Teacher standards describe what “good” teaching is and how it is demonstrated. They provide a common reference point for both teachers and evaluators that establish clear expectations, encourage consistent judgement and focus appraisal on the key aspects of teaching that matter for learning. Effective teacher standards are aligned with national learning goals, developed through broad consultation, and grounded in national and international evidence of the teaching approaches shown to have the greatest impact on student learning.
Teacher appraisal
Teacher appraisal can significantly enhance teaching practice when it offers feedback that connects teacher development goals with relevant training and support. It can also serves as a method for career advancement and feed into system-wide improvement by directing experienced teachers towards mentorship and leadership roles.
Key messages
Teacher appraisals may serve a developmental function – providing feedback for improvement– or an accountability one – having consequences for teachers’ careers. There are risks that the developmental function is hampered when too closely associated with a high-stakes appraisal process. Education systems should consolidate developmental appraisal as a regular, informal exercise that is fully internal to the school, while introducing external accountability appraisal at key junctures of a teachers’ career. This requires building teacher and principals’ capacity to effectively engage in developmental appraisal and use results to improve teaching practices and competencies.
Teaching and school leadership are highly complex. Summarising performance in these domains in a single measurement such as a test score or single observation faces substantial reliability and validity challenges. Multiple measures of teaching and leadership practice, including observations, portfolio reviews of classroom or school processes, student outcomes, stakeholder surveys and others can help to triangulate these multiple perspectives. A critical consideration is how to weight each of these dimensions, which depends on methodological design, substantive choices and resource constraints.
Context
Teachers are most frequently appraised by school principals or other members of the school management team
On average across the OECD in 2018, 64% of teachers work in schools where school principals appraise each teacher every year, and 51% work in schools with annual appraisals by other members of the school management team. Appraisals by other sources are somewhat less common.
Frequency of teacher appraisal, by source (2018)
Regular teacher appraisals inform decisions about teachers’ professional development activities
In 14 of 20 OECD and partner countries with available data in 2015, results from regular teacher appraisal at the secondary level inform decisions about teachers’ professional development activities. These results can also affect teachers’ pay (11 countries) and career advancement (10 countries). In 10 of 19 countries, positive performance in a regular appraisal could be used for rewards or incentives, such as more opportunities for in-service professional development, public recognition, and changes in work responsibility. Underperformance in regular appraisal has consequences for teachers, the most common being the need for further appraisal (16 countries) and compulsory training (10 countries).
Use of results from regular teacher appraisals (2015)
