The Editor, Sir:

In recent weeks, merit pay has been endorsed by Minister of Education Andrew Holness, as an incentive scheme for teachers to improve students' performance in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations.

First and foremost, the typical (and unintended) result of implementing such an incentive package for teachers is the most disadvantaged students being taught by the least-experienced teachers thus perpetuating the cycle of inequality and low student achievement that has riddled Jamaica's educational system.

Merit pay, as argued by Harvard economist Richard Murnane in his groundbreaking book on the teaching profession ' Who will teach? Policies that matter', is a popular policy that is often part of efforts to raise standards, but that actually hampers progress towards staffing the schools with more skilled teachers.'

Why is this so? The concept of selection bias impacts both the teacher and student population in affecting student achievement and thus poses an important and pervasive problem in educational policy.

Inexperienced

With continuing disparities in work conditions, merit pay will have inadvertent effects on the composition and quality of the teacher population and lead to a deterioration in average teacher quality in Jamaican schools.

Inequality in the schooling would worsen as there would be an influx of inexperienced, non-certified teachers in the schools with lesser resources and worse working conditions and an exodus of experienced teachers to newly created positions in more affluent schools.

Before educators can become comfortable with 'the concepts of challenge and incentives', it is imperative that the Government get the incentives right. Reinvigorating the teaching profession in Jamaica requires a thorough and complete examination of the incentives for attracting and retaining excellent teachers. It would also be presumptuous to implement any form of merit pay before addressing fundamental issues such as improvements in key working conditions and the dismantling of a tiered secondary school system that produces two types of students with different and unequal paths of opportunities.

I am, etc.,

RICHARD WELSH

rowelsh@gmail.com

STANFORD, CA