Forum Letter Replies
Better pay for teachers is not at odds with commitment and passion
Mr Gilbert Goh (“Performance-linked pay more harm than good”, ST, 1 Jan) and Dr Ranjiv Sivanandan (“There’s a reason it’s called ‘public service’”, ST, 4 Jan) felt there were better ways to attract and retain teachers than by enhancing pay and linking pay to performance.
MOE agrees that good teachers are not motivated by pay alone. They take satisfaction from seeing their pupils learn, helping to change their lives, and working with colleagues to improve what schools can provide the next generation.
However, there is no trade-off between paying teachers competitively and sustaining their commitment and love for teaching. Even good and passionate teachers are lost to the service when the pay differential grows too wide. If the Education Service failed to keep in step with relevant private sector salaries, it would harm both the teaching profession and the quality of education in our schools.
Mr Gilbert Goh disagreed with linking pay with performance. If pay is not to be linked to performance, then how should it be determined? Rewarding for performance does not mean ignoring the things that good teachers do or rewarding those who “follow the crowd and do the necessary just to achieve above-average appraisals” as Mr Goh feared. Teaching creatively and effectively, going out of the way to look after the needs of their students, contributing to others’ capabilities, and partnering parents to meet the needs of students, are all explicitly recognised in the assessment of teachers.
Teachers themselves support performance-based pay. The majority of the 3,300 teachers surveyed by MOE last year favoured a stronger link between performance and annual increments and performance bonuses. They also favoured more individual and team awards to motivate good teachers.
MOE’s commitment to building a first class teaching force is multi-faceted. We will ensure that pay remains competitive at every level of the Education Service, but this is not all we are doing. The GROW 2.0 package that was announced recently extends the opportunities for educational professionals to develop themselves, and introduces further measures to enhance work-life harmony. Schools are also giving teachers more time and space to do what they believe works best for their students.
The revisions to salaries and terms of the Education Service over the last decade have helped us to recruit and retain good teachers, and raise the quality of education in our schools. A high quality teaching force, properly paid, committed to excellence and passionate about nurturing their students, is what allows us to do the best possible for every young Singaporean.
Director, Personnel
Ministry of Education
“Performance-linked pay more harm than good” (Gilbert Goh Keow Wah, ST Forum, 1/1, pH5)
I refer to the recent news about pegging teachers’ pay package to performance.
Though it is commendable that the Government is trying to attract more teachers to the profession by paying them well and ensuring that hardworking outstanding teachers are rewarded monetarily, I feel that there are better ways to ensure that they stay in the teaching profession.
Rewarding workers with better bonuses and salary is just one of the many ways to retain workers. Often, an understanding principal and co-operative colleagues also contribute immensely to reasons why teachers stay on in their jobs. A positive vibrant working environment has always been an attraction for workers to continue contributing. Regular positive feedback is also vital in any organisation.
In a buoyant employment market where teachers are often employed on a contractual basis, the ability to get them to renew their contracts has to be done creatively. Many teacher friends I know are not really attracted to the profession for the salary, but for honourable reasons. They really want to change the lives of their students. Often, their ambition is crushed either by a stifling school environment or an overbearing principal.
I have also heard that some teachers have little room to implement their own teaching style. There is a lot of red tape plus politics, especially in an environment where many colleagues want to score points by ‘out-teaching’ one another for a better appraisal.
The performance-pegged bonuses, though commendable, may create too much tension in the school environment, when teaching should primarily be a vocation that practitioners do out of love. If a teacher carries out his job with the intention to perform well to gain more bonuses, then teaching may not be the right profession for him.
Principals should not grade teachers well just because they do what is demanded of them. Many will then follow the crowd and do the necessary just to achieve above-average appraisals.
Often, outstanding teachers do more than is required of them. I remember a primary school teacher who visited students who were absent and even raised funds for families in need. Though their teaching was average, they motivated students to do better through their love and care.
“There’s a reason it’s called ‘public service’” (Dr Ranjiv Sivanandan, ST Forum, 4/1, pH16)
Mr Gilbert Goh has conveyed very eloquently the dangers of performance-linked pay for teachers in his letter, ‘Performance-linked pay more harm than good’ (ST, Jan 1).
I would like to carry his argument a step further.
Public service is distinct from private enterprise. This distinction is essential if we are to be clear about what salary incentives serve to achieve in motivating the right behaviours in either sector.
Public service requires a different aptitude, ethos and capacity, and emphasises empathy, altruism, selflessness and a strong sense of purpose in contributing to the community. It carries with it a heavy emotional investment, often difficult to quantify in monetary terms. The strongest motivation for such an endeavour would be to affect positively the next generation by being role models, and to improve significantly the condition of others, or society as a whole.
Public service includes the sectors of education, health care, social services and the civil service. Monetary rewards rank (or should rank) low, and often departures from public service have more to do with disenfranchisement, disillusionment and low trust environments, where individual contributions are not valued or individuals do not feel invested in the overall direction or purpose of the organisation.
In other words, poor motivation and poor work dynamics, distinct from pay, may be a more critical root cause to address.
In the private sector, a completely different set of circumstances is at play. In a free market economy, competitive salaries and performance-linked bonuses rank high in the decision-making process of job selection, and in motivating profitable behaviours.
An overemphasis on salary incentives to attract or retain talent in public service may, in the long run, be detrimental to motivating the right behaviours, or worse, attracting people not suited for public service. Motivational writer Stephen Covey said: ‘Principles are the simplicity at the far end of complexity.’ Let us not miss the forest for the trees. Clarity of purpose, individual investment in a shared common vision, a vibrant work environment and enlightened leadership that respects (and celebrates) diversity of opinion will provide more than ample motivation for the right-minded people to stay.