Annual salary reviews have recently been taking place in many of the schools we support. With the changes to the Teachers’ Pay and Conditions that have taken place in recent years, automatic pay increases for teachers and members of the leadership team are a thing of the past. Schools now have much greater flexibility to reward members of staff based on their performance. The changes mean that, provided performance is managed effectively, this is much less likely to happen. The question is how should performance be managed?
We’ve explored how to handle capability issues in previous articles: Managing an underperforming teacher: first steps and Managing an underperforming teacher: the capability policy. It’s important to note that making a decision not to award a pay increase doesn’t automatically mean you should invoke the formal capability procedure. However, many of the points made in our previous articles are relevant in the case of preparing teachers for the outcome of salary review conversations.
Most teachers and members of the leadership team, unless they hear otherwise, may assume they will be receiving an annual salary increase. Your role as Headteacher will be to effectively manage these expectations. This can be done in a number of ways:
- During appraisal review meetings employees should, at a minimum receive an interim appraisal review mid-way through the year so they know how they are doing in relation to their objectives. However, you shouldn’t wait until a review meeting to raise concerns.
- Hold regular one to ones with members of staff where there are issues to discuss with them.
During these meetings, you will need to cite evidence of the issues you want to raise. This evidence can come from a number of sources, for example: lesson observation; feedback sheets; work scrutiny; pupil data; and professional development logs.
You should also make a note of these conversations so that they can be referred to in the future. This can simply be in the form of an e-mail to the member of staff confirming what was discussed. We always advise our clients that “if it’s not written down, it didn’t happen”. Unless you have a written record, the contents of the discussion can be misinterpreted, forgotten or disputed.
You should also remind the employee, if appropriate, that their salary progression each year is dependent on their performance and the issues being discussed, unless addressed, may have a bearing on their annual salary review.
Of course, a similar approach should be taken when you have a particularly high performing member of staff. When undertaking salary reviews in schools, you may need to convince Governors of the need to reward outstanding performance during the course of the year. This is made easier if you have clear evidence to hand. I would caution against making any assurances in relation to accelerated salary progression to these individuals to avoid raising expectations; however, providing positive feedback and recognition for a job well done is a good way to promote employee motivation.
Taking these steps will enable you to justify decisions not to award a salary increase to a poor performing employee or, conversely, to convince Governors an above average increase is warranted for an outstanding teacher.
