Peg pay on effectiveness to end strikes

Kenya is at that eerie moment of strikes again! Having recently witnessed despicable scenes of student unrest across the country, we have graduated to teachers, doctors and nurses striking for higher pay and promotion.  Teachers in public schools have been out of school for three weeks now, as their counterparts in private schools attend to their students.

By the end of the year, learners in private schools will have had a clear advantage in the number of contact periods they will have had with their teachers.  Any wonder they continually outshine students in public schools?

The solution to the perennial teachers’ strikes lies with evaluating teacher-effectiveness, and pegging any future salary adjustments to the outcomes of such evaluation.  Admittedly, the Government ought to harmonise the salary scales of all its employees, especially those of teachers who trail other public officers.

This fact notwithstanding, not all teachers are effective, so why should all benefit from a blanket pay-hike? Teacher-effectiveness can be judged through the quality and quantity of educational instruction given in a school, which in turn affects the overall quality of education.

It can be evaluated at the input, process and output levels.  First and foremost, input comprises a teacher’s academic and professional qualification, experience, expectation; motivation for entering the profession, attitude towards teaching, certification and licensure.

These measures may define the individual teacher’s “quality”.   However, the most important input into the school system is the student who is being processed to become a useful product in the society.

What entry behaviour does the learner bring into the learning process, and do teachers add significant value to that entry behaviour?  Such data must be elicited intentionally using self-reports, peer ratings, student ratings, interview guides, checklists or questionnaires.

While the public may esteem teachers in national schools as more effective, objective teacher-effectiveness outcomes may indicate teachers in deprived environments as more effective in adding significant value to the low entry behaviour of their learners.

Secondly, evaluating teacher-effectiveness at the process level on the other hand examines (but not limited to) the interaction that occurs in a classroom between teachers and students.  It may also include a teacher’s professional activities within the larger school and community.  An effective teacher should set high expectations for the learners and facilitate the learning process in such a way as to attain them. Process attributes range from regular and timely attendance of school, timely transition of learners to the next level, timely completion, spotting and nurturing students’ talents, to structuring lessons in more captivating ways that lead to enriched learning. Obviously, some teachers are more effective in these areas than others.

Lastly, output represents the results of classroom processes, such as impact on student achievement, duration rates, student behaviour, engagement, attitudes, and social-emotional well-being. Other outcomes may involve contributions to the school or community in the form of taking on school leadership roles, educating other teachers, or strengthening relationships with parents.

From the recent indiscipline witnessed when the schools closed, we can only conclude that the teachers in those schools did not fare well in influencing and motivating the learners to behave well during their interaction with those particular learners. Output is not just outcome in performance only, so teachers should avoid chest-thumping when they churn out excellent grades in national examinations; after all, not all student learning is attributable to the teacher!

There exist quantitative models that can be used to evaluate teacher-effectiveness while controlling for diverse resource characteristics of the schools. The Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC) should invest in a vibrant research department that can evaluate teacher-effectiveness and reward merit with salary increments and promotion.

It is high time teachers’ unions like the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) partnered with the TSC to conduct periodic evaluation of their members’ effectiveness with a view to identify effective teachers for awards at school, county and national levels, rather than the unions’ combative identity of leading teacher-strikes each passing year.

For now, TSC and the Government must stop their arrogance and engage teachers in order to end the present stalemate.  Threats and intimidation only yield rebellion.