Well said, Philip Roberts. Your article strengthens my suspicions that most of the opinions in support of performance pay, along simplistic "money for results" lines, reflect no experience of regional and isolated schools in any Australian state or territory.

SOCIAL DRIFT and OTHER KEY FINDINGS on ISOLATED COMMUNITIES

"The real issues affecting these schools are the impact of isolation on young professionals and the seeming lack of support for their staff. Recent research has shown that the isolation from family and friends, lack of services and a sense of professional isolation all tend to encourage teachers to leave after a couple of years."

This is then to point out this experience felt by many citizens living in isolated rural communities.

* What happens if all these peoples leave too?

We need to become a more affirmatively engaging driven society.

I wish for a society that uses our economic, cultural and historical knowledge to solve social problems at the point of their cause.

Cooktown School in Cape York lost 14 teachers in one year recently. We have a similar staff turnover at the hospital and other essential services. How can we, as locals, build continuity at a community level like this?

With respect, I say we are becoming a society made up of “competitive mainstream bullies”. We have a administrate breakdown in governing performance at national, state and local levels.

It seems money drives everything. We have bullies in the work place, bullies in the schoolyard, violence everywhere for all sorts of reasons these days, in all sectors of our Australian community. (See findings of the Western Australian Education Reports on Bullies”).

Wake Up Australia, IF we want to attract teachers back to school, and IF we want to attract our kids back to school….

The mindset is about more than JUST MONEY.

Civic Engagement is a key issue in Australia and I say we need to be more mindful and attentative.

It is our own performance we need to review… not a pay-pack on teachers!

http://www.miacat.com/

I lived and worked on Thursday Island for three years. It was a real privilege, what a wonderful place. And actually people tended to save quite a bit of money there because there was nothing very much to buy. It broke my heart to leave T.I. but there were endless accommodation problems. If you were a family it was fine, you had your own house, but as a single person I was expected to share a very small flat with another person with whom I had nothing in common.
I agree that teachers love their work, not in a nun-like way, but because you can be really creative when you teach. I got a lot of pleasure from thinking up interesting activities for the children.
But workplace bullying is a big issue for teachers in Queensland. Your career and your health can be destroyed in a couple of days. And there is no hope of justice. The Bad Apple Bullies website http://www.badapplebullies.com/ supports teachers who are dealing with workplace bullying. You are not alone.

An excellent, well thought out approach to the issue that indicates that if the Federal Government was genuinely interested in improving the educational experiences of students - and especially those disadvantaged, in this case by distance - rather than making political points and playing the "blame game" there are things that can be done that the States would fully co-operate with.

Performance pay for teachers is utter garbage as every over seas study has proven and as we all know here.

It simply will not work, other than to be abused by those who only wish to look after themselves and their mates.

I would willingly testify before a parliamentary inquiry about principals who have given promotions to wives, misteresses, drinking mates, horse bet mates... while bullying some truly great teachers.

I could attest to racism, sexism and other discrimination.

It matters not HOW good a teacher is - only if they are friendly with he/ her who decides.

Then what about the frauds? There are many schools in this state that have a pass mark of 20% NOT 50%. They would look great on
paper but they are not giving their students a real chance at a career or tertiary entrance down the track.

Theer are many schools with limited resources, few computers, old text books...

There are schools where the majority of teachers have, with respect, limited experience in VCE levels.

Then there are the private establishments

I could go on but the wholse system is a crock and should be scrapped