I’d be willing to bet that the majority of schools set performance management or appraisal targets that read something along the lines of: “X per cent of pupils to achieve age-related expectations” or “X per cent of children to make accelerated progress” - you know the type, as you’ll have had them set for you by a well-meaning leader who is hoping to get results out of both you and the children you teach.

But is this really the best way to ensure teachers do their best work?

Here’s everything that is wrong with this very prevalent practice:

1. The purpose is unclear

Is this meant to be a developmental thing? Is it designed to performance manage teachers out of the job? Or is it supposed to ensure that children get good results? Go back to the “why” of performance management and the practice doesn’t always match the purpose.

2. It is not developmental

Telling a teacher to get a certain percentage of children a pass mark isn’t exactly helpful in terms of growing them as a professional. It does nothing apart from perhaps drive some fear into them. When performance management targets only speak of data-driven outcomes, the document becomes something that is taken out every term for the review meeting but has absolutely no use in the meantime. What can a teacher learn from a set of such targets? Not much.

3. It doesn’t get results

Just as setting these kinds of targets isn’t developmental, nor do they actually do anything to help teachers get children to achieve.

4. It can encourage cheating

Although teachers are a trustworthy bunch, the threat of failing performance management can encourage a certain amount of grade inflation when teacher assessment is submitted. This has knock-on effects when teachers inherit those children only to find they aren’t really working at age-related expectations, yet are expected to maintain or improve upon this level.

5. It assumes there are no other influencing factors on children’s achievement

We live in enlightened times: we understand that there are factors such as home situation, mental health issues and a whole host of other very human, normal, everyday life things that can mean in any given year, month, week or day, our performance isn’t always optimal. Therefore, it is surprising that schools think that typing a target onto a teacher’s pro forma is going to be the sole factor in ensuring each and every child’s success.

6. Exams and tests might not be an accurate picture of achievement

As already discussed, there are many factors influencing performance, and perhaps none more so than on exam day when jangling nerves and unfamiliar formats don’t always lead to the best outcomes. Of course, teachers understand that tests are inevitable and that it is their job to prepare students for them, but should such shaky foundations be the basis of whether or not they pass their performance management?

7. It doesn’t focus on what will really make the difference

Hopefully a list of actions will be part of even the most pupil-data-driven performance management document. That list of actions should include necessary CPD, evidence-based techniques that will help to achieve the targets and so on. But it is really these actions that should become the targets: if goals such as “to use retrieval practice on a weekly basis” or “to embed routines to effectively manage transitions in order to maximise learning time” were set, then teachers would have a better idea of what should have an impact on the learning outcomes at the end of the year.

8. It is a short-sighted view of what is measurable

In a business as important as education, can we really just resort to what makes things easier? Sure, plugging a load of exam outcomes into a spreadsheet and running a few calculations can immediately tell us whether a teacher passes or fails the year - nice and simple. This is the driver behind the setting of pupil-data-driven targets. But what if leaders were willing to work a little harder? Enough monitoring and evaluation goes on in schools - is data derived from these enough to show that teachers are achieving action-based targets or not? When teachers are seen in action often it even becomes quite easy to measure whether or not they are doing the things they are supposed to be doing: in 90 per cent of observed lessons. Mr So-and-so was observed to be using effective routines for transition that maximised learning time. This even comes with it’s own paper trail (lesson observation forms, trackers) with which to satisfy anyone scrutinising performance management practice.

9. It absolves SLT of responsibility

If you measure a teacher by the outcomes of the pupils they teach then it is the fault of the teacher if they fail. If you set them action or CPD-based targets then the leader who identifies potential actions is equally responsible - and so they should be. Holding teachers accountable for action based-targets - pedagogical techniques and so on - means that leaders cannot point the finger when the results aren’t as desired. Leaders are paid more to be held more accountable so performance management should reflect this.

10. It’s driving people out of the profession

Do current levels of what we mistakenly believe to be accountability encourage people to stay in the profession? From countless stories that we read, the answer is no. It does the opposite. Teaching is a difficult and wearing enough job as it is without imposing impossible targets on teachers who, no matter how excellent they are, are always battling against a multitude of other factors. And this often with very little support from leaders who are happy to set a data target and then wait until the end of the year to see if it’s been achieved.

The writer is a deputy head in the north of England