Performance Based Contracting and Increase in Wage in Preschool Education: Development Strategies, Motivation and Incentives

Abstract

This article explores opportunities in using performance-based contracting as a tool for internal recruitment and a means of solving problems that preschool educational institutions face in their development. Kindergarten staff underwent little change for decades. Sociological surveys revealed the first shifts in the motivation of preschool teachers after some large-scale salary increase measures in education were undertaken. According to the Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations, only 60% of preschool teachers wanted to continue working for their institutions in 2007–2011, while 40% felt like changing their jobs. In 2016, 78% of kindergarten teachers did not want to quit: they had new incentives and an interest in professional growth, their work had become more creative, and interest in work had come to the fore. The findings give reason for considering further support of the salary reform feasible in order to change the nature of preschool teaching as a strategic vector of development in this education sector. As the course of the preschool teacher salary reform has been analyzed and the major trends in changes in institutions that applied performance-based contracting in 2012–2016 have been identified, the conclusion is made that further implementation of performance-based contracts is possible provided that performance criteria recommended “from above” are specified wisely at the level of individual educational institutions and adjusted to kindergarten-specific development strategies. Personnel policies are becoming a resource in the transformation of preschool education content and its orientation towards the development of 21st-century skills.