By Vernon Daley, Staff Reporter
Henry-Wilson (left) and Smith (right)
THE GOVERNMENT is pushing ahead with plans to link the salaries of teachers to their performance in the classroom.
In January, the Education Ministry will pilot the much-discussed performance management system, which will set out the terms on which teachers are to be assessed as a basis for giving them pay increases.
Speaking at The Gleaner's Editors' Forum last Thursday, Education Minister, Maxine Henry-Wilson revealed that her Ministry and the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) were working to finalise the system, which will judge teachers' performance based on professional development, student development, teaching skills and classroom skills.
"It goes through a whole series of competence that we think people should possess as teachers," the Education Minister told the Forum, which was held at the newspaper's North Street offices, downtown Kingston.
Earlier this year a committee comprising representatives of the JTA and the Ministry of Education was set up to develop the performance management system, following a long and contentious salary negotiation. The teachers eventually accepted the Government's package, which saw them receiving a three per cent increase for the six-month period April 2002 to September 2002 with the salaries for October 2002 to March 2004 being calculated to bring them within 75 per cent of those in the private sector. The JTA had proposed a 30 per cent increase for the six-month period.
Meanwhile, the committee is now fine-tuning the method that will be used for evaluating the teachers. Mrs. Henry-Wilson disclosed, however, that the plan is to have evaluation teams that would include persons drawn from the particular school where the assessment is being done as well as educators who are not connected to the institution. This, she said, would make the system more transparent and kill any suggestions that the evaluations were being corruptly administered.
Currently, the committee is doing work to determine which schools and teaching grades will be included in the pilot.
Patrick Smith, a past president of the JTA who attended the Forum, expressed general support for the performance management system but urged the society not to base its assessment of teachers purely on students' performance in national and external exams such as the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations.
The assessment, he said, has to be based on measurable targets throughout the school year.
"Once we agree that at the end of a school term that children should have achieved specific proficiencies, then we don't have a problem," he said.
Mrs. Henry-Wilson chipped in, noting that the push to introduce a performance management system was not an attempt to penalise teachers but a nudge to have them set goals that are consistent with the goals of the Ministry of Education. She added that it was also a move to introduce management systems within the schools.
"Education is a management function. You have to be able to say that you are going to move the school from here to there," she said.
