The Merits Of Teacher Performance Pay - 3187 Words

THE MERITS OF TEACHER PERFORMANCE PAY IN KENYA Introduction This paper discusses the merits of performance pay for teachers in Kenya. I argued here that remuneration reforms for civil service teachers will achieve production efficiency. This paper has three main sections. Section 1 gives a brief description of the scheme of service for teachers in Kenya. Section 2 highlights the economic case in favour of teacher salaries and identifies the government failures in ensuring teacher effectiveness. Section 3 offers a criticism of teacher performance pay as a reform strategy in determining teacher efficiency in Kenyan public schools. This section further delves into the issues that affect effective teacher performance pay systems and reflect†¦show more content†¦The salary system is in ascending order in the scale of eleven job groups. The highest paid teacher, chief principal (job group R) is at grade 11.The lowest paid teacher, a P2 (job group F) is at grade 1. In addition to the basic salary, teachers are paid allowances with allocations relative to the job group standing, this include; house allowance, commuter allowance, medical allowance, responsibility allowances. Teachers are entitled to an automatic annual salary increase of about 4% for every year of service (Teachers Service Commission, 2012 p 1-24). Duflo et al (2012), elaborates on teacher recruitment and salaries in Kenya; illustrates the central role played by the Teachers Service Commission in teacher m anagement and trade –union representation is highlighted to show how the wage system works (Duflo et al, 2012). Michael and Mathew (2007) underscore that salary schemes for teachers are almost a worldwide characteristic of public schools. They rely on data from national surveys that indicate that 100% of teachers in public schools are paid using a pay set salary system (Michael and Mathew, 2007). Glazerman et al, (2011) argue that the single salary system was created to address equity issues and has spread over the globe, where teachers regularly get paid based on qualification and experience as opposed to the measure of teacher effectiveness and their students results. (Glazerman et al, 2011;