One of our big corporate clients specialises in doing time and motion studies to work out how manufacturing processes can be improved and how piecework at different parts of the process can be paid in a fair and equal way. As churning out lessons with the help of Cutting Hedges New Edition and an IWB isn’t much different from churning out widgets with the help of a lathe, we thought we might as well get them in to analyse us too as part of consultations on introducing performance-related pay.

Here are the criteria for a fully scientific analysis of classes that they came up with. Performance-related pay will be based on:

 Number of successful elicitations

 Number of words of longest sentence successfully elicited

 Number of squats next to students to monitor or talk to them

 Number of errors collected

 Number of stages done as pairwork

 Number of changes in pairs or groups

 Number of worksheets used

 Number of sections the board is divided into

 Number of ClipArt on each worksheet page

 Number of colours on worksheets

 Number of phonemic symbols on the board

 Number of encouraging words and sounds made, with double points if it is after some truly dreadful production by the student(s)

 Number of uses of body language and tone of voice to indicate errors

 Number of uses of flashing and beeping things such as an IWB or the machine that goes ping

 Times when the teacher understands a completely incoherent sentence or monologue

 Top speed reached when sprinting across classroom to help students or stop them doing the wrong thing (to be calculated with a radar gun)

 Times when a teacher successfully hides not knowing something

 Smiles

 Laughs

 Time spent on Mr Bean-like clowning around

 Hours spent communicating with students outside class (dating also counts)

 Number of students who were planning to complain but then changed their minds

 Number of classroom romances conducted in English

 Number of complaints when they get a new teacher

The total will be calculated after taking points off for:

 Number of student complaints

 Number of exercises in the textbook skipped

 Number of timings on lesson plan off by more than a minute

 Number of student questions

 Percentage of class time when the teacher is speaking

 Number of examples of explaining instead of eliciting

 Number of flashes of irritation or impatience (however brief)

 Number of examples of obvious letching

 Number of sentences in pidgin English by the teacher

 Examples of swearing (unless students successfully learn those swear words)

 Positive feedback from the teacher that sounds about as interested as a husband listening to his wife’s stories about bargain hunting

Any easy to assess criteria we missed?

More on performance-related pay in TEFL here.