Unions urge schools still using performance-related pay to ditch it

Unions have urged schools still using performance-related pay (PRP) to ditch the “shoddy practice”, after polling reveals some have retained it.

The government removed the “bureaucratic requirement” for schools to use PRP this academic year, after its workload reduction taskforce secured a pledge it would be axed in January.

But 10 per cent of teachers surveyed this month said they still had performance targets related to exam results that were tied to pay progression.

However, Teacher Tapp also found the number of teachers with targets related to pay had almost halved since its last survey in 2022 – and that it has been on the wane since 2018.

“There is no longer a requirement for schools to continue the shoddy practice of [PRP], which is workload intensive, and damaging to morale and industrial relations,” said Dr Patrick Roach, the general secretary of the NASUWT.

He said any school that continued to use PRP could “expect to be challenged robustly”.

Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the ASCL leaders’ union, urged leaders “still using this approach to review the policy as a matter of urgency”.

PRP ‘works poorly in practice’

The government’s workload reduction taskforce concluded PRP “works poorly in practice and does not have a commensurate positive impact on teaching and learning”.

It has since been removed as a requirement from the school teachers’ pay and conditions document.

But elements still exist when it comes to teachers progressing on to the upper pay scale. Academies are also not obliged to follow national pay and conditions.

Ten per cent of the 9,321 teachers surveyed by Teacher Tapp this month said they still had PRP.

But the proportion who reported they had targets linked to pay and results had nearly halved since Teacher Tapp last asked the question in November 2022.

Grainne Hallahan, Teacher Tapp’s head of community, said the DfE might “take credit” for the fall.

But Teacher Tapp also noted “fewer and fewer” teachers had been reporting they had targets related to pay progression in surveys since 2018.

“This suggests many schools were moving away from a results-based form of PRP long before the government removed the requirement to base pay increases on performance,” said James Zuccolo, the director for school workforce at the Education Policy Institute.

Changes will take ‘some time to implement’

Alistair Wood, the chief executive of Edapt, which provides legal support for teachers, suggested PRP persisted “mainly due to a logistical issue rather than a strong ideological one”.

While the announcement about PRP was made in January,  the DfE did not release guidance until July and the pay and conditions document was not updated until September.

“It’s not particularly surprising that there is a bit of a lagging effect as schools wait for certainty before changing a policy that is likely to be met with a large degree of scrutiny,” Wood said.

Pay policies also need to be approved by governors.

Colin Lofthouse, the chief executive of Smart Multi-Academy Trust, which has 11 academies in Newcastle and Gateshead, said its new policy would not be in place until next September.

“We haven’t officially moved policy to say that there is no link between one and the other, but in practice that’s exactly what happens.”

Wood added that in theory PRP went beyond exam results, and that schools might have other metrics for measuring performance. The data could therefore “under-report the amount of PRP still going on”.

Evidence suggests impact of PRP limited

Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) research in 2021 found the impact of PRP was “low”.

It suggested schools consider more “cost-effective ways” to boost teacher performance, such as quality professional development.

Chris Paterson, the co-chief executive at the EEF, said there was a risk of “unintended consequences – such as teachers focusing disproportionately on tested outcomes, rather than the wider curriculum and pupil learning experience”.

Zuccollo added that the goal of PRP was to motivate  teachers, retain good staff by rewarding them well, and attract people to the profession.

While a large study by UCL in 2021 found there was no evidence of a link between PRP and retention, internationally the evidence is mixed.

Zuccollo said this meant it would work well in some schools but not in others.

“England has a diverse range of settings and the government is right to leave choices about remuneration to school leaders, rather than mandating any single approach for all.”