aspects of a teacherÊs work. Incentivizing the improvement of exam results without incentivizing improvements in these other areas normally associated with school life would certainly lead to the neglect of these vital areas as teachers sought to maximize pay and, depending on oneÊs subjective interpretation of what education should exist for, may even lead to incomplete and substandard educations. The next problem faced is that of measuring the teacherÊs influence on candidate performance. This is an incredibly difficult task, even more so than measuring the true comparative value of an exam result, as there is no objective way to measure the standard of a pupil. Prior knowledge, hard work, external tutors, varying pupil interest in a subject, varying attention spans and the fundamental ability of pupils to comprehend what they are being taught all affect the outcome of a teacherÊs input and can greatly influence the superficial appearance of the quality of teaching. The complete individuality involved in the way in which individuals think and processes information ensures that every student learns best in a completely unique fashion. Thus teachers, capable of great feats with some students, may seem redundant 7 with others. A teacher capable of educating pupils to an incredibly high standard may find that the variety of requirements, unwillingness or inability of students to learn within a class room fundamentally limits their ability to maximize the level of education received by their pupils and may superficially, when using exam results as a measure of performance, cause them to appear sub- standard. This is a scenario which highlights the risks of using exam results as a measure of performance (on which pay might be based) due to the way in which it ultimately assumes that correlation is the same as causation and further highlights the limitations that a teacher may face regardless of their abilities or effort. Whilst I accept that there is some correlation between teacher performance and exam results I find it impossible to devise a perfect system to
creating a dogma that education is solely for the purpose of achieving high grades and exists not for personal development, self- fulfilment or purpose of gaining knowledge within a subject. Exam technique guarantees that the highest grades are more easily attained by those best able to tick the boxes determined by the examination board, rather than those with best knowledge of the subject area being tested and ensures that the best teachers, according to examination results, are those who spend significant amounts of time teaching how to jump through hoops instead of teaching their subject. This failure of exams is furthered by evidence that displaying knowledge beyond the syllabus is often penalized by inept markers 5 and restricting mark schemes. Would a good evaluator of knowledge penalize such effort? When pay is derived by the improvement of a qualification, which is flawed and dependant on factors completely misaligned to the final purpose of embarking on the attainment of such a qualification in the first place, it puts into doubt whether any incentive would lead to a beneficial outcome. Is the purpose of education fulfilled, or better reached, by the sole yardstick of exam results? I expect, having read through many school and university prospectuses that few, schools, students or parents would accept that a teachers sole function is to provide a pupil with only the knowledge required to achieve well in examinations 6 . With many schools marketing their ability to create well-rounded individuals, via their extracurricular activities, volunteering schemes and disciplinary excellence, it would appear that schools are advertising a service expected of them by prospective students and parents. Many would agree that whilst grade attainment is necessary for a school to be deemed ÂgoodÊ it is by no means sufficient. Thus it is fair to assume that those using the education system expect more than good grades from their education and it is questionable whether pay, influenced by only the improvement of exam results, would lead to a fully beneficial outcome without impinging on the other
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