In that podcast with Patrick Crozier that I did last week, and which I already linked to from here, I mentioned a blog comment about perverse incentives to teachers.  What I was talking about was the first comment on this posting by Matthew Sinclair, from “Alex”, which started like this:

Here’s an incentive structure for you, Matt: someone very close to me teaches at a comprehensive school. Every pupil they teach who is in an exam year has a predicted grade assigned to them. If the pupil is assigned a C and achieves a B, the teacher gets one point. If they achieve a D, the teacher gets minus 1 point. At the end of the year, if the teacher is in minus numbers, they have to explain themselves, get all their lessons reviewed etc. etc. The person close to me has one class who are all predicted A*s, so they are guaranteed to get punished as long as just one pupil “only” achieves an A.

I’m not necessarily saying that that system is outrageous.  It’s just a good, real example of how exam-obsessed teachers are incentivised to be.

Alex then supplies another example of a perverse incentive, this time involving truancy of a sort that a really rather good school finds almost impossible to control, and which it is then punished for.  Finally, he apologises for going on a bit.  No apology necessary, in my opinion.