GCSE results day is a difficult time for students - 11 to 13 years of education culminate in the receipt of a manila envelope and an impassive series of numbers and letters to dictate the shape of things to come.

From toasting university acceptances to accepting the reality of retakes, students are sent through the full gamut of emotions on this nervous summer day. But so, too, are their teachers.

For teachers, the academic year is likely to begin with a new cycle of performance management. There are a few flourishes and ornamental niceties in the opening cadences of the performance management overture, but they will almost invariably lead to the overwhelming question: how did your exam classes do? This, in turn, will be the explicit or implicit reason for a teacher’s pay progression or lack thereof.

The thinking behind this practice in many schools is straightforward and easy to understand: good teachers get their students good exam results. And vice versa. Teachers should have a financial incentive to ensure that their students get good results. Students shouldn’t be the only ones with a vested interest in their success.

All defensible, inarguable sentiments, right?

Well, let’s consider a few reasons why (student) performance-related pay leads us down a dark path as educators.

1. It turns teachers against one another

Imagine you are in a large department of teachers within your subject and your performance is judged against theirs. You generate a new resource or method of delivering course content for your class, which the rest of the department could clearly benefit from. Do you share your resources with them, or do you hold them back knowing it may give you the edge to have relatively better results than your peers?

I personally am philosophically committed to sharing everything I create for my students, but I have worked with someone who once described the moment he “lowered the shutters on his work” the minute that PRP was introduced into our state school.

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2. It puts more pressure on some teachers than others

Consider the fact that some specialist subjects will always have very small classes and/or coursework components. Compare this with the compulsory “core” subjects which are now entirely exam-based and are likely to contain incredibly large classes.

Consider the fact that, controversial as it may seem, some qualifications are genuinely more difficult than others, or attract different types of student.

Consider the fact that some teachers actively avoid taking on exam classes and will cling to as much key stage 3 work as possible to dodge the levels of accountability we face on results day.

Consider the fact that some students just get incredibly unlucky with health or personal issues on the year of their examinations.

Consider the fact that some classes simply have that perfect combination of students who goad each other on to conscientious new heights, whereas other classes, with the best teacher in the world, do not.

Consider the fact that secondary school target grades are often calculated based on individual students’ prior attainment dating back to primary school, whereas the new GCSE grades are calculated on a quota-system set by the government.

Consider the fact that the people who decide the performance management system a school is going to use are often the least vulnerable to being held accountable for an individual class’ exam results.

3. The results we get in August are only a first draft

I remember in my first year of teaching, one of my brightest, most exceptional students got a far lower grade than seemed appropriate for their abilities. I was devastated and ashamed that I had allowed this to happen to such a promising student. Luckily my head of department calmly sent the paper back for re-marking and this student went from, if you can believe it, a D to an A.

This was my first taste of just how wrong the exam boards seem to get it every year. From rogue markers to shifting boundaries to clerical errors, I have watched exam results shift dramatically in the three-month negotiation period from August to October.

Yet the numbers are crunched and the decisions are made about teachers at the start of September, while all this is up in the air.

An old mentor of mine once said to me: “In teaching, you are only ever considered as good as your last set of results.” What I didn’t realise at the time was how inaccurate these results could be.

4. Lies, damned lies and statistics

I am hardly the first person to notice that statistics can be used to prove just about anything. As a teacher, I always attempt to use statistical data on my classes to make sure I am accurately providing what they need and can assess every student’s academic growth over the year.

I am also acutely aware that the same set of class data can be used to prove that I am working miracles with my classes, or that I am doing a terrible job. If a teacher is in or out of favour then the same set of class data can be used to applaud or condemn them.

Making sure that teachers are fully incentivised to do their best within the profession is certainly something to be encouraged.

Allowing the data generated by the summer results day to put the crosshairs on a teacher or to earmark them for greatness, however, is a short-sighted practice which ultimately damages the prospects of many potentially great practitioners.

Phil Brown is a writer and English teacher from South London

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