A leap of faith? Performance pay for teachers

This article evaluates the UK government's performance management initiativ e for teachers in England and Wales as set out in the Green Paper, Teachers : Meeting the Challenge of Change and subsequent technical amplification do cuments. This new initiative aims to `modernize' the teaching profession, r aise standards and provide financial rewards for individuals, teams and who le-school performance. The article draws upon the first detailed analysis o f the 4,064 document archive held at the Department for Education & Employm ent (DfEE) and on the wide body of social science research into performance -related pay and performance management. It finds that when considered as a whole package, the initiative represents a relatively sophisticated set of proposals which reflects a great deal of the most recent thinking in rewar d management. Critiques, which dismiss the initiative in terms of tradition al arguments against performance-related pay could be accused of ignoring s ome important features of the proposed change. Nonetheless, even when consi dered in its own, wider terms, the initiative is found to be flawed since e ven this `sophisticated' package neglects some of the important realities o f schools as complex organizations.