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Politics

Entry 13, on 2004-08-11 at 08:12:00 (Rating 2, Politics)

The government here (New Zealand) has announced a lot of new money to increase teachers' pay levels. Surprisingly, there was some comment that it's not what is really required. A system where teachers could be paid based on performance was pushed quite hard.

Theoretically it sounds like a good idea. Pay the good teachers more. Unfortunately, its really not that simple because there is no way to measure genuine performance.

In my experience performance is usually measured by bureaucrats using crude tools which reward workers who obey the rules and are good at paper work. Generally, these are the people who are *not* good at their job - so exactly the wrong behaviour is rewarded.

Despite its advantages I don't support performance pay in education and other critical services.

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