You Can't Coach That

Monday, May 14, 2007

Allow me to set the scene. You have been doing a job for many years. You therefore have a wealth of experience which should be tapped into and utilised for the benefit of your employer and those that your employer serves. You have however become disillusioned with your profession and therefore your performance has diminished over time.

This may seem familiar to many people. You may have found yourself in this position or you may recognise this in people that you work with. I know I do.

The solution would appear to be self-evident. Such an employee would either leave their current employment voluntarily and move into an area where they are more suited, or their diminished performance would allow their employer to terminate their employment.

Enter the Queensland Education department. It has been announced today that they will repeat a 2002 program whereby a $50,000 grant will be made available to “under-performing” teachers to encourage them to leave the profession and move into different careers.  Surely any employee that is “under-performing” should be told in no uncertain terms that their performance must improve or their employment will be terminated. Terminated, as in gone, fired, don’t let the door hit you in the bum on the way out. Not “we know you haven’t been doing your job for the last 5 years so here’s 50 grand for doing such a poor job”.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, after all our politicians receive multi-million dollar superannuation payouts if they are in office for any significant length of time regardless of the level of their performance. There is a whole other story in that one - another day perhaps, one rant at a time.

Let me know what you think, am I being too harsh here?

I have previously written about teacher pay related matters:
Performance pay for teachers and
Teacher Salaries

“You can’t coach that”

Friday, April 06, 2007

Australia is a nation of approximately 20 million people. Australia is approximately 7.2 million square kilometres in area compared to approximately 9.1 million square kilometres for the USA.

No you are not in a geography lesson. These facts provide the background to opinion on the state of the government in this country. Quite simply we are over governed. There are three levels of government in Australia - federal, state, and local. Naturally each level of government is responsible for different areas of running things. For example, defence is a federal responsibility (although some would argue that in this regards we are a very small branch of the US but more on that in another story), Education and health are state responsibilities and water and utilities are generally a local responsibility.

How on earth can we really need three levels of government for a country that in population terms is the size of New York State and only three times the size of New York city or London? We have seven police forces (one for each state or territory), seven health systems and seven education systems. 

Yes, seven education systems. As a teacher this is one area that is particularly of interest to me. We are in the middle of a debate on the need for a national curriculum. The federal Liberal government is pushing this agenda designed to ensure that all students in our country are educated to the same standard. Our state Labour government seems hell bent on pushing through its own ill-considered reforms so as to beat the federal government to the punch.  In my humble opinion the answer is a simple one - make education a federal responsibility. This would achieve all the goals a national curriculum could achieve under the current arrangements and more. I can’t even begin to imagine how many additional teachers could be employed with the funds saved through the abolition of 6 systems of bureaucracy.

These cost savings could be replicated throughout many governmental activities. Health is another case in point. Significant economies of scale would be achieved through bringing this under the federal umbrella and having a single government department stuffing things up running things rather than six or seven. Enormous hospital waiting lengths could be reduced with the employment of more doctors.

Some would argue that the sheer size of Australia prohibits this dream becoming a reality. However, I would argue this is not the case (I really wanted to say “this is bullshit” but this is a serious piece of writing). Cairns is in far north Queensland and as such is approximately 1800 kilometres from the capital, Brisbane.  I would suggest that when a city is already this far away from the centre of power and decision making, another thousand kilometres or so is not going to make a difference.

So, is any change in this regards likely? Of course not. There are too many people with a vested interest in keeping the status quo. The origins of the states as separate colonies of the British Empire seem to have an influence even today. More importantly though, what state politician is going to support such a change when it would entail the loss of their job and the hold on power that they currently enjoy.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

The Federal Education minister Julie Bishop wants to pay teachers based on their performance and has received backing from the Labour opposition (see this article from The Age for more)

While this idea has merit and could in fact result in higher income for some teachers, I wonder how performance is going to be measured. How can the performance of a teacher in a disadvantaged school with disengaged students be compared to the performance of a teacher at an exclusive private school where all the students are motivated and indeed want to be at school and maximise their learning?

The focus should be on attracting the best and most qualified (not to mention motivated) people into the teaching profession in the first place and then keeping them there with appropriate pay based on their professional status. Teaching as a career has been devalued to such an extent that universities are forced to lower entrance standards to ensure adequate numbers of new teachers are being trained.

On a different note - perhaps teachers would be more likely to accept performance based pay if politicians were more accountable in the same way. I doubt Ms Bishop’s performance in the education portfolio will be considered when she receives her multi-million dollar superannuation payout.

“You can’t coach that”