27 Responses to “Does better pay really lead to better teaching?”

1. Sara Hannam Says:
   September 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

   Alex a good question. The simple answer I believe is *yes*. Perhaps asking the questions the other way round helps to clarify. If teachers who are currently paid well and are content with their jobs suddenly got quite severe pay cuts to put them in line with most EL teachers in badly paid jobs, would they mind? I think they would and I hope none of us would say they were moaning without reason! But I think by asking the question the way you have – if we take a “bad” teacher and put him (cough) or her (!) into a better environment would they automatically improve, or the converse, would they get worse is impossible to prove on an individual level and therefore a bit of a red herring. I think it is more a reflection of the fact we live in the era where enquiry is obsessed with finding the exceptions to prove a point. We can all find great examples of someone who got paid buckets and didn’t do a good job (um most of the people working in high finance, or senior educational management!) and someone who gets paid peanuts and is really committed. How much does that help us to make sense of your initial question though? So perhaps better to look at it in terms of the general rule and the implications both economically and otherwise (as it certainly isn’t only about pure economics, money signifies other things in society). Teachers who are paid decently don’t have to scrabble around doing lots of other jobs and searching for secondary sources of income, so therefore are less likely to be overly stressed and tired etc. which definitely has an impact on their happiness and performance. It is likely (if they are paid well) that they will feel more valued in their workplace, as in this world, pay is one of the main ways that someone’s “worth” is assessed. Bad pay signifies (often) replacability. Scientifically speaking, there is no way that you could prove a direct link – and I am not sure why there is a need to. It seems to be setting an impossible task that will make it very hard to draw any conclusions. Although I can just imagine one of the big EL estalishments tasking some social scientist with the task of proving that pay rises don’t lead to better work therefore they are abandoning them!! There is always a subjective element in how much is enough, hence (for me) the absolutely crucial need for some sort of collective bargaining which is sadly absent in ELT that could take account of the local differences that you mention such as salary -v- cost of living -v- other local factors. But the bottom line is teachers are not paid enough and no amount of trying to tie that back to their characters would convince me otherwise. Infact most people working in the caring professions are not paid enough. But there are different levels of engagement from teachers as to how “hard” they work. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be paid properly though. I think we need to hold onto that with a very firm grasp as the voice of “individual performance” is not something that will help teachers achieve a better lot in life in the long run. The big enterprises you mention though always get it wrong in my opinion as what they don’t realise is that if you pay people properly they do work better (that has always been my experience with a few exceptions) and they will develop more long lasting and sustainable educational structures. Thanks for the post!

2. Alex Case Says:
   September 15th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

   Cough indeed- I did write the sentence as he/she him/ her, but my sentences are so ungainly anyway I had to take it back out again!

   Thanks for your long and thoughtful comments as ever Sara, but I’m not sure you have answered the main point of my post this time- perhaps because it is hidden in one of my endless sentences. Alternatively, it could be because we have mainly come across different species of English teachers. I’m taking as my model here a 23 to 25 year old single native speaker with CELTA equivalent if you are lucky, by far the biggest segment of native speakers in most private language schools around the world. Unless they are a natural teacher they really don’t teach that well, although they do their best to struggle along, and like people in all professions around the world they need a bit of prompting to improve.

   That person (young, single and used to student lifestyle though they are) could be struggling to live in Croatia or Rome without, as you say, extra jobs or rapidly decreasing savings. The same teacher in Korea couldn’t help saving money and could probably afford a cleaner once a week and to take taxis everywhere. The same teacher might struggle to get a job in the Middle East, but if they did they’d suddenly have longer holidays and a much bigger flat. So, would that person moving from Croatia to Korea or Korea to the Middle East suddenly find their improved living conditions improved their teaching? Would they even give up the extra jobs once they realise how much more they could save with a few extra hours in the country they are now in. The main evidence we have to go on is the reputation of such teachers in each of those countries, and it is exactly the same (i.e. mainly negative) in Rome and Seoul.

   To confuse the issue more by putting it yet another way:

   Imagine all the school owners in the world agreed to improve standards by taking an additional amount of money equal to 10% of the present pay bill of each school and putting it into raising educational standards, to be measured in some way by a combination of improved student progress and improved student satisfaction. Would the most efficient use of that money be:
   - ICT?
   - teacher training?
   - teacher pay?
   - other ways of improving teachers’ lives, such as improved accommodation, better teachers’ room, PG Tips?
   - improved teachers’ room resources?
   - better self access centre for the students?
   - one more manager to help the teachers?
   - better management training so the teachers are helped better?

   I have to say, as the most efficient way of improving standards, I think teacher pay and the other ways of improving their lives will be far down the list- and in fact the success of International House is entirely based on that fact.

   To give a real life example, the government in the UK increased the package for new secondary school teachers so much that people back where I am from suddenly thought about getting into teaching for the cash “It’s awight, yer get yer student loans paid and everyfink, specially if you do mafs or French. I can’t stand mafs, but I could do with the cash. ‘olidays are all right an’ all”. Would better pay for all TEFL teachers not just give the dodgy cert providers yet another reason for PR releases persuading even more unsuitable people to go abroad for the cash?

   Of course older, more dedicated and more experienced TEFLers with families could indeed afford to do their jobs better if they didn’t have to worry about paying next months’ school fees or medical bills, but they are a smallish proportion of teachers that most schools could do without by replacing them with the next group of new graduates and anyway can find half decent paying jobs if they look hard enough

3. Alex Case Says:
   September 15th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

   PS

   I do agree however that if we can’t convince schools to pay us better the only option is to force them to through unions etc. The possibility of doing that in the most globalized job of a globalized world with little or any government support (and sometimes government obstruction) will have to be the subject of several other posts

4. Neal chambers Says:
   September 16th, 2009 at 6:47 am

   Great post Alex. It brings up a lot of valid points.

   I seem to see the same theme coming up is that a lot of these teachers a 20 something singles out for fun. And for those 20 somethings they should be okay with mediocre pay. I mean most of the people that I know that teach are just here to party travel and gather a few stories to tell the grandkids about.

   For others, true teachers, people who actually like teaching and want to do it as a job, there need to be more stable career paths available. We only have two choices really a) get a masters and teach at uni or b) study the foreign language of the country we live in and go get a job with a multi-national. Both are pretty daunting. If there were slightly more options to move up in a company it would definitely help stop turn over and make for better teAchers. Without a goal they are just left to spin their wheels. Must companies only plan on a person being here for 2 years and leaving. After that they don’t know what to do.

   The other problem is just pure business. The natural evolution of any business is to move towards commotization (spelling?). English teaching has moved to that point. To make more money you need to make the business more effecient Or provide a unique experience which is hard to do with teaching. People (and companies That pay for employees classes) pay for results. Results are usually things that are measureable like standard tests. There are several things to consider for a language school compared To a high school or university.

   Anyway, my two cents. Hope this makes sense.

5. Sara Hannam Says:
   September 16th, 2009 at 7:26 am

   Alex thanks for the clarifications. Now I have a much clearer picture of the kind of teacher you have in mind as I hadn’t realised you were mostly talking about NESTs. I know the type – that was how most of the teachers I met in my first year in Greece were as we had all been shipped over, en masse, by a recruitment agency that focused specifically on Greece. Most of had CELTAs, we were in the main single-ish (or at least not yet raising families) and wanted to work and get some experience as NQTs and enjoy ourselves rather than investing huge amounts of time on professional development. Speaking personally, I had worked all the way through university so my student experience was a bit different (more people doing this nowadays?) and despite wanting to advance, I had no time for CPD once I’d put in my 30 hours of teaching (split shifts) and 50 tons of marking that I was sent home with every week, plus the extra private lessons I had to do all across the CITY to supplement my tiny income : ) Perhaps that is why I established a wide circle of Greek and other nationality friends, plus a few Brits with similar backgrounds, quite quickly, and found myself not naturally drawn to the teachers in the group above socially as many of them seemed to have access to other funds (family money?) which cushioned the blow a bit. So I would probably always say that teacher pay does make a difference to enjoyment of life as I tend to think of those times as a sort of conveyer belt of excitement and tiredness but with a lot of eating “fasolada” (do you remember what that is??!) which is all a bit of a blur. Of course you are right that certain countries will allow teachers to have a more luxurious lifestyle just by virtue of the infastructure and what position T’s have within it. Totally accept that and admit I don’t have as much experience as you at assessing so many teaching scenarios. I think your list of possible ways of valuing teachers is really important and I completely agree that all of them are necessary (except the one more manager – although I wish the existing ones were trained better rather than having to learn it “on the job” so to speak – good management is something that needs careful research and training). I might also add in there some sort of admin support as teachers become more and more involved with paperwork and having to “prove” themselves on paper these days (which I am not really in favour of on the whole, when it is used to monitor rather than to enhance effectiveness of teaching or relationship with Ss or between Ts). I would suggest that there needs to be a two pronged approach which is to improve teacher pay (in most cases) via some sort of collective structure (agree subject of another post – I’m gonna blog about this soon as it is something I am really interested in) and the other is to work on expanding resources and support mechanisms. The problem is that in these times of credit crunching it is very often those very support mechanisms that are being cut back or removed. I hardly know any teachers in Greece who work with any of those facilities you mention – however important they are – especially those who work in the state sector. Getting employers to invest is really hard at the moment, despite the contradiction that they are asking for better and better results in this day and age. I think teaching has always been a profession that has the potential to attract some people for the wrong reasons (a bit like the army!) because there will always be a need for education, so in difficult economic times, some people may make their choices based purely on the attraction of the money/security/travelling etc rather than taking account of their pedagogical role. But on the other hand, that *is* how a lot of people make decisions about work generally as they get their soul food through their non-working lives. I am not like that, but I do admire those who are – they seem happier on the whole as they care about things outside the work structure and see it for what it is perhaps?? I too see it for what it is but want to change it too – this has the potential to wipe the smile of my face at regular intervals! Re: the age thing. It is partly about having more responsibility and therefore not being able to make such ego-centric decisions as we get older – but I think it is also about becoming worn down by years of very hard work in some cases which applies for those with or without families – and wanting experience to be valued too. It seems that experience is fast becoming a reason to get rid of people because they cost too much, know more than those in management, might need more time off, not be so flexible (having perhaps grown up in a time when people had permanent jobs?). I don’t actually think that educational standards can be effectively measured via the methods that you outline (i.e. student success and student perception of satisfaction) and although these are important data to gather, they are often used as a weapon against teachers when gathered by the school management rather than teachers themselves in a negative way these days – but perhaps that is a subject of another blog. Finally, what is a “natural teacher”? Thanks for the chat – as always a pleasure.

6. David V. Says:
   September 16th, 2009 at 7:48 am

   I think that low pay acts as a demotivating factor, thus better pay removes this as being a cause of dissatisfaction.

7. Sara Hannam Says:
   September 16th, 2009 at 9:06 am

   I agree David. Nice point!

8. Alex Case Says:
   September 16th, 2009 at 9:18 am

   All very good points, but it is still Jason’s original brief comment that I am most interested in hearing people’s specific views on. I’ve just thought of another slight variation on it- if there are countries where teachers good pay and still don’t do much of a job, what is the motivation for other countries to think about improving such conditions, e.g. by having a legal minimum wage for foreign teachers such as Japan used to have but scrapped? It’s the right thing to do has never been much of a bargaining position!

9. Sara Hannam Says:
   September 16th, 2009 at 9:48 am

   I don’t think it is possible to answer this question with any degree of certainty in the way it is being asked so I have to say I have gone as far as I can on this one! P’raps I am too dense to understand tho – very possible as didn’t get much sleep last night. Either that or I cannot see the perspective being described by you and Jason? In my view, and looking at the question as a possible source of enquiry, you have included several individual variables i.e. the teacher, the country – and then several collective variables such as agreed concepts of good pay (where from?) and an assumption that it is possible to judge whether teachers are doing a good job as a group within those countries (which groups, what criteria?). There are stark differences within the NEST groups of teachers you describe which relate to factors I outlined in my previous post such as access to other forms of income or individual desire to remain in teaching. This mixture of solo and collective factors seems to negate the original assumption in the question that teachers *are* individuals with uneven levels of performance. I am also not sure the relationship (or motivation as you put it) between countries and their decisions about pay levels functions in anything close to the direct way you are describing – does it? Going back to Jason’s original post, is it really possible to generalise about “good” teaching in any country? Surely some things will be being overlooked and the answer the the question will therefore be over-generalised and simplistic? The solution (or at least the start of it) is in the detail which this question does not seem to allow you to expand upon. I didn’t read Jason’s original post tho so many apologies to you both if I am missing something obvious.

10. Alex Case Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 11:11 am

    Fair point. I think I said that I don’t have a lot of evidence to show that pay doesn’t have that much direct impact on standards (e.g. compared to spending the money on teacher training, teaching resources or a self access centre), but if we are going to prove to governments, employers etc that it is worth paying us all a decent living wage the onus is on us to prove that it is worth their while. I wrote what I thought was a slightly provocative post expecting, or at least hoping for, a torrent of arguments proving me wrong. If we give up on that argument about showing how well improved pay improves teaching standards, what is our selling point?

    Perhaps a better question is that one, i.e:

    Can we and how can we prove that we as a profession are worth more money? Or, to get back to Jason’s original comment (sorry, can’t remember which post or even blog that was on), should we care as “some TEFL teachers are already paid too much”? (not sure if those were the precise words, but pretty close)

11. Sara Hannam Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 11:30 am

    I am thinking about new question – much more room for discussion now. More later!

12. Alex Case Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    “I think that low pay acts as a demotivating factor”

    Of course, at least for most people, but the number of demotivated but decently paid teachers in some parts of the world suggests that it not the most important factor and/ or not the most cost efficient factor to tackle.

    Rather a leap of logic there, but commenting during McAfee virus scan and am reaching the limit of my patience!

13. Darren Elliott Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    It’s impossible to compare across contexts as everything is so different. I’ll refer to one that both Alex and I understand – Japan. When I first came over, I’d never taught before and had no qualifications. I was very motivated though, and on balance pretty well paid. What worries me now, though, is not the lower end but the middle tier. Although the pay and conditions are generally pretty good for qualified, capable teachers, the fixed non-renewable contract is almost ubiquitous. Is that motivating or demotivating? I honestly don’t know. On the one hand, teachers certainly want to get a good reputation so they can pick up more work in the future (although is a lot of energy wasted in networking, publishing meaningless ”research” and brown-nosing?). And some teachers who managed to get permanent contracts seem to put their feet up and cruise towards retirement. Would I do the same if I knew I had a safe job for good? Of course, many of us TEFLers have short attention spans anyway and can’t stay in one country for more than three years….

    Very broadly speaking, the teachers who stay in the poorly paid jobs here are the incapable and the unqualified. One can’t criticise the whole restaurant trade on the basis of the KFC server’s wage conditions. But the lack of a long-term career development is a worry, in many contexts.

    (PS Sorry to plug – got a new blog. Nothing on it yet, but keep ‘em peeled. Some exciting stuff on the way. Nothing controversial though. I’ll save that for comments on other peoples blogs)

14. TEFLista Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Alex wrote:

    “…how can we prove that we as a profession are worth more money?”

    Well, it’s a very difficult task, when we’ve got, in some cases, entire ministries of education saying that basically we are not a profession at all. Take for example, the Seoul Ministry of Education, who hires hundreds of teachers each year. Their requirements for the job? “BA in any field”.

15. TEFLista Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    With such a mentality, and a focus on edutainment rather than education, it’s no wonder that wages in Korea have , more or less, remained stagnant for the the past 15 years or so. And if you factor in the cost of living, then they have actually gone way down.

    So what to do? We need to collectively wave some of the flags that we have that set us aside from other ‘non professions’, mainly:

    An initial period of training
    Study that culminates in the award of a certificate or degree
    Specialized content knowledge
    Specialized procedural knowledge
    An association that acts on behalf of its workers
    Participation in a larger community of practice

16. Alex Case Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 4:42 am

    “With such a mentality, and a focus on edutainment rather than education, it’s no wonder that wages in Korea have , more or less, remained stagnant for the the past 15 years or so”

    or maybe they just realised that they weren’t getting anything other than “teachers” who were only interested in paying off their students loans for paying well over the world going rate

17. Andy Mallory Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 4:43 am

    Hmmmnnn…thorny issue.

    I think that higher pay does not proportionally increase teaching standards. Why should it? To teach well teachers need to have no immediate financial or other worries – like Visas or housing etc…Or stupid management initiatives.

    If you find a some motivated teachers – pretty easy to tell at interview if someone is motivated IMO – give them adequate resources to do the job – don’t overload them with teaching hours – and monitor their work, giving modest rewards for good work and appropriate feedback on bad work – together with some help to get better – you have a pretty good prescription for a really good team of teachers.

    If you pay badly, overload teachers, make impossible demands, leave them alone with no management at all for long periods or have bad management systems – you will pretty soon demotivate even the best teachers.

    This is so simple – how can so many – I’d say 99% of TEFL organisations – not do this??

    70 years ago Finland fought a short and terrible war with the Soviet Union. Depsite losing they did very well with a small, highly motivated army and were naturally curious why. It was studied at the time and afterwards and what came out of the research was widely adopted in Scandinavian business after the war.

    From my sadly imperfect memory there were four principles to the Finnish method…

    1 – everyone must understand the plan, why it matters and their role in it.
    2 – everyone must have adequate resources to do their job.
    3 – good and bad performance must be justly and promptly rewarded/punished
    4 – management must be open to feedback after the mission to learn from any mistakes.

    There may have been a number 5 – can’t remember now. But it’s all so simple yet so difficult! Especially in Asia.

18. Alex Case Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 6:44 am

    “how can so many – I’d say 99% of TEFL organisations – not do this??”

    because they can make plenty of money without doing so and they don’t believe that the investment of money and management time and training to make it happen will lead to significantly greater profits, especially when however well they develop their staff 50% of them will go elsewhere every year and however badly they treat them 30% will stay, with 50% of the (easy to find) new staff doing a half decent job before they get disillusioned and move on?

19. TEFLista Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 6:51 am

    Love it, Andy — that’s a keeper ! Please give us number 5, if there is one.

20. TEFLista Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 7:01 am

    “or maybe they just realised that they weren’t getting anything other than “teachers” who were only interested in paying off their students loans for paying well over the world going rate”

    I would say that this isn’t the case. If anything, it’s because of the mindset that speaking English = able to teach English. The standards were never high to begin with.

21. Sara Hannam Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 7:27 am

    Morning all,
    Really liked Andy’s contribution – tho have some reservations about comparing teachers to an army (!) but the message is clear that working as a group involves some real devolvement of decision making and power to those working in the trenches (or at the chalkface) and that managers need to recognise strategical mistakes. I would say that in our day and age, despite their being the illusion of equality (less hierarchical management structures perhaps in some contexts) this is there on paper only in most cases and T’s are very alienated from the processes and are the last to be consulted about decisions affecting their classroom – result: deskilling and as Andy said demotivation.
    Alex I think you have effectively answered your own question in your last contribution. The whole idea of “proving” is based on the fact there are two reasonable (and equal) parties involved in the dialogue, and the person/entity needing to be convinced is open to accepting suggestions and advice. I think this sort of ignores the power relationship involved. When things are driven by financial gain in the way they are (as you outline in your previous contribution) and those at the top know teachers may complain but many will stay as they need the job, and those that leave can be replaced, what really is the motivation to improve the situation for them? They are not likely to really care *that* much about the significant improvement in classroom reality that would take place if investment was made (or in many cases to even understand the pedagogical implications of that) – even though as you rightly point out this would probably improve their business if they did. Modern economic reality is all about immediate gain rather than long term planning, and constant change of policy, which is generally organised around how many fee paying students there are at their point of enrolment, rather than in anticipation of their arrival as it once might have been. It is always lagging behind in a sort of frantic last minute rush. There is a whole school of management theory based on this very principle, euphamistically called “management of change” as if somehow it is a galloping horse beyond our control. Andy’s list would be very workable if it wasn’t for…..well the basic principles of capitalism! No wonder Finland is an isolated example. Teachers (or other care workers) are not really in the position of having access to information that fairly appraises their performance. That would mean evolving a system outside the structures of financial transaction that everyone was invested in. In most cases, that is not the case. So, in answer to your question “how can we prove as a profession that we are worth more money”. Sadly we will not be able to prove that by referring to pedogoical theory or reality, or even alternative views on teacher assessment or how to improve student performance. Those arguments will fall on deaf ears as long as the focus is elsewhere on market concerns (there may be a few exceptions). The only way, IMHO, is to use our collective strength to “disrupt” the main motivating factor behind all these business interests. Their pursuit of profit which means that education is assessed in terms of how much money it makes rather than what sort of service it delivers. The whole thing grinds to a halt without the teachers and teachers need to start realising they have more to gain by sticking together than pursuing their own individual careers, in whichever way they do that.

22. Alex Case Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 9:26 am

    So, we seem to all agree on the original point that we can’t prove that we are worth more money due to the increase in standards and therefore student retention/ word of mouth advertising that would result and that would more than make up for that greater outlay.

    The question then becomes my new one- what if anything can we do to prove that TEFLers in general are worth more cash? I’m looking forward to Sara’s blog post of unionisation, but is the most globalized industry in the world, the one where there is most likely to be a plane load of new graduated strike busters with no intention of doing it for more than a year and so nothing to gain from most of that year on strike, most likely to break down the capitalist world system? I really wish I could believe that. Like Sara (see her latest blog post) I love Asian Dub Foundation (and not only because they are partly responsible for me meeting my wife!) but for me the appeal is pure escapism and 45 minutes of imagining a better world

23. ali Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Get the fuck out of TEFL-that is what we can do.

24. Sara Hannam Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 11:01 am

    Thanks Alex for your nice thoughts about my ADF post. It hasn’t done well on the responses (zero so far) so I thought I might be talking to myself!!! Glad to know you are a fellow traveller in the alternative music circuit. Soon (hopefully next week other part of life allowing) will blog on unions and all that. Hope you will join me. I thought this was a great thread by the way. Want to link it to my blog – will do so today! Ali, I think that I want to do just that about once a week, but won’t you just end up with the same problems in some other industry? Nothing smells much of roses these days does it?? (Putting ADF on full blast now to feel better!!!)

25. TEFLista Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Also looking forward to Sara’s blog post of unionization!

26. Sara Hannam Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    Right then – will mull this over during weekend and try to get something written early next week…..now which approach shall I take, that is the question! See u there.

27. Sara Hannam Says:
    September 22nd, 2009 at 1:04 pm

    Just to let you know my blog bout unions and ELT is up at http://sjhannam.edublogs.org

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