The Forum > Article Comments > Breaking the pay deadlock > Comments
Breaking the pay deadlock : Comments
By Andrew Leigh, published 19/3/2007Striking a grand bargain with teachers where those who wish to choose a merit pay contract can do so.
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But there are also those who quite frankly don't deserve to be fed, let alone given salaries and job security.
So while I recognize there is a problem, I am far from convinced that there is a future in a two-tier system, where the talent gets rewarded with well-deserved merit payments, but where the parasites and underperformers continue to be paid while continuing to fail to educate our children.
If you give the teachers a choice, the good ones will embrace performance-related pay, but the poor ones will cling like limpets to their existing featherbedding.
If merit is to be rewarded, failure must be punished.
The compromise proposed here would raise the overall cost, but will not weed out the dross.
The answer lies with the teachers themselves, not the government. If they were to allow their hangers-on to be fired, (and they know who they are, don't they?), there would be room for merit incentives.
But there isn't a politician alive who would dare to stand on a platform that advocated such, they would be eaten alive.