Earlier this week the week the Government and the Jamaica Teachers Association signed a landmark agreement effectively bringing the compensation of the nation’s teachers to 80% of market. Senator Dwight Nelson, the Minister responsible for the Public Service indicated that the impact on the budget would be somewhere between $15 Billion and $18 Billion. Minister of Education, Hon. Andrew Holness remarked that with the increase he will be holding teachers accountable and now expects a significant increase in their performance. I am concerned that the Minister believes that by simply raising the teachers’ salaries he will automatically get increased performance.
The statement by Minister Holness implies three assumptions. Firstly, the teachers were holding back on performance because they were poorly paid. Secondly, teachers were not being held accountable because they were underpaid. Thirdly, the main problem for our pathetic level of performance of the Education system was due to teachers and that simply paying them more will magically boost the performance.
The Task Force Report on Education outlines a comprehensive way forward to transform education. Properly paying the teachers is one of several recommendations. The most significant one to my mind however is the leadership required at the school level. This requires that the Board and Principal must have the authority and autonomy to manage the school rather than being literally puppets of the Ministry of Education. The proposed shift of authority from the Central Ministry to the new Regional Authorities is really only a cosmetic shift. The call by Minister Holness that he will hold teachers accountable will not go very far unless he holds everyone accountable, including himself. As my colleague Marguerite Orane said in her blog, being accountable to actions and being accountable to results are not the same.
The fact is that if we have a poorly performing education system with underpaid teachers and all we do is raise teachers salaries with all else remaining as is, all we will end up with is a poorly performing education system with well paid teachers
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Excellent article Robert. I checked out the newspaper article and found these quotes from Min. Holness:
"The teachers are being paid at a higher scale and therefore we expect from our teachers a higher level of performance.
"In other words, the performance of the teachers will now be tied to the results of the students and the results of the students will now be tied to the performance of the teachers," Holness warned.
I wonder what this means? The teachers have been adamant that they will not accept pay for performance. What does Min. Holness plan to do if there is no improvement in student performance?
There is many a slip twixt cup and lip - and many a step to make between paying teachers more and actually achieving improved student performance. I really hope Minister Holness is brave enough to do it, for it won't be an easy road. And saying it must happen is less that 0.000000000001% of the task
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