New South Wales teachers have voted strongly in favour of a new performance-based pay deal which will see the most prime pedagogues paid six-figure salaries.

Members of the NSW Teachers Federation held stop work meetings this week to sort out a new pay deal, with about 96 per cent voting to see pay packets tied to performance rather than time spent in service.

The deal will be phased-in over a number of years, with standard incremental pay rises continuing until it is fully implemented in 2016.

Reports say the new process will be imposed to better manage under-performing teachers, there will also be a 50 per cent reduction in funding for professional learning.

There has been opposition to the performance-based system in the past. Some teachers say it is too difficult to track 'performance' as a metric when classes change, they say the system also fails to account for immeasurable factors such as socio-economic backgrounds, family relationships and cultural factors.

The deal means the best teachers will not be drawn into administration jobs to achieve the salaries they deserve. Similarly, it will not pay larger sums to teacher simply for continuing to teach, a policy which has been criticised for rewarding teachers for becoming set in their ways.

The Director General of the NSW Education Department, Michelle Bruniges says; “valuing those teachers and recognising and rewarding them through a pay scale that keeps them in the class room is exactly where we want to be in an educational agenda that's based on valuing the work done in classrooms.”

“I hope it does have that effect so that people don't have to go away from their passion and love inside the classroom.”

There will be no cap placed on the number of teachers who can be paid the highest salary; they only need to make the grade.

“I think the more the better would be my response... because we want the very best quality of teaching workforce and the way to do it is to be very clear about it,” Ms Bruniges said.

“Here are the standards you've reached, this is the pay associated with the achievement of those standards, here's the professional learning funds you have to do it and to go from there.”