What is the worth of a teacher?

What is the value of a teacher? You might think very little judging by the variability in pay rates between countries. The question however is: How do you objectively value the worth of a teacher?

Education in most countries is publicly administered, such that the negotiation of pay rates comes down to arbitration or some formula. i.e. Inflation-adjusted pay rates.

The reality however is that teachers are inclined to move away from such arbitrarily asserted pay rates; and for good reason, they are divorced from the facts. There are any number of factors which affect the value and worth of a teacher. The question is - how do you gauge them. It is a basis for utter disagreement. The market of course offers a solution. The market pits buyers against sellers. It compares your market value against others. Teachers would assert their value in terms of pay per class, with certain hours of preparation, with perhaps a bonus incentive for good student performance. This would necessarily entail accountability standards so that teachers could be rewarded for better effort.

Does this seem reasonable? I would think so, because this is the way most of us engage in the market place. Its not a universal rule, but its the fundamental premise of how markets function. Now lets look at the pay claims for NZ teachers. Firstly they have the misfortune of dealing with a monopoly. Clearly they are happy about this because they never attempt to demand privatisation of the schools, so you know they are not about accountability or fair pay.

What they do embody however is extortion. Just as they are employed by an 'effective monopoly', their strongly unionised labour force effectively acts as a monopoly supplier of teachers. You can therefore imagine that you will get two self-righteous bodies vying for the upper hand. The problem is that there are students in between. The implication is that you have both parties using extortion in order to get what they want:

1. Teachers can go on strike to demand higher pay, better conditions

2. The Education minister can repudiate any claims, reasonable or not, knowing that teachers have no where else to go.

When people are subject to extortion they tend to get very self-righteous. The problem of course is that its not simply an inflation adjustment. Teaching has changed. More demands are made upon them, and their performance is not entirely within their control. They don't parent their students, they don't teach them manners, they might not have the resources, they might not have access to the training they need. The implication is that the expectations placed upon them might be entirely unreasonable given what they have to work with. We might ask then, why do we have this highly centralised system which precludes the market finding more reasonable solutions. Private education is no magic panacea, particularly if its outcomes are driven by government-inspired 'pricing formulas', and its administrators have poor management skills. Privatisation can be a dangerous solution in such a context. We have already witnessed several flawed privatisations in NZ.

Clearly though this industry is ripe for a solution....but instead we have two parties trying to extort concessions from each other with the kids suffering in between. It is not to unlike the breakdown of a family, where the parents use the kids as an instrument of abuse.

In the latest NZ Herald article, we have John Key suggesting that NZ teachers ought to accept the nominal pay increase because the government is under financial strain. That strikes one as unfair because there is no reason why teachers ought to carry the burden. Its a bad argument. 'A good offer under the circumstances'. This is bad politics. Perhaps John Key ought to drop politician salaries instead, or reduce our contribution to Afghanistan, which was only ever a symbolic gesture and a little practice in 'real war' for the troops.

Without knowing the generosity of previous teacher pay increases, or comparative rates of pay for teachers, it is impossible to establish if teachers are over or under-paid. The reality is that teachers are probably overpaid because they are not advocating privatisation of education, in which case their salaries would be determined by the market. This would at the very least achieve a relativist standard of value, and reward objectivity. That is the theory if there is sufficient respect for logic. That is of course less likely in a political system based on extortion...sorry 'democratic correctness'....tyranny of the majority. That is after all why teachers are losing. The indifferent, passive majority cares little about the gripes of teachers...and they might even be contemptuous of them for disrupting their working lives. After all, governments are just so reasonable. I just believe every word that John Key says. He's so handsome.

If I assume that teacher salaries were previously reasonable, then the current pay offer by the government looks a little low. i.e. They are offering 0.5% plus a $1000 bonus worth 1.5%, which equals 2%. Given inflation of 2% before the GST impact, that does not look generous...but they may have had huge increases under the Labour government. The teachers are seeking 4%, plus a lot of other administrative cost burdens live teacher training, smaller class sizes. These issues strike me as government government responsibilities. I agree with the sentiment, but if they want these things, let them support privatisation, which would give parents a choice, as opposed to having teachers extorting government with kids school hours in order to impose their 'delusional' standards of care. Given that teachers are not 'market savvy', we cannot attribute market realities as one of their strong points.

Education and training in the Philippines

Today I had the pleasure of meeting the Chancellor of a local high school & college in the Philippines. Unlike in a great many countries I see that the Philippines offers accelerated growth to its capable academics. I wonder if this is by design or by necessity in as much as many of its better staff would be lured to foreign countries. I was introduced to the senior academic staff of the facility, all of whom implied high educational standards. My partner conveyed that the chancellor as a teacher some years ago was able to make history fun. This is interesting because I had the same experience learning philosophy when I was young. A great many people would consider philosophy boring. To me it was the most interesting and important subject. The reason was my professor:
1. Also made it fun by ridiculing ideas of other philosophers using sarcasm
2. He also grounded those ideas in facts so the education became relevant to people's lives.

Of course you can examine the professional qualifications of an academic institution, but its not until you see the concrete expression of the leaders management that you begin to see the flaws in the system. Certain things like the disparity in remuneration between the West and East need to be addressed. We had the opportunity to tour the grounds. This institution I suspect is one of the better performing institutions in the country. Its programs convey the right intent, though there are changes that need to be made in execution/implementation. Its positive that the chancellor has an MBA, but the issue, did he attain an MBA by necessity or by desire. Its clear to me that he did it by necessity because throughout our meeting he conveyed his desire to escape the business side of education and to spend more time on his creative writing interests. This of course differentiates his thinking from mine because I have been interested in science and business since I was 13 years old. For me they are a seamless integration. This is why I am focused on the business side.
So we have a academic institution which is running a commercial hotel, a travel agency and a cafe in order to teach staff how to manage such businesses. The problem is that they are really not 'commercial businesses' in as much as they are not geared for profit. Let me give you some examples. The travel agency was unable to make a flight booking because they were unable to contact their agency. They could not even investigate flights. The cafe meal was average, the student staff were polite, but shy. We could have walked out without paying because the students were not really invested in making this business profitable. The cashier was turned away from us, maybe working on an assignment. A real business would make sure customers paid. The hotel has low occupancy because its over-priced and located within student grounds. The problem is that this facility is not just an academic institution, its an opportunity to give students real experience running a real business. So what I would be looking to do would be:
1. The key is to make the experience as real for students as possible.
2. How to retain professional academics to stop them drifting overseas
3. How to get funding for research

Achieving first world commercial standards
Clearly if you want to offer a standard of hospitality which will achieve high standing in the global tourism market then you need some conception of first world standards. The best chance of achieving this is by finding Filipinos abroad who are interested in running such a business for commercial gain. The Philippines cannot match first world standards of remuneration. The error is to think they need to. Yes, the Philippines is losing a lot of staff to the first world, but that is fine, some will come back as business owners. The solution is to offer or remunerate the CEO of the commercial unit well, the rest need not be. The CEO (leader) is critical. Why? The CEO ensures high standards, provides critical, conceptual input, and ensures excellence in quality control and buesiness development. Cheap labour can do everything else.

Retain professional academics to stop them drifting overseas
Remunerating such a person, maybe even a foreigner if you want to attract higher critical thinking skills, is easy. Simply make it a commercial business unit and not a part of the academic institution. Afterall it is supposed to be a commercial experience. So let Filipinos profit from the experience. If there is no satisfactory Filipino staff then lease the facility to a foreigner for 10 years so they can train up a Filipino, but allow them to make a good profit until they do. The Philippines will benefit from a plethora of better skilled students.
We have to remember that skilled Filipinos are going overseas as staff. Foreigners are coming here as business owners. Why would a person go overseas if there was a local business opportunity, unless they had some aversion to risk. So the intent is to offer risk-opportunities in the Philippines, to teach risk management skills, to create a risk culture, so Filipinos stay in the Philippines, or come back when they have the skills, because they are motivated by business opportunities rather than lifesytle, because I can think of no better place to set up a business given the low cost of labour.
The Philippines is not the only country facing this dilemma. NZ has the same problem. This is a traditional problem because NZ has long been penalised by its small isolated market. NZ has however the opportunity to offer the world an array of niche services, particularly online opportunities. For a Western country it is particularly attractive for high level programming, online content development, etc. Cheap movie making. It would not lose people overseas if it had a culture of entrepreneurism which saw them take a business risk rather than make a lifestyle decision and go overseas. This will not stop people going overseas, but it will encourage them to go abroad an save for the day when they can go overseas and return to set up a business.

How to get funding for research
This Philippine college was investing a lot of energy in soliciting external support from business. It was particularly focused on building relationships with Filipinos abroad, particularly alumini, both to encourage them to return, to support the institution, to inspire students, and perhaps as future educators. They were also hoping to expand research at the college. These are credible objectives, but several points needs to be made. Business people have a commercial focus, so when they enter an academic institution they can sense the different culture. That gap needs to be broken. Only when that gap is broken will research funds be forthcoming. There is no shortage of funds in the world, there is a shortage of credible sales propositions because of a shortage of critical self-reflection.
I would encourage this academic institution to take the hotel-travel agency-cafe out of the school grounds and place it in a commercial setting, and run it like a business. If this is training they don't even need to spend on infrastructure. They need only develop a relationship with an existing business (hotel, cafe, travel agent) owner wanting cheap staff and free training. Staff could be trained in off-peak periods. This would free up floor space for other school activities like research, which don't require a shop-front presence.