This week Prime Minister Gillard announced a suite of radical policies that will do far more to improve student learning than any school hall or national curriculum ever could. Performance bonuses for teachers and schools; Teach Next, which moves passionate professionals into teaching careers; and an Australian Baccalaureate to complement state high school certificates. Combined with earlier initiatives such as the MySchool website which compares school performance and profiles across the country; and last week’s promise to hand more power back to principals and parents, we have a real revolution. Not just of schooling policy, but Labor policy.
These policies – quite rightly – overturn traditional Labor and teacher union platforms and demonstrate that the Gillard is willing move beyond traditional alliances and ideas to do what the evidence says is necessary (not that we were in doubt!)
Take performance pay, which rewards the best – not longest serving – teachers with a 10% salary bonus. Under Labor’s new performance framework, excellent teachers will be rewarded not only for student achievement, but also their contribution to the school community, support for colleagues, and involvement in extra curricular activities.
The policy responds to shocking findings by Melbourne’s own Grattan Institute that 91 per cent of teachers felt the best teachers in their schools did not receive the greatest recognition, and that only 8 percent said they’d receive any recognition if they improved their teaching. Indeed, OECD data shows that Australia was the fourth worst of 23 developed nations when it came to recognizing and rewarding effective teachers.
It’s a dysfunctional system. Our teachers – and students – deserve better.
For this reason, performance pay has many supporters, including the Australian Council of Educational Research, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Primary Principals Association, which represents all school sectors.
Yet, the policy is opposed by teacher unions and old Labor ideologues because – shock horror – it recognizes that not all teachers are equal in their talent and dedication.
For instance, Angelo Gavrielatos, federal president of the Australian Education Union, condemned the scheme as ‘wrong’, ‘misguided’ and ‘bad’ without providing any evidence. He claims it will do nothing to address teacher shortages, willfully ignoring the complementary Teach Next policy and the fact many teachers leave when their enormous efforts receive little more than a pat on the back.
The policies are not new. Teacher bonuses are already being implemented in Victoria, and around the globe. ‘Teach Next’ type schemes have had great success in the UK and US, attracting excellent teachers, and raising the profile and esteem of this important vocation. And school-based-management, working well in Victoria nearly 20 years, has been repeatedly recognized by the OECD as a key attribute of the world’s top performing school systems.
But most are from the ‘too hard’ basket, fought against by the states (for some legitimate reasons) and by the teacher unions and ideologues (for generally illegitimate reasons.)
This is the very definition of revolutionary policy – progressing beyond old party lines and old rhetoric. Doing what works, rather than what is politically convenient. It’s certainly time.
Bronwyn Hinz
School of Social and Political Sciences and Melbourne Graduate School of Education
University of Melbourne