It is a truism to say that many disputes, be they in industrial relations or in the political and social sphere, relate to the precise weight which is to be attached to the words and terms being used.

The current imbroglio with regard to evaluation, performance and accountability in the education service is characterised by extraordinary imprecision in the use of terms. The purpose of this article is to endeavour to shed some light on the matter by setting forth what the ASTI, as representative of 16,000 teachers, understands by the various terms.

The ASTI believes that the raison d'etre of any evaluation of schools is to contribute to the enhancement of the education service being offered. Any form of evaluation which does not give this added value may satisfy bureaucratic requirements, but it will not foster improvement in the education service.

This emphasis on the enhancement of quality as the purpose of evaluation allows us to focus on the kind of institutions schools are and to see how the performance of schools can be enhanced.

The evaluation of the performance of schools is an extremely difficult matter. What are the precise, quantitative measures that one can use to relate the performance of a teacher in a class or school where a significant number of pupils have learning or behavioural difficulties to the performance of a teacher in a school of high achievers?

Each school has its own history, geographical location, curricular emphasis, resources and intake profile. School evaluation therefore must be sensitive and responsive to the uniqueness of each school, and the enhancement of quality will be achieved by the promotion of good practice in accordance with school effectiveness research rather than by the application of inflexible, standardised criteria.

Teachers at second level, of course, already feel they are very accountable in the context of the almost ferocious public scrutiny given to examination results by media, parents and the broader community. School evaluation has to be authentic: that is, it should seek to evaluate what really happens in a school rather than evaluating a "show" put on by the school for the purposes of the evaluation.

Teachers in particular are concerned that any evaluation should be authentic. Teachers question whether, for example, the mere presence of an inspector in a room as evaluator changes the dynamics of a classroom.

The classroom is a very private space, and an intrusive presence can distort the normal give-and-take of a classroom. Teaching is a relatively isolated activity, and classroom authority, often won at some difficulty, should be reinforced.

SCHOOLS, on an ongoing basis, reflect on their performance and seek ways to enhance the service they are offering to pupils.

Schools which were once relatively structureless organisations, where the demands of the law, parents and the broader community were relatively restrained in comparison to the storms of controversy which surround school issues nowadays, regularly engage in systematic planning to enhance their performance and provide the best possible education.

Planning in the past tended to be done in response to a particular need, on an ad-hoc basis, but nowadays it is done in a carefully planned and structured manner by schools. More than 200 are currently participating in this systematic planning process, in collaboration with the Department of Education and Science, which will clarify the education philosophy of the school, its aims and how it proposes to achieve them.

Examples of targets schools may adopt to improve pupil performance include consideration of the introduction of alternative programmes, e.g. Leaving Certificate Applied or the Junior Certificate School Programme, standards of literacy and numeracy in the school, truancy rates and retention rates. Critical self-review with outside assistance if necessary is a fundamental part of this process. This kind of systematic analysis of school performance enables a whole school community, parents, teachers, management to reflect on their activity and to devise strategies for enhancing the service they offer.

This is the kind of collaborative attempt to enhance school performance that teachers can enthusiastically engage with and is thus the most likely to have the effect which is desired, namely, as a better education service for our young people. Moreover, this is the approach which is validated by international best practice. Annual bonuses based on individual performance may have a significant effect on employee behaviour in financial institutions in the City of London. But exhaustive analyses of PRP studies in Britain provide almost no evidence that performance-related pay in areas such as the health service or local government produces any incentive to change or improve motivation.

Performance management at system level, such as that involved in the school development planning initiatives, has the potential to enhance the quality of education in our schools. In this context, performance-related pay on an individualised basis, or on a school basis in accordance with ill-defined, inappropriate criteria, would positively inhibit school effectiveness by removing the collaborative and collegial nature of school planning which is essential to its success.

When speaking of evaluation, performance and accountability in a school context we must not ascribe a content to these words which is more suitable to industry.

Almost every day of their lives teachers are endeavouring to enhance their performance and the effectiveness of what they do. The imposition of inappropriate performance indicators which can purport to have an authenticity (and may indeed have authenticity in industry) will not ensure a better service for our pupils; indeed the opposite may well be the case.

More to the point, if we looked at a means of assuaging some of the anger and frustration felt by teachers at the fact that they have lost out in pay because they kept to the rules of national agreements, while those who broke those same rules achieved major advances, the morale of the education service might be enhanced.

John White is deputy general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland