A Way Forward With Key Policy And Practice Recommendations For Teacher Pay System In Kazakhstan

Current Teacher Pay System in Kazakhstan

Discuss about a way forward with key policy and practice recommendations.

According to Townley (2014), teachers are rewarded in accordance to their study qualifications as well as the period they have been in the teaching career but not according to their performance. This does not motivate the teacher to be a good performer. Instead, a teacher would strive to earn an additional degree in order to earn a high pay. If one has spent all their years teaching and they have several degrees, then they are highly rewarded. An individual who is new to the teaching profession would have to be satisfied with the pay they get until they are several years in the profession. This lowers performance of all the teachers because there is nothing to motivate them.

According to Branch (2011), motivations are important in every organization in case it aims to remain productive and successful. Teachers require to be compensated and rewarded in accordance to the work that they do. Compensations and benefits are the extra rewards that employees receive in addition to their basic wages. Branch’s argument reveals that if employees are not rewarded, their aim will only be reporting to their workstations but they do not care on whether what they do has impacts. This is the same case with teachers in Kazakhstan. Those that teach and ensure that students understand whatever they teach do it because of their codes of ethics. It is ethical to maintain honest and integrity and put the public interests before their own. A different pay system would act as a motivator to all teachers no matter their age in the teaching career.

After a thorough research on the current teacher pay system and performance-based teacher pay system as detailed in this article, performance-pay strategy has a good number of benefits than the current system. Teachers’ morale would be improved, their performance would increase, students would grasp more concepts than they currently do and school administration would develop. All these advantages are not offered by the current teacher-pay system. It is for this reason that I recommend performance- pay strategy. However, though performance- based system appears better than the current pay system, it does not appear singly. There are three models that represent performance- based programs and only one of them can be applied.

Knowledge and skill based compensation is a performance- based model. According to Lundahl et al. (2013), this model involves individual financial awards for established skills, knowledge and qualifications obtained. Skills, knowledge and qualifications of a teacher directly reflect on the performance of students. In this system of payment, teachers are compensated based on their education attainment and individual skill levels. Teachers receive a pay increase as a reward after reaching certain education, skills development and training goals (Bradley, 1995). If such a system is implemented, teachers would get incentives to improve their levels of education and skills. Even though the skills and knowledge of teachers reflect on the performance of the students, some teachers would concentrate more on self-improvement and fail to work hard on making students perform. This would lead to the current pay system.

Problems with the Current System

School- based compensation is also a performance- based model where financial rewards are group based. According to Busher and Saran (2013), rewards in this model are allowed in accordance to the performance of students. In this pay strategy, the performance of students is used to evaluate schools through added value gains to the scores of students or absolute achievement of the students. Once a school is determined to have high performance, all the teachers from that school are financially rewarded.

According to Hobson and Malderez (2013), merit-pay model generally considers individual financial awards which are given after classroom observation as well as student performance. This model aligns individual teachers’ objectives, milestones and targets with the goals of Kazakhstan’s education system. In order to implement such a model, a standard way of determining the performance of students in schools is put in place so that all schools in the country utilize it (Ballou and Podgursk, 1993). For instance, there could be standard exams that students do at certain levels of their education. After such exams are marked and graded, comparisons are made with previous results in order to determine whether improvements have been made. According to the improved performance, teachers would expect their merit levels to be increase by a certain set parameter. In the merit-pay model, amount merit rewards vary in accordance to performance. For instance, a 0% salary increase can be offered to unacceptable performance while a salary increase of between 2% and 3 % can be permitted to those who meet expectations.

Among all the performance- pay models, merit pay model is the best and it would ensure that teachers are paid according to the performance of the students. I recommend the use of this model. In addition, the teacher can work individually to raise the performance of his/her students and get rewarded for it. Also, the whole school does not have to perform in order for the individual teacher to be compensated. This would ensure that the current teachers who are not eager to see students perform get no rewards. In order to implement this model, the national examination body would release information on improvements that have been made to the body that pays the teachers in Kazakhstan. In order to make payments to the teachers, the table below can be used.

Table on recommended salary increases according to performance

Teacher’s Performance Appraisal	Salary increase
Exceeds Expectations	3.5 to 6 percent increase
Meets expectations	2.25 to 3.25 percent increase
Partially meets expectations	0 to 2 percent increase
Unacceptable performance	0 percent increase

The implementation of these salary increment would increase the Kazakhstan’s national budget. However, policies on payment of public workers, including teachers permit that their salaries be increased from time to time depending on the economy. For instance, according to Tengi News (2015), Kazakhstan’s government decided that it would increase the salary of teachers in that country at the beginning of 2016. This salary increase came in earlier because there were earlier announcements that the increases would be done on 2017. The decision that led to 2016 pay increase resulted from the free-floating rate policy that has been in place since August 2015.

Performance-Based System as a Solution

Conclusion

Performance based systems on the other hand have been used globally in many nations including the United States. Most countries have adopted this performance-based strategy in order to modify the conventional salary scales. One of the notable characteristics of pay-for-performance strategy is that teachers get sanctions and rewards in accordance to their performances after evaluations. In a majority of pay-for-performance programs, rewards are offered once the teacher exhibits good knowledge of his/her work and students show a high performance. Contrary to the current strategy of paying teachers in Kazakhstan, where a teacher is not motivated by anything, the pay-for-performance strategy has the advantage the teacher gets motivation from students’ good performance as well as from the feeling of satisfaction rather than from monetary rewards. Pay-for-performance also reward teachers by sponsoring further development of their professionalism through course advancement and by offering various holiday and vacation packages.

The recommendation of a pay-for-performance strategy within Kazakhstan would positively affect the education system and largely impact on the development of the country. This is because, unlike the current teacher- pay system, performance based system would focus on the performance of the school, the performance of the teacher, reward duration, advancement of teacher’s salary as well as the pecuniary nature of compensation. This would raise competition among teachers and improve the performance of their work. There has been arguments for and against performance related pay. Individuals who argue against performance related pay argue that the clarity of goals in education is reduced as concentration would be more on how teachers perform than how they teach. Through the arguments, an evaluation of perfect needs of the teachers indicate that the performance of the students would be reduced. However, even if there are arguments against the effectiveness of the performance pay strategy, the current system is no better. Students are left at risk of not gaining from their teachers while the government keeps making losses as the money it uses to pay the teachers fails to have some effect.

Among the three models that represent performance pay, merit pay has a completely different approach and would be easy to implement once each section of the recommendation is put in place. The model would see teachers being rewarded individually after their work leads to the performance of their students. The school doesn’t have to wholly perform in order for the teacher to be rewarded, but the teacher’s students have to show a better performance for the teacher to be rewarded. This model ensures that the teacher makes every effort in order for the student to perform better. According to government policies on payment of public workers, it would be easier to make the additional payments to teachers. The government regularly raises teacher’s salaries by a certain percentage each year. Salary increments according to this recommendation would have a very small effect on the national budget, which would be easily accounted for.

References

Ballou, D., & Podgursk, M. (1993). Teachers’ attitudes toward merit pay: Examining conventional wisdom. Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 47(1), 50.

Bradley, A. (1995). Researchers set out to devise new pay structure for teachers. Education Week, 14(28), 16.

Branch, D. (2011). Employee Motivation, Recognition, Rewards, and Retention: Kicking It Up a Notch! CPA Practice Management Forum, 7(11), 5-7.

Busher, H. and Saran, R., 2013. Managing teachers as professionals in schools. Routledge.

Hobson, A.J. and Malderez, A., 2013. Judgementoring and other Threats to Realizing the Potential of School-based Mentoring in Teacher Education. International journal of mentoring and coaching in education, 2(2), pp.89-108

Tengi News, (2015). Kazakh government confirms wages raise for teachers. Tengi News. Retrieved 29 May 2016, from https://en.tengrinews.kz/politics_sub/Kazakh-government-confirms-wages-raise-for-teachers-261728/

Townley, B., 2014. Selection and appraisal: reconstituting. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), p.92.