18th September 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Nowadays it seems that money talks when it comes to producing the results that people want to see in education. This is true of all parties involved – parents, tutors, students, teachers, schools and universities. This week the department for education announced that it is considering offering an extra £5000 bursary to encourage graduates into teaching science or maths. This is in response to the long-term shortage of teachers in these subjects and the policy is to be rolled out as an incentive to encourage good recruits into teaching in these areas.
The department has also recently suggested that teachers be given financial incentives in the form of performance related pay for good class exam results. In addition, we are already aware that university’s funding is heavily tied to several different markers, including research publications and access initiatives. Money seems to be making the educational world go round, but is this going to produce the best results for students? I have come across examples of parents offering cash rewards to their children for good exam results- £100 for an A grade, £70 for B etc – and it doesn’t sit well with many of us. We would like students to do well because they want to, and they want to invest in their futures.
So why should we be any happier with making one off payments to graduates to go into teaching? Would we rather attract teachers who are after an incentive payment and who may well leave the profession after a few years, or would we rather build up teaching as a profession that good graduates want to get into? Surely it is better to pay teachers the good salary that they deserve, and create a student and education focussed system, rather than a league tables and results based system which will fail to attract the best teachers. Whether we are talking about investing in students or teachers, that investment should be long term and meaningful, rather than one-off bribes.