Teachers' salaries should be based on the academic performance of their students.

One may tend to believe that rewarding teachers on the basis of pupils' performance will enhance the academic performance of the students. When we consider the positive and negative aspects, the prospect has more detrimental factors. The argument “Teachers' salaries should be based on the academic performance of their students” may seem sound but, is flawed. Moreover, overall personality development of students should be the measure of teachers’ merit and not just academic performance.

Each subject varies from another on difficulty level. While some subjects are harder some may seem ‘a piece of cake’. Obviously, students will perform better in subject having less difficulty than that having higher level of difficulty. Teacher, teaching difficult subject may teach more diligently than the teacher, teaching simpler subject but, the students tend to do well in the simpler subject. It will be unjust on part of the teacher, teaching difficult subject, if he/she is paid less than the teacher teaching simpler subject. This may lead the teacher to loose motivation, and thus degrading the quality of his/her teaching.

Paying teachers depending on the performance of students may seem as an opportunity for some teachers to make more money thus resorting to malpractices. Teachers may leak some of the questions to the students to improve the academic performance and thus increasing their pay-check. Also, a teacher may grade the papers of a subject that he teaches. A greedy teacher might grade his students highly just for the sake of monetary gains.This may create a “bubble” of complacency around students, which may harm them, eventually.

Each student has different intelligence level, interests and acumen. Teachers might encourage intelligent students to take their subjects and discourage others. This may inhibit learning for students eventually killing the whole purpose of knowledge and teachers.

On the other hand, very few teachers will work assiduously for the upbringing of their students by finding effective teaching techniques, interacting and helping each student to perform well.

However, the prospect of paying teachers on the basis of students academic performance seems unhealthy because, it may do more harm than good; as greed may rise it’s ugly head leading to malpractices, degradation in teaching quality and inhibition of knowledge. Therefore, teachers should not be paid on the basis of the students academic performance.