Firstly, yes, the employer does benefit – but so do the customers – the students – and everyone sems to forget them. In the public school system, your principal is NOT your employer, the Department of Education is, and there are many opportunities for teachers to gain promotion through merit selection. Surely a teacher who puts in the effort to develop their own skills and can demonstrate those skills in practise will stand a better chance at promotion – benefiting everyone, themselves included.

I have never understood why teaching seems to be the only profession where (in Australia at least), you al start at the same level and you all progress at the same rate for seven years in tems of salary – regardless of merit. Ability plays no part in career progression in the early stages. Seniority does. We seem to be teaching teachers that you don’t need to work harder to progress, you just have to stick in there. We keep drumming out of teachers the desire to learn and improve. After those seven years of coasting, suddenly there might be a desire to go to the next level, but mediochrity doesn’t cut it (actually sometimes it does – I’ve see my fair share of dud school executives).

Why is there no other profession that works this way? Why have changes occurred more readily in other professions and not in teaching? These are all valid arguments for performance pay.

Whilst you note that it is not the employers responsibility, they certainly benefit. In fact, in the DET anything you create belongs to the DET (was going to reference the Code of Conduct, but the Portal is broken again).

As I learn new skills, and develop older skills my employer, my school, my students benefit. Although, my experience is that your employer tends to take advantage of that (meaning, more jobs).

I guess this is where a discussion about performance pay starts.

9-5?? I am constantly having this argument with my non-teacher husband who is a tradie and doesn’t understand staying back without overtime.
It is more like, 8-6 at school, 6-8 kids, 8-11 laptop. I love trying to keep up to date, my family does not! So much for those lovely school teacher hours .

Please excuse Simon for not completing his reports on time. As a teacher, he decided he needed to practise the concept of lifelong learning that educators seem to preach so much about.

Sincerely,

Parallel Divergence.

A big issue occurs when teachers themselves have lost the will to be life-long learners – unfortunately quite common as they get caught up in the everyday admisitriva of reports, tests, marking, etc. I use learning opportunities as a reward for finishing the drudgery of everyday tasks. Hmm so tommorow I think I’ll play with GeoGebra rather than finish my reports – will you write me an excuse note?

A great post and one for sharing. Would make a good intro to online discussions for teachers about to embark on L4L (sorry NSWDER). Or perhaps to demo the student response network…

Troy, thanks for your comment. I love your first sentence providing the reason for this attitude in many schools.