Ja: JTA demands equal pay for the incompetent

THE Jamaica Teachers' Association says it is not in support of a government proposal to pay teachers based on their performance, saying there are other ways to deal with incompetent teachers.

"The association does not and will not support performance-linked pay.," JTA general secretary, Dr Adolph Cameron said Wednesday night.

"There are people from the ministry who know that the effort in place now to develop a performance management system does not have as its base any link with pay," Cameron told an awards ceremony at the Renaissance Jamaica Grande in Ocho Rios, to honour Florence Morris-Barrett, former principal of the Ewarton High School in St Catherine.

Dr Cameron said the guidelines in place to govern how teachers operate should be used to weed out teachers who are not doing their job.

So, what else is new? School administrators often function on the principle that schools should not have to conform to the rules of the market. What business will pay an incompetent employee the same as a highly performing one? What business will even retain that employee? Only one run by the government. Performance-based teacher pay is a great first step in weeding out the incompetents; for, education is too important to subject children's future to them.