Imagine if the New Zealand Rugby Union’s collective agreement with players mirrored the agreements negotiated by the teachers’ unions. The pay scale for teachers has all teachers starting on more or less the same salary, and stepping up in small increments over seven years or so to a fixed maximum. There is almost no scope to accelerate for ability, or for application or skill. Nor is anyone held back for showing no particular flare. Talented or not, everyone moves in lock-step.

Under these conditions, would we expect our national game to flourish? Or would it languish? No doubt for some the All Black jersey would still be a calling.  But would we expect a future 19-year-old Jonah Lomu to wait 10 years for top honours? Or would we see him switch codes, hollowing out the talent available to our national game?

Unfortunately, our education sector is seeing too many prospective teachers doing just this, and voting with their feet. The problem was the subject of a five-part series last week in the New Zealand Herald. Entitled, “The Primary Issue”, the series looked at the poor state of primary schooling in New Zealand.

In a normal week many of us find it impossible to agree with any of the Herald’s commentary on education policy. Last week it was hard not to be in violent agreement.

We do not have the world class education system of which we have long boasted. As readers of The New Zealand Initiative’s education reports over the last three years will be aware, we are falling down the international league tables.

Though this is a cause for concern in itself, the greater issue is our schools are failing those most in need. While our best students are performing at world-class standards, we are failing the bottom 20%. This is a particular problem with Maori and Pasifika. At the same time, we have system-wide shortcomings in the teaching of mathematics.

A crisis of teaching

The Herald correctly identified that we have a crisis of teaching.  As we now know, teachers have the greatest impact within schools on children’s education outcomes, far outweighing programmes or policies dreamed up in Wellington. An inspirational teacher will always trump a Ministry of Education “innovative learning space”.

While we have many, many exemplary teachers, as early as the 1990s the Education Review Office reported on “significant numbers of incompetent teachers in New Zealand”. Recent studies suggest the position has only become worse.

Should we be surprised? Or is teaching – as the Herald suggested – now a “Plan B” career? And, if so, why?

We are paying peanuts   In the mid-1970s an experienced teacher earned approximately the same salary as a back-bench MP. Today, a back-bencher’s salary is a little over $156,000. But this is now twice as much as the salary of an experienced teacher.

If this is not telling enough, our MPs can point out that since the mid-1980s their own incomes have fallen relative to the salaries of judges, a traditional benchmark, by between a quarter and a third.

Pity the poor teachers. We are paying them peanuts. Is it any wonder our children are not getting the teachers they deserve?

To understand how this position has arisen, we need to consider several unusual aspects of the job market for teachers. These set it apart from most other markets – including most other labour markets - where quality, scarcity and demand determine both where scarce resources like aspiring teachers end up, and how much we pay for them.

First, the job market for teachers is heavily dominated by the state sector. Fewer than 5% of students in New Zealand attend private schools. The balance of around 95% attend state schools or state-integrated schools. As a result, there is limited scope for teachers to opt to work in the private sector.

More importantly, the pay scale for state sector teachers is governed by collective agreements. These are determined by bargaining between the government and the teachers’ unions. Despite having their own boards, state schools are not permitted to pay teachers above scale.

Finally, the scale itself is driven by a teacher’s years of experience. An individual teacher’s performance is irrelevant. So too is the teacher’s subject specialty.

Instead the scale works like a ladder, with teachers moving up one year at a time until they plateau after 10 years. Though there are minor adjustments to the starting and finishing point depending on a teacher’s qualifications, the scale starts in the mid-$40,000s and steps up more-or-less in lock-step to the mid-$70,000 over seven years.

Unlike almost every other form of human endeavor, the fixed pay scales dictated by the collective agreements mean that ability and hard work in the classroom are not rewarded. And of course it is the same the other way around. Short of appointment to a managerial role, the super-star teacher cannot be accelerated. Nor can the average-performer be held back.

If we can work out the implications of this approach for other fields of endeavor – including a likely exodus from the rugby field - why should we be surprised when that is exactly what is happening in teaching?

Remuneration must reward merit

It does not have to be this way. Other professions flourish with merit-based pay. If most of our doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers and accountants can be rewarded according to their abilities and effort, so can our teachers.

The Key-Government’s Investing in Education Success initiative announced in 2014 was a good first step in this direction. By providing additional career pathways and remuneration for outstanding class-room teachers, it recognises the value of teaching excellence.

But if we are to lift the quality of our children’s teachers, we need to go further, with a remuneration system that both attracts more star teachers, and helps manage out those who are not up to the job.

The District of Columbia in Washington has been doing just this since 2009 with a policy initiative called IMPACT. A recent study by Stanford University’s Centre for Education Policy Analysis suggests it is working. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study finds improvements in both teacher performance and student achievement.

Of course the approach must be more sophisticated than simply paying teachers based on their students’ raw performance. Given the wide range in student ability within and across schools, no one could seriously suggest that would be reasonable.

But if there is one thing every principal knows, it is who are their good teachers - and who are their worst. That is a good start. We simply need a remuneration system that captures this. If every other profession can manage to do this, our teaching profession can too.

Only once we start paying teachers what they are worth will we get the teachers our children deserve. At The New Zealand Initiative we are researching fairer ways to recognize performance.

If we can get this right, perhaps one day we will also be world champions in mathematics.