Would you rather:
- Top exam results for your pupils – or £1 million in the bank?
- £1 billion additional schools funding going on teacher pay, student mental health support, or curriculum development?
- High workload and good behaviour, or low workload and poor behaviour?
- Fight a hundred duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?
Is there any point in such questions? Sadly, Teacher Tapp can’t offer you either top exam results, or £1 million. (The top prize in our Golden Ticket raffle is £3000 though, so keep tapping!) Yet, to date, we’ve asked three of these four questions. Why?
First, hypothetical questions get teachers thinking and talking. If we ask teachers “would you like a pay rise?” they’ll say yes. If we ask “would you like more TA support?” they’ll say yes. We’ve not learned much! A forced choice makes it interesting: “would you rather a £1000 pay rise or five extra hours TA support a week?” We’re all in favour of nice things! We find it harder (and more interesting) to choose between them. In this case, we’ve asked teachers what they would have preferred as NQTs. Six in ten wanted a salary boost over a TA.
