STAFF ASSESSMENT: THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROCEDURES FOR AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

In Australia, a recent Review of Efficiency and Effectiveness in Tertiary Education (Hudson, 1986) has produced an interest in formal staff appraisal schemes designed to assess performance of academic staff members for feedback and decision‐making purposes.

This paper outlines five principles which seem, after review of the literature on staff assessment schemes in the USA, to be important for the development of valid and reliable staff evaluation schemes. While the suggestions for Australian universities which have been made by the recent report are compatible with some of these principles, other principles are clearly violated, even in the sketchy outline of the scheme which has appeared to date.

It is suggested that these principles need to be emphasised once again in the hope that the Australian universities are able to gain from experiences which exist in the literature to date.