Teacher Accountability and Pay-for-Performance Schemes in (Semi-) Urban Indonesia: What Do Education Stakeholders Think?

Abstract

Teacher evaluations are conducted to inform employment decisions and teacher professional development with the ultimate goal to create beneficial student learning environments. The effectiveness and feasibility of teacher evaluations, particularly in high-stakes contexts (hiring, firing, promotion, pay-for-performance schemes), crucially depends on the support these evaluations receive from the various education stakeholders involved. While many governments around the world, including the Government of Indonesia, are interested in reforming and expanding their current teacher evaluation systems, often little is known about how principals, teachers, parents, and students perceive these evaluations. This paper uses data from a recent large-scale opinion survey in Indonesia to examine and provide rare insights into the attitudes of key education stakeholders towards teacher performance evaluations. Four key insights are identified. First, many principals and teachers agree with existing evaluation schemes employed in Indonesia, such as the teacher competence test (ujian kompetensi guru (UKG)) and the teacher performance evaluation (penilaian kinerja guru (PKG)) and are also open to reforms and the introduction of new schemes. Second, pay-for-performance schemes are generally popular among principals and teachers, and preferred over seniority-linked pay systems. Third, teachers in urban areas are more favorable towards pay-for-performance schemes than teachers in semi-urban areas. Finally, all stakeholders generally support the concept of principals, teachers, and parents fulfilling performance evaluator roles.