Teachers' pay to be linked to exams

Teachers' pay could be linked directly to their pupils' exam results from the day they enter the profession, according to tough proposals published today by Education Secretary Estelle Morris.

And annual pay increases could be taken away if results do not continue to improve. The radical proposals tie teachers' pay to the success of the Government's plans to reform secondary education, and bear out Chancellor Gordon Brown's warning that the £12.8billion pumped into schools in last month's spending review must represent "something for something".

But the package, outlined today in Ms Morris's remit letter to the School Teachers' Review Body, brought an angry response from teaching unions, who said it would do nothing to attract more of the country's best graduates into the profession.

The letter confirms that Ms Morris wants the STRB to propose a threeyear pay deal for teachers from next April as part of a pattern setting public sector pay beyond the next general election. But the price of a three-year deal will be the principle that "pay

progression should be linked to greater challenge for the individual". Teachers already have a performance-related pay system, which gives a £2,000 bonus to those meeting national standards after seven years in the profession.

After that, progression to salaries up to £30,000 for classroom teachers depend on a two-yearly performance review. Ms Morris proposes today that the link with exam results should be made more explicit, and suggests that pay increases could be "non-consolidated" - leaving it open to heads to take them away if a teacher's performance declined.

And for the first time, Ms Morris suggests that pay during the first seven years of a teacher's career should be performance-related.

The letter also asks the STRB to find ways of using the pay system to deal with the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, particularly in London and the South-East. It suggests that the next teachers' pay deal should be a "minimum" increase, introducing the possibility for the first time of local pay variation. Last year, the Governmentintroduced "golden handcuffs"-bonuses of up to £15,000 for teachers in areas of staff shortage, if they stayed in the profession for three years. But last month, ministers acknowledged that these had not been widely taken up. In March, the National Union of Teachers closed more than half the schools in London in a one-day strike over pay, the first industrial action over pay for 30 years.

Union leaders are campaigning for an increase in the £3,000 London costofliving allowance. A senior government source said: "In the spending review we said our purpose was investment for reform. We aim at nothing less than the transformation of secondary education and as part of that, workforce reform is absolutely crucial. It is right to link teachers' pay more closely with their performance in the classroom."

But Chris Keates, deputy general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said: "What person is going to want to come into a profession where annual increases in salary can be taken away again? Teachers will find this bewildering at a time when the Government accepts that there are real problems in teacher recruitment."