Teacher merit pay refers to the payment of compensation to teachers on the basis of their performance and aptitude instead of their seniority. In many professions, the concept of merit-based pay is prevalent, and employees are rewarded with salaries and privileges according to their job performance. However, teachers usually work on fixed salaries irrespective of their abilities and contributions. Now people are concerned to know the odds if teachers get pay based on their merit.
Merits:
Following are the merits of the merit pay system for teachers.
Promotes justice
As discussed earlier, most professions reward their employees on the basis of their performance. They get different bonuses, allowances, and increments on an exceptional performance. Teaching is one of the most important professions in the world, which has a direct and indirect influence on all the other activities of life.
When a sloppy and careless teacher gets the same pay as a hardworking and dedicated teacher, it may create a feeling of injustice in the minds of hardworking teachers. As a result, their performance also declines; they take their job for granted in some cases. Getting merit pay nurtures justice in the workplace and motivates teachers to improve their performance.
Motivation
It has been proved that incentives motivate people to do or stop doing something. When teachers get incentives for their better performance, they retain their current job performance and try to improve it continuously.
Similarly, those who get low pay will also get motivation from highly paid teachers who ultimately make efforts to enhance their performance by inducting smart teaching methods and techniques. The collective effort will result in improved organizational performance. This will ultimately benefit students with better teaching techniques.
Recruitment of fine talent
Usually, the main reason for the dropout of teachers is a load of more work with less salary. Due to this, they opt to switch their career whenever they get a better offer which they usually find in the corporate sector, or do some freelance work part-time such as cheap assignment writing UK. It creates a deficiency of fine talent despite an abundance of human resources.
A great benefit of merit-based pay of teachers is that it helps to recruit the best of the talents. The brightest minds who otherwise choose to switch their careers can be hired if they are compensated according to their performance. Hiring the best teachers is crucial because it has a direct impact on the future of students. When teachers realize that their services are being acknowledged through incentives, they remain in the profession.
Removing inefficient teachers
A merit-based pay system helps to highlight the most efficient and inefficient teachers on the basis of their performance. On the one hand, it results in the promotion of the ablest teachers.
On the other hand, it also helps in identifying teachers with unsatisfactory performance who are just on the post due to their seniority and do not contribute to the achievement of organizational goals. These teachers can be replaced with the most appropriate human resource. It has a pleasant effect on the educational system.
Healthy competition
Merit-based pay promotes healthy competition among teachers as they become critical of their own performance. The single salary scale guarantees job security as they are usually associated with teacher tenure. Due to this, teachers keep following the same lesson plan throughout their tenure and lack creativity and innovation.
This system provides fewer promotion opportunities as job performance is not the primary consideration. When teachers are rewarded differently, they try to enhance their efficiency to outshine others with their performance. This healthy completion is good for the students, teachers, and education as a whole.
Demerits:
Some downsides of merit pay for teachers are discussed below.
Teaching quality is difficult to measure
Teachers’ pay based on merit requires the measurement of their performance for the allocation of deserved incentives. The fact is that measuring teachers’ performance or the quality of their teaching is nearly impossible or at least very difficult.
There is no a prescribed criterion or benchmark to evaluate the performance against. There are some factors that denote effective teaching, but they are not enough to be used as a measure of performance and efficiency. This is a major drawback that makes authorities reluctant to enforce this system.
Variation in evaluation systems
Due to the lack of a standard evaluation system for merit pay of teachers, every institute uses a different method with different variables. Due to this, the evaluation results are not reliable. Moreover, every institute has a different mission, goals, and objectives, and therefore the criteria they use for performance evaluation may differ entirely from others.
Similarly, the nature of evaluators differs from one another. Some might be stricter than others. This also has an impact on evaluation results. A teacher who is considered efficient according to one evaluation test may be found deficient according to the other. This is a major problem that causes irregularities in the merit pay system.
Cost
It is a fact that the merit pay system is costly as compared to a single salary scale that has a fixed budget. A big reason for the non-application of this system is cost inefficiency. Merit pay system includes certain administrative costs along with the monetary cost of major gains in terms of incentives. To evaluate teachers’ performance, the administration should be adequately trained.
This training involves cost implications in terms of money and time. Separate staff should be appointed for keen classroom observation. The time involved in the whole process is compensated from the time defined for curriculum development. Sometimes the cost exceeds the benefits attained from the merit pay system.
Non-cooperation among colleagues
When teachers treat their colleagues as their competitors for gaining rewards, they do not share constructive and unique teaching techniques with each other. Due to this, their individual performance may boost, but the collective impact on the educational process appears to be negative. This creates a bitter environment that is not at all conducive to learning. Enmity among teachers affects the teaching objectives, and ultimately students suffer.
Conclusion:
The benefits and disadvantages of the teacher merit pay system show that it is not applicable in every institution. Moreover, there are few things to consider before incorporating the merit pay system. Every institution that wants to introduce this system should keep in mind all the assumptions necessary for it. With proper planning and budgeting merit pay system for teachers can produce exceptional results.