher volunteers to test their feasibility and reliability; evaluating the acceptability and credibility of these methods with stakeholders; and examining the effects of the assessment process on teachers’ professional learning.

Research on Performance Pay for Teachers, by Lawrence Ingvarson Elizabeth Kleinhenz and Jenny Wilkinson, was commissioned by the Commonwealth Government. The full report can be download from the ACER website.

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