Why Labour should oppose changes to teachers’ pay

Last year, Michael Gove announced that he will scrap the national pay scales for teachers by this September, and replace them with a system of ‘performance-related pay’ whereby headteachers and will be able to pay the majority of teachers any amount that they want.

The idea behind this is that ‘good’ teachers will be rewarded with good salaries, while ‘bad’ teachers will be punished with pay freezes and cuts. So far, so free market. It’s been the Conservative message since the early ’80s: Be good, and you’ll get a sausage; be bad, and you’ll get a thump. But why now? And why teachers?

Among the reasons that the academies and free schools programme remains unpopular with teachers is that they do not have to follow national agreements on pay and conditions. They can hire unqualified teachers and pay whatever wage they think is appropriate. Some individual teachers and schools have undoubtedly benefited from this flexibility, whatever the broader impact may be. Yet, despite the fact that over half of the country’s secondary schools are now academies, only a small minority have adopted this approach to pay, while most have stuck with the current pay scales. This suggests that they are fit for purpose: If headteachers thought pay-by-performance was a good idea, all those in academies would already have adopted it. But Mr Gove, apparently not content to let headteachers make decisions unless they make the ones he wants, is now forcing them to adopt the new system, which he believes will improve education.

The trouble is, the evidence is against him. Pay-by-performance for teachers has been tried many times, and has failed as many: It exists in the UK, for senior teachers, and was applied to all teachers in the 19^th century. Various states in the US have implemented such systems, only to abandon them when they produced the same results as all such schemes: Teachers were demoralised; competition for wages drove down pay; and, with teachers unwilling to deviate from the paths that led to a much-needed pay rise, lessons and curricula became narrow and entirely exam-focused, with no free-thinking or experimentation. When your pay cheque’s on the line, you don’t take risks.

Given that the evidence, the profession, and the schools are against him, why has Gove chosen to implement this plan? Simply, it is the beginning of the Coalition’s plan to force regional pay on the public sector. The NUT and NASUWT together represent around 90% of all teachers, and the Government clearly believes, perhaps rightly, that if these powerful teaching unions can be beaten, the rest of the public sector will roll over without a fight. The resulting regional pay will widen the North-South economic divide, hitting poor regions already staggering from cuts to pay and jobs.

The Labour Party must oppose this policy to protect the nation’s teachers in the short term, and to prevent the long-term economic damage that will stem from yet more cuts to pay in the poorest parts of the country.