Ireland in minority with lack of teacher appraisal
The new study on teaching careers across the continent revealed that in the vast majority of European countries, teacher appraisal is common practice.
While Irish children are regularly tested, the Eurydice study on education systems in 43 nations found that when it comes to secondary school, Ireland is among a tiny minority of countries which don’t evaluate teaching skills.
“Only Ireland, at secondary school level, Iceland and Turkey do not have regulations on systematic appraisal for teachers”, read the report from the EU Commission.
In Ireland, it noted that the Teaching Council is responsible for regulating the teaching profession at primary school level but serving teachers at secondary school level education “may be appraised only in exceptional cases”.
The Eurydice study said: “This is carried out by the inspectorate at the request of the school board.”
The report noted that Ireland is almost on its own when it comes to its hands-off approach to appraising the performance of teachers.
“In 33 education systems, regulations from top-level authorities require teacher appraisal to be carried out.
It added: “In four countries, Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Norway, the schools or the local authorities that run them have full autonomy for deciding whether teachers should be appraised and how and when this should take place.”
In another three education systems in France, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands there is “some top-level input but schools are left a good deal of autonomy”.
In Northern Ireland, each school’s board of governors must have procedures and processes in place to monitor and evaluate the operation and effectiveness of the teacher appraisal scheme.
The report, entitled Teaching Careers In Europe, said teacher appraisal is a process intended to assess individual teachers’ performance and ensure that they have the skills needed to carry out their role effectively.
Their performance can be tested by drawing on a range of information from classroom observations to parent and or pupil surveys. It can be designed for new teachers, serving teachers, or both and can be linked to promotion and professional development needs, or be a way to provide teachers with feedback on their performance.
The report said that in more than one third of systems, appraisal is used to determine whether a teacher should be promoted and in 10 cases to determine who should receive bonuses or other benefits.
In nine education systems appraisal is used to determine salary progression.
It is also used to provide teachers with feedback and identifying professional development needs are the main purposes of teacher appraisal.
“Promotion is the only reason for appraisal in Croatia and Lithuania,” read the report.
“In Italy, in-service teacher appraisal is intended to identify which teachers are entitled to receive a reward for their performance.”
It said: “Further investigation will be needed to fully understand the summative and formative dimensions of teacher appraisal in the different education systems and how they relate to better teacher performance.”
