The national agreement focused on reducing teachers’ workload, while building schools’ capacity to help them focus on teaching, and enhancing their professional status.
In 2004, The Agreement on rewards and incentives for post-threshold teachers and members of the leadership group continued the focus on professionalism acknowledging the need for stronger links between performance and pay, school improvement and professional development.
The result of these reforms for teachers has been to:
- refocus their responsibilities on the core role of teaching and helping to raise pupil achievement
- highlight the need for a consistent, high quality performance management system by which to aid their career and pay progression.
A new professionalism
In its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) in 2005 (see external links), the Rewards and Incentives Group (RIG) framed a vision of a 'new professionalism', first mentioned in the 1998 Green Paper Teachers: meeting the challenge of change. The new professionalism recognises how important it is for teachers to maintain and improve their professional practice. It promotes professional development as an integral part of a teacher’s everyday life.
By focusing on their practice and developing their expertise, teachers are better able to help pupils achieve their potential, as well as gaining personal job satisfaction and progressing in their careers. This is at the heart of the new professionalism and its relation to performance management.
