Merit Pay for teachers

What a polarised debate ! Opponents froth at the mouth. Proponents make out it is all so clear and simple.
There is not much new about performance pay. It is built into any worthwhile career. Anything else is a "dead end" job by definition.
Over my 25 years, my pay increases have almost exclusively been according to performances outside the classroom. Each career restructure promises to value classroom performance, but ends up at a standoff between the union and the government - usually a place that suits no-one and has no logical coherence.
Today, to get better pay, staff must still go through paper shuffling and spruiking interviews for responsibilities outside the classroom. The message that the classroom is the last priority has remained clear and constant throughout my career.
How do we get out of this mess ? Who has the guts to cut the Gordian Knot rather than waste millions trying to untangle it ?
What we need is:

• Payment for all non-teaching duties to be completely separate from teaching salary budget so that anyone can apply - teacher or non-teacher, young or old.
• Payment for leadership roles to be completely separate from teaching salary budget and to continue to be for fixed terms.
• Payment for teaching merit to be completely separate from the salary budget and based on assessment of parent satisfaction and student performance changes, both measured objectively by instruments designed independently of the school (and preferably of the state bureaucracy).

In this way, teachers (and schools) would try to give parents what they wanted, rather than tell them what the government wants.
Teachers (and schools) would also tend to follow educational approaches that produced real results, rather than the latest government fashion statement.

Stephen Digby