The case of ‘payment-by-results’

Re-examining the effects of an incentive programme in nineteenth-century English schools

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10106320
AutoresHuriya Jabbar (0000-0002-5496-4863, University of California, Berkeley, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen45
Número3
Páginas220-243
Fecha de publicación2013-06-14
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Educational Administration & History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-0620 • E-ISSN: 1478-7431
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00220620.2013.796912
OpenAlexW2170249504
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas41

Performance-based management is a recurring and controversial strategy for education reform. This paper examines a nineteenth-century English experiment in paying schools by results and uses concepts from personnel and behavioural economics to understand its decline. Like many recent education reforms, payment-by-results sought to bring schools and teachers under the ‘laws of supply and demand’. The unintended outcomes of the policy, which ultimately led to its end, included narrowing of the curriculum, cheating and manipulation by schoolteachers and managers, and increased risk and uncertainty in the teaching profession. The paper begins by exploring the role of economics principles in the drafting of the policy. It continues to explore how the programme unravelled, with special attention to issues of perverse incentives, teacher motivation, risk, and uncertainty. Building on recent studies of analogous modern experiments in performance-based management, this paper finds important parallels to current policy concerns. The lessons learned address the fundamental relationship between incentives and teacher motivation and the role of economic theory in education policy

Cheating · Curriculum · Economic growth · Economics · Education policy · Higher education · Incentive · Parallels · Payment · Pedagogy · Political science · Public economics · Public relations · Sociology · Unintended consequences · Accounting Education and Careers · Finance · Law · Psychology · School Choice and Performance · Social Psychology · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies