For one time only...I agree with the NUT - payment by results for teachers is a daft idea

****

...on teachers' performance pay. The proposals "from MPs" should the sort of appreciation of reward structures that gave us over-paid useless bankers:

Schools minister Nick Gibb said the government has asked the school teachers' review body – which considers matters relating to teachers' pay, duties and working time – to make recommendations on introducing "greater freedoms and flexibilities" in teachers' pay, including how to link it more closely to performance.

And the chosen measure is something called "added value" - which is a pretty discredited metric and was designed anyway to assess whole school performance over several years not individual teacher performance over one year. And in the USA where teacher 'ratings' are widely used, there's precious little evidence that these act to raise overall educational outcomes (which is, I guess, the whole point of the exercise).

The relatively simple 'appraisal bar' approach that already exists in the pay scales should be adequate and, more to the point, the decisions as to reward should fall to school management teams not be set by some bunch of bureaucrats down in Whitehall. And certainly not in response to a report from a bunch of MPs.

There's no doubt that schools find getting rid of underperforming teachers quite difficult but not giving them a pay rise isn't going to make them either leave or perform better. Do we really think that the teacher stood in front of a class is thinking; "I'll be extra good here and I'll get a pay rise or a bonus"? Of course they aren't and if they were, we would be a little worried about their vocation for the job.

School heads know who are the good and bad teachers - we just need to give them the "freedoms and flexibilities" to manage. And more complicated and often misleading performance measurement will just cost money without raising standards.

And in the end Christine Blowers (for once) is right:

Payment by results is total nonsense. Children are not tins of beans and schools are not factory production lines. Successful schools rely on a collegiate approach and team working.

....

On wisdom...

Over at Living with Rats, Julian Dobson speculates on building what he terms “the wisdom economy.” I pondered on whether to indulge in my usual response to Julian’s stuff – to try and tear it to shred’s from the perspective of what I might call “real liberalism”.

However, I was rather more struck by the balance between knowledge and wisdom – a balance I have commented on before and which players of Dungeons & Dragons will appreciate better than most – as you’ll read here where this trite little distinction is sourced!

"Intelligence tells you what the problem is and how to solve it, wisdom tells you whether or not you should."

I’m not sure this takes us much further forward. But is does perhaps set wisdom somewhere else than knowledge. Here’s Bruce Lloyd saying much the same thing in management speak:

“In essence, Wisdom is the vehicle we use for integrating our values into our decision-making processes. It is one thing to turn information into knowledge that makes things happen, but it is quite another thing to make the ‘right’ (/’good’/’better’) things happen. How we actually use knowledge depends on our values. Instead of moving up from knowledge to Wisdom, we actually move down from Wisdom to knowledge -- and that is how we incorporate our values into our knowledge based decision-making, as well as see the application and relevance of what we generally call Wisdom.”

So, as we might expect, “wisdom” is about the application of values. But whose values? My values – of free choice, liberty, independence and self-reliance – can respond to wise application just as easily as can the so-called progressive values of no growth, collectivism and the superiority of the group. And the authoritarian too can apply his values in just the same manner and just as wisely.

Now in all this there is an assumption that wisdom is superior to knowledge – and it leads inevitably to the “I am wise, I know best” position (as K Sridevi rather raspingly points out here):

“One can understand the progression from storytelling to leadership to wisdom. Both storytelling and leadership, in different ways, depend on "the willing suspension of disbelief". The storyteller asks his audience, "trust me, follow me, even when my story seems to defy the way everyday life works". The leader asks her people, "trust me, follow me, even when the path looks difficult and against your immediate interest". And the idea of wisdom management does seem to have that "trust me, I know best, you're not really qualified to question me" character to it. "Wisdom" is sufficiently imprecise to make its possession effectively unverifiable in a general objective way, and sufficiently confusable with charisma to make its claims believable at least by some.”

So while the “knowledge economy” is defined by what we know, the “wisdom economy” does not have these bounds. It is defined only by the wise – and who decides who is wise or what is wisdom? In truth, we already have that “wisdom economy” since wise men have acted according to their values – and those values are the values of our societies.

Another way of seeing wisdom is as the exercise of “judgement”. We are back with phronesis – with Aristotle’s practical wisdom. And again this takes us through a process of firstly understanding good and bad (what Aristotle calls the “conditions for human flourishing”), the ability to consider what is required in such a context, to deliberate on that consideration and to act accordingly. We are where we started with the vexed issue of values – so long as I apply what I consider to be the “conditions for human flourishing” and do so with consideration, deliberation and follow through with action, so long as I do this I am acting with wisdom.

The idea of the “knowledge economy” was a recognition of the added value that derived from greater knowledge – this economy was less resource intensive, more culturally varied and more personally satisfying. It was about real economics. Sadly, the idea of the “wisdom economy” is just words – all successful economies and polities rely on the application of wisdom. Taking society’s values and applying them to decision-making, management and administration - that is wisdom.

....