Right from the word go, this scheme is proving to be incapable of even-handed and fair application

Union leader Doug McAvoy

The National Union of Teachers says it has had thousands of calls from members.

But the Department for Education said the NUT's findings seemed to be based on "anecdotal evidence" not supported by its own large scale analysis.

About 250,000 teachers are eligible to apply for a performance-related rise of �2,000 from September.

This involves applying to "cross the threshold" - the existing ceiling on pay for ordinary classroom teachers, currently �23,958.

Teachers have to show among other things that they have raised their pupils' educational attainment.

No strike ballot

Neither the education department nor the company handling the applications, Cambridge Education Associates, has said yet how many have applied, although the deadline was 5 June.

The proportion is widely expected to be high. The Times Educational Supplement quotes sorting office postal workers as saying they have been swamped - with many of the letters unstamped.

Doug McAvoy: Logging complaints from members

The NUT has opposed the new system, calling it "payment by results". But its executive has refused to follow a call from its annual conference to ballot for a one-day strike on the issue.

And even it said it would support members who chose to apply.

But teachers say a high level of applications should not be taken to mean that the scheme is "popular".

Mark Parkinson, a teacher who e-mailed BBC News Online, said: "This would be a government line. This is most certainly not the case.

"In my large secondary school nearly everybody eligible has applied and most if not all have thought the scheme to be a disgrace in practice as well as in principle. This includes the head."

He said the process had been "a shambles" and a waste of teachers' valuable time.

"We have had to fill in the laborious and silly forms in the middle of preparing pupils for GCSE and A-levels," he said - yet the result would not be known in larger schools until the autumn.

The NUT says some teachers did not receive their application forms until the end of May - days before the deadline.

Others had received the wrong advice on how to apply from head teachers who had not been properly trained.

'Unfair'

Some heads were advising teachers on how to fill in the forms while others said they were forbidden to do so, the NUT said.

Some staff had been told - wrongly - that they could not apply if they were aged over 50.

Husbands and wives who were both teachers had been mistakenly informed that only one partner could apply.

Even the Department for Education and Employment had been giving "inaccurate information" to callers, it said.

The NUT's general secretary, Doug McAvoy, said: "Right from the word go, this scheme is proving to be incapable of even-handed and fair application.

"The training for heads has been of extremely variable quality with the trainers often unable to answer straightforward practical questions."

Questions over funding

Written guidance to heads was capable of differing interpretation - and that was happening in schools throughout England, he claimed.

Funding for the scheme has been guaranteed for the first two years - the government has set aside �1bn and insists there is no quota on the numbers who can apply.

But the NUT said the picture after that was not clear. It had heard of head teachers telling their staff they could not afford to retain those who succeeding in getting the pay rise.

"This scheme is a monster of the government's creation but it is the schools and the children who will suffer as a consequence," Mr McAvoy said.

The Department for Education said checks had shown that 94% of head teachers who attended training events in May had found them to be "satisfactory or better" and there was a helpline run by CEA to answer heads' queries.