Proper measurement is at nub of pay for performance debate

When I look back on my 11 years of school in New Zealand, it's pretty easy for me to pick out which teachers went the extra mile, who had that special ability to explain new concepts in a way which just makes sense; it's pretty easy for me to identify which teachers truly deserved to be paid more than the others.

And the contrast does exist: just as I can identify who the good teachers were, I can also identify the bad ones. The teachers who did only what was absolutely necessary, who taught in a way which didn't engage or educate students all that effectively.

In any other profession, a simple wage structure would reward the former, and incentivise the latter to make improvements.

It's for both reasons of justice, seeing good teachers getting rewarded for their work, and necessity, seeing incentives spurring the education system to rectify the terrible results that can be seen clearly in certain sectors, that I looked upon the recent announcement by Hekia Parata, the Education Minister, that the government was looking at implementing a programme of performance pay for teachers with quite some admiration. It is a happy coincidence for students in the UK that their own Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is pushing for a similar policy.

The admiration I have for Parata is borne out of the fact that this was one of those moves that the teacher unions were always going to oppose. And that's not a surprise; they generally seem very eager to oppose initiatives which will impose a significant burden upon those that they represent.

Despite that cynicism that I have for the body representing teachers, I have actually had some really great conversations with my teachers about performance pay. The strongest argument against it by quite some way is that it's too hard to measure teacher performance.

That doesn't mean we should simply turn our back on it. It means, if we do go down the road of devising some sort of metric, teachers should support it, embrace it and contribute to it. They should be a part of devising what the metric is comprised of; tell the government all the different factors that make a good teacher and then critique and refine the formula in a constructive rather than destructive way.

It wouldn't be a basic formula. It would measure the value added to a class of students' educational outcomes, rather than absolute values, while considering other factors such as student and parent views of teachers. It's vital to have teachers contributing to the assessment method.

Alternatively, we can move towards a system hinted at by Nick Smith on this week's Back Benches programme, in which principals are given the autonomy to distribute the bonuses to teachers as they see fit.

Either way would have issues, but the issues of an education system in which 40 per cent of Year 11 students at low decile schools are failing NCEA Level 1 are far greater.

I can say with near certainty that there are teachers at my school, and I imagine all schools, who would do more if it was in their interests to do so. That's not to say that teachers are bad or selfish people. Rather, it is saying that they share the same nature as the rest of humanity in that they respond to incentives and generally go the extra mile when it is worth their while at the margins.

Let's embrace and utilise that nature as the rest of the economy does, and let's make sure we can hold onto the teachers who do a great job of educating our most important generation.

James Penn is deputy head boy at Wanganui High School and was a member of the New Zealand team that competed in the World School Debating Championships.