Thursday, 28 February 2013

Using Ofsted to bully schools into docking pay

A new letter from Sir Michael Wilshaw to Headteachers, backed up by Ofsted’s January 2013 ‘Subsidiary guidance’ to schools, makes crystal clear how the inspection regime will be used to bully Heads into rationing teachers’ pay progression under Gove’s new performance-pay proposals. It also shows how it will be used to set teacher against teacher, key stage against key stage, department against department.

Wilshaw advises headteachers that “in future, inspectors will ask schools for anonymised information from the last three years, which shows the proportions of teachers who have:
  • progressed along the main pay scale
  • progressed to, and through, the upper pay scale
  • progressed along the leadership scale
  • received additional responsibility payments, such as teaching and learning responsibility payments and special needs allowances.
The information provided should include information about patterns of progression through the different salary scale points, and comparisons between subject departments and/or teachers deployed in different key stages.
  • ask the headteacher about the proportion of teaching staff that has passed through to the upper pay spine
  • compare this with the overall quality of teaching 
  • find out whether there is a correlation between the two, and if there is none, find out why, taking into account the length of time the headteacher has been in post.
Examples of the information headteachers could provide include:
  • the proportion of staff that progressed through thresholds this year/last year
  • the proportion that did not progress through thresholds this year/last year
  • a table showing for each salary point, the number of staff, points they have moved from, and the number that met their performance management objectives
  • performance management information the school provides to governors
  • any other relevant information with regard to the performance management process.

No comments: