Performance Management
One of the best things that the Coalition government has done is introduce private sector initiatives such as Performance Management into state schools so that staff pay is directly related to academic attainment / outcomes. The days of rewarding failure are coming to an end.
The following are key extracts from briefing notes by the National Governors' Association:
Pg. 5
Ofsted expects to see “anonymised information on the performance management of teaching staff and its relationship to salary progression provided to those responsible for the governance of the school.”
Pg. 6
If you are not receiving the objectives themselves, you will need to have other ways of understanding in what areas there is underperformance. This could take the form of summary comments by the headteacher.
Pg. 8
For a teacher to progress, his or her achievements and contribution to the current school must have been ‘substantial and sustained,’ based on two successful consecutive appraisals.
Progression depends on exactly the same factors as on the UPS: “sustained high quality performance.”
It is not an automatic right.
Judgements must be properly rooted in evidence and be made having regard to the most recent appraisals or reviews.
Pg. 9
Governors are obliged to ensure rigour in relation to teachers’ pay. There should be a very close relationship between school performance trends, staff performance objectives and appraisal outcomes, and teacher and headteacher pay increases.
As part of the inspection process, Ofsted inspectors now assess governors’ understanding of how their school makes decisions about teachers’ salary progression, and will judge “the robustness of performance management...demonstrated through...a strong link between performance management and appraisal and salary progression.”
According to the Governors' handbook:
Pg. 60:
Governors have to satisfy themselves that appraisal evidence informs other decisions for example, on professional development and pay;
Pg. 61:
Governing bodies must assure themselves that the arrangements proposed for linking appraisal to pay progression are robust and can be applied consistently.