Letter: The performance of school teachers could be assessed like that of lecturers

There is considerable sympathy for those striking for increased wages to mitigate the effects of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

However, in respect to both lecturers and teachers, there is another aspect to be considered in respect to business performance.

The Blair-Brown governments fast-tracked changes in how universities operate from being solely charitable organisations by introducing student fees, and also encouraging universities to develop and benefit from their portfolio of intellectual property, such that many universities now derive more of their income from business interests and performance than they do from teaching students.

The independent report Ratio analysis of financial KPI in the Higher Education sector: a case study (Belfast, 2018) not only analysed routine key performance indicators (KPI) associated with business performance, and for which a ratio of 1 tends to be the optimum, but introduced and analysed several that are specific to the Higher Education sector.

In so doing it revealed huge differences in performance across many KPI that arguably could be addressed by the Higher Education sector as part of ongoing wage negotiations.

For example, the ratio for sales per academic ranges from 0.13 at Cardiff University to 0.76 at the University of Oxford.

In the category of academic fees, etc the amount earned per academic ranges from £60,000 at UCL and Cardiff up to £170,000 at Oxford.

For research grants per academic there is a range from 0.02 or £20,000 at LSE&PS to 0.31 or £310,000 at Oxford.

For the ratio of academics to number of staff there is a spread that ranges from 14.11 for Oxford through to 72.83 at Cardiff.

The ratio of academics to students ranges from 4.57 at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to 23.75 at ICL.

The ratio of academic fees, etc per student ranges from 0.004 at QUB to 0.01 at all of the English universities surveyed.

Sales revenue per student ranges from 0.01 or £10,000 at QUB to 0.09 or £90,000 at Cambridge.

These examples gleaned from performance data in Annual Reports from 2006-2016 provide a pre-Brexit benchmark against which post-Brexit performance can be measured in future. And we can apply a similar range of KPI to schools as well to address performance across the education sector as a whole when considering teacher performance as well.

Dr. Bernard Mulholland, BT9