Michael Gove the evil overlord strikes again

Michael Gove is at it again. Today he’s taken it upon himself to ‘heap further misery’ onto teachers with ‘reckless’ plans that would damage children’s education.

At least, that’s what the NASUWT teaching union would have you believe. The Education Secretary has in fact published advice for schools on performance-related pay, which they can use from September of this year. It means that coasting teachers won’t get automatic pay rises based solely on length of service, and that good teachers who put extra effort in will get pay rises. So the unions appear to be outraged not on behalf of their entire membership, but on behalf of those teachers who aren’t going to get pay rises: in other words, they’re annoyed that the game is up for poor performers. I’ve already written about why it’s odd that the NASUWT and the NUT don’t trust the people now in charge of these pay rises, given they are also teachers rather than evil overlords, or indeed Gove himself, but there was one other interesting line in the NASUWT’s response today.