Should teachers be paid according to how much their students learn?
It is the job of teachers to educate students and to help them to learn. This learning process obviously includes the acquisitions or basic skills and, usually, the acquisition of knowledge of a wide range of subjects such as mathematics, history, language, literature, geography and science.
It is relatively easy to measure how much students have learnt in such subjects. Examinations, sometimes in the form of multiple choice questions, sometimes in the form of essays, occasionally in the form of oral tests, measure the level of attainment and these exams can easily be marked by teachers or by external assessors. The mark given indicates a particular students achievement in a subject and so student’s success, or otherwise. In their subjects can readily be assessed.
If the members of one particular class all do very well in an examination, does this mean that they have a particularly good teacher? This could possibly be the case. a good teacher knows how to impart information effectively and also knows how to arouse in students a desire to learn. Intelligent students are not necessarily all keen to learn. They often need someone to motivate them.
On the other hand, there are factors other than the effectiveness of the teacher that should be taken into consideration. It could be that these particular students are just especially intelligent and/or that they find it exceptionally easy to learn. Alternatively, they might have been having private tuition, paid for by their parents, out of school hours. They might have parents or elder siblings who are able to assist them greatly in their studies.
We must also not forget that we live in an age of advanced communication systems. Although television frequently comes in for a good deal of criticism, it does often provide factual programmes which are of great educational value. Students watching them can learn a lot. In addition, now that so many households own a computer, a great many students may augment their knowledge by surfing the internet. It certainly provides information on a wide range of subjects and young people, as a rule, like working or playing with computers. They make learning seem more fun.
For all these reasons, the achievement of these students does not necessarily reflect the skill of the teacher. This being the case, why should teachers whose students have learnt a lot and so have achieved good examination results be given all the credit? In particular, why should they be paid more than others? The answer is that they should not.
They have not necessarily put more effort into their work or worked longer hours and they are not necessarily better teachers. The teachers of much less academically inclined students, who have shown not to have learnt much, may have put in much more effort. Indeed, it is very likely that they have, since such students find it more difficult to learn and need more teaching help. These teachers may have ended up with students who have learned less and who, thus, have got poorer examination results. However, they started with students who had les learning potential than more academic students and their students might have improved greatly under their supervision.
There are some jobs which can be measured in terms of productivity. In some of these jobs, workers can be paid according to work done. Teaching is certainly not such a job.
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