Thoughts on the upcoming International Summit on the Teaching Profession, by John Bangs, Senior Consultant to the General Secretary
1. How do we define quality teaching? What are the conditions for creating the highest levels of teacher quality and self-confidence? These are questions which go to the heart of teacher evaluation and teachers’ professionalism. It is not surprising therefore that in some countries teacher appraisal is heavily debated and contested. Despite this the third International Summit on the Teaching Profession this March will debate all these questions.
2. For those that don’t know about the Summits, the participants represent countries in the OECD which have rapidly improving or high performing education systems. They are unique events. In no other global forum do Education Ministers and the leaders of teacher unions in their countries sit down together to discuss teacher policy and objectives for the coming year.
3. Past Summits hosted by the US in New York considered how to build the quality of the teaching profession and its leadership. A consensus was established on the need for countries to develop country wide policies for teacher recruitment and learning for example. A key ‘take-away’ action was to make policy development a partnership between government and teachers’ organisations in improving education systems.
4. In previous Summits the sharpest area of discussion has been on the design and implementation of teacher evaluation systems. That hasn’t prevented this year’s Summit making teacher appraisal its central focus. In fact most governments and unions have embraced the debate.
5. The latest OECD evidence shows that having a national teacher appraisal scheme is not essential to an education system’s success. For example, countries such as Finland, and Norway do not have them. For appraisal to work therefore it must be valued by teachers and be seen as a welcome addition to their professional lives. Appraisal must be an essential part of teacher policy and as Laura Figazzolo’s research for EI shows; successful schemes are ones which are constructed by teachers and their unions in partnership with governments and employers.
6. OECD’s evidence from other countries shows that if teachers trust appraisal, they will appreciate feedback which supports their work in the classroom. Constructive feedback is seen as making a key contribution to raising teachers’ self-confidence. Indeed in this climate teaching standards and quality professional development are recognised by teachers as vitally important for their work.
7. What about the controversial aspects of appraisal? To what extent should student results be used to evaluate teachers’ performance, for example? The malicious hunt by the press for New York’s ‘worst teacher’ as a result of its Value Added Measure scheme has led to other countries considering comprehensive approaches involving a wide range of evidence.
8. And what about the relationship between appraisal and teacher underperformance? The evidence is that there is little consensus about the relationship between support and sanctions across countries. This is a new area of discussion at the Summit with participants aware that trust in appraisal is eroded if teachers are confused about its purpose.
9. One of the sharpest debates will be around the relationship between rewards and performance. There is no evidence internationally that performance related pay impacts positively on student outcomes. There is a lot of evidence that the evaluations involved divide the profession, depress teacher motivation, and, as one OECD study memorably said, create a lot of noise in the system. There is also a lot of evidence that where teachers’ pay is taken off the table and there are good basic levels of pay/compensation the issue of how to recognise long standing experience in classroom teaching is a creative and open debate. Yet there are a number of systems which are tempted by merit pay.
10. All these issues will be debated at the Summit. The countries attending include the US, Japan, Germany and mainland China. One country which will be notable for its absence is England. All Ministerial diaries are apparently full. It is not an accident that these diary clashes take place at the same time as the Summit. The Education Minister has just imposed a pay scheme which means that it will be impossible for classroom teachers to improve their pay without taking part in performance related pay. To quote a key conclusion from the first Summit, ‘the quality of the education system cannot exceed the quality of teachers-equally the quality of teachers cannot exceed the quality of the education system’. The English Secretary of State might want carry out a little self-evaluation on his own quality!