The problem with targets

Merit pay, eh? Normally I’m all for hopping on the teachers-unions-are-spawn-of-the-devil bandwagon. But they’re right to think that performance-related pay, or at least any form of it likely to be introduced by bureaucrats, is likely to be a disaster for exactly the same reason as most government-mandated teaching requirements offer exactly the wrong incentives. Neill Harvey-Smith explains:

If one in twelve children sitting their GCSEs in 2010 raise what would have been a D to a C grade, in just one subject, and everything else stays the same, then the government will have met its supposedly tough new target for secondary education. Would your kid have got 5 A to Cs anyway? They don’t need extra help. They are doing well enough already. Will your kid get way below 5 A to Cs? Then teachers would be stupid to try and raise their marks a long way; there are more promising students to focus on, just below the threshold.