The Editor, Sir:

In your editorial of January 14, entitled 'Pay teachers for what they produce', you continue to push for performance-based pay for teachers.

Any attempt to use what you refer to as the 'accepted measures for educational outcomes' under the present system will only lead to a worsening of what I like to call the 'Manning Cup Syndrome' that has developed over the years.

Under this system, the traditional high schools have hustled themselves into safe, protected positions by denying access to weaker students, not unlike, in principle and purpose, the manner in which some of them have gone about recruiting athletes for various sports. The sort of comparative analysis that has been used in the media over the years is only relevant in a system where students are placed according to geography and each school receives a more or less normal distribution of schools in terms of ability and performance going in.

Comfort zones

Until we remove these status-driven schools from the comfort zones which they have built for their own self-promotion, and force them to compete on a level playing field with the comprehensive and new secondary schools, the comparisons we make with the performance of teachers in the two types of schools remain meaningless, futile and misleading.

The comprehensive schools, that everyone frowns on, are the only schools that were set up to do the job the way it ought to be done. They take in the entire range of students that exist in this country and they allow the ones who are able to excel, to do so. They are not avoiding the problem of teaching weaker students as is done by the status-driven schools. I have seen no evidence to date to suggest that the high-achieving child has any better chance of doing well at any of the status-driven schools than he or she would do at a comprehensive schools.

Lazy, incompetent teachers

Right now, there are, doubtless, some lazy and incompetent teachers who manage to secure high pass rates because they are strategically placed to do this, while some hard-working, creative and dedicated souls are in less prestigious schools heroically getting fours and fives from struggling students dumped in their midst because the system insists that they should not darken the doors of some status-driven school, which may even be next door to where they live. Teachers know this and it is for this reason that they oppose the idea of performance-based pay.

If we are serious about education, we must recognise that it is the lower half of the student population who really requires our attention. The pedagogical effort required to get good results from the brightest and more motivated student is minimal. Any school that is not attending to the needs of students in the bottom half cannot be said to be doing a good job.

That is the type of transformation that is needed if we are serious about educating the nation.

R. HOWARD THOMPSON

c/o Munro College

Munro PO

St Elizabeth