Increase teachers' salaries on performance basis: Lessons from the GCC

By Isaac Wanasolo

As Uganda hosted the GCC Investment Forum, a parallel conference on globalisation and internationalisation of education was taking place at Hilton Metropole Hotel in London.

In attendance were ministers of education, professors, education consultants, university chancellors, directors and managers of business institutions among others from the Gulf region, Europe and the Scandinavia and I was privileged to represent the international students’ union of Norway as vice-president of academic affairs and welfare.

A number of intriguing papers were presented about the theme but what caught my attention were the arguments around the issue of increasing teachers’ salaries to motivate them, make them creative and critical thinkers.

Dr. Ferial Mansour noted that teachers needed to be motivated through increased salaries but based on performance and in addition, introduce career pathways for continuous professional development to keep teachers up-to-date with modern research and knowledge.

This she said would ensure value for the additional pay, however small. She, however, cautioned about rigid traditional school curricula that do not allow critical thinking and incorporation of creative ideas by teachers.

 She concluded that for such an intervention to work there is need for flexible curricula to accommodate latest demands from the 21st job market, which calls for affirmative action from governments.

Dr. Abdulla Baabood, Director of the Gulf Research Centre at the University of Cambridge rhetorically asked, “Should we ask poor quality teachers to be creative and critical thinkers?” Following factual comment from Dr. Ferial that in many countries except Singapore and Saudi Arabia, students who apply to become teachers are those who have failed to score good grades to enroll for courses such as medicine, engineering, etc, which means, even the quality of teachers is certainly poor.

In fact, these are the same teachers taken up by schools to teach students expected to become doctors and engineers! This of course is true for Uganda as well but the effects are severe in rural schools for obvious reasons.

This is one of the major contributing factors to the ever-diminishing prestige for the teaching profession.

It was also noted that, there is often a disconnect between private and government-aided schools in that students from high quality expensive schools have access to a wide array of choices and opportunities to access government and international scholarships as opposed to their counterparts from government schools.

In Our case, this applies only to those traditional government schools that are disadvantaged geographically and financially typically relying on government funds for everything. It also applies to deprived private schools that are financially handicapped and often geographically disadvantaged. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, according to Faten Salah, Government schools pay the highest teacher salaries in the country.

H.E. Professor Dlawer, former minister of higher education and scientific research in Kurdistan presented a number of reforms that he initiated and implemented, which have and continue to transform higher education in Kurdistan.

Most importantly, he noted that teachers are the pillars of education and, therefore, they must come from the best student pool.

He, therefore, recommended some of the interventions that worked for him including, among others; raising the bar for admission grades, continuous training and assessment of teachers, making research and publication a requirement for every teacher at all levels especially at upper secondary and university level and establishing performance indicators for teachers upon which assessment for promotion is based.

Non-performing teachers would then have to either step up or be asked to resign because “students should not be taken for granted”.

With this in place, he said, students would receive up-to-date knowledge, critical thinking and creativity would then be possible among teachers and ultimately, the teaching profession will regain its former glory.

Teachers should be the most respected professionals all over the world but ‘this will only be possible depending on whether we choose to implement reforms by evolution or revolution’.

The writer is the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Welfare
International Students Union of Norway
http://isu-norway.no/about.php
Email: wanasolo@stud.ntnu.no