Neoliberalism and the (internal) marketisation of primary school assessment in England

Abstract

This paper considers the effect of recent education policy on assessment practices in English primary schools and how these affect relationships between teachers and pupils in an increasingly market-driven school system. Previous research has focused largely on the effect of markets at a systemic level, but less attention has been paid to how marketisation plays out in teachers' work at classroom level. Similarly, research on assessment has tended to examine teachers' practices in relation to pupils' learning rather than examining it in terms of the role it plays in teachers' professional working lives. This paper brings these ideas together, using the latter as the context for understanding the former. In particular, it focuses on recent policy changes to the way schools in England are evaluated, moving from final attainment to pupils' progress 'in-year', and considers their potential for altering the dynamics within schools rather than just between them. It draws on a small-scale, interpretive, empirical study involving interviews with primary teachers in England. Data from this study are used to illustrate how tensions can arise for teachers and how internal market competition can be set up between them in which pupils' achievements become a commodity to be made use of, encouraging teachers to consider pupils' achievements as private, rather than public, goods. The paper thus provides a starting point for exploring the effect of market-orientated education policy on teachers' assessment practices at the in-school level and briefly examines some of the implications of this effect.

The Performative Arts and Pedagogy Project – Towards the Development of an International Glossary

“…Science (Rahm and Brandt, 2016;Smith, 2011); language education (Flubacher and Del Percio, 2017); Music (Leon, 2014); visual arts (Watts, 2017); drama (Lambert et al, 2015); primary school assessment (Pratt, 2016)]. Whether the demise of DIE, TIE and community theatre at that time can be singularly attributed to a transformation of the relations between government, private enterprise and society (Giroux, 2013), or whether the ongoing internal debates within the field weakened it and contributed to their demise is unclear.…”

Playing the levelling field: teachers’ management of assessment in English primary schools

“…In previous work (Pratt, 2016) I have argued that contemporary schooling positions teachers within a doxa of meritocracy in which one's professional (perhaps even personal) worth is gauged according to a restricted number of measures. Increasingly, these refer to assessment outcomes.…”

“…Tony: Some teachers, this thing really bugs me, that some teachers don't trust other teachers and you see four points dip at the start of year and they consistently do it. Not only is it potentially rivalrous (Pratt, 2016;Slater & Tonkiss, 2001) but adjustment of grades is somewhat ironic given the care, and the shear amount of time and effort, that teachers take to get their assessment 'bang on'. In some of the schools adjustment appeared as a deliberate and collegiate negotiation, Fiona noting that 'you might maybe put [pupils' grades] down as a little bit lower … because you have got in mind that if they don't make that progress then that reflects poorly on the next teacher'.…”

“…(Cameron, 2014) Such language is indicative of the way in which education in English schools has been reconfigured, as a market commodity to be acquired by the youngor administered to them perhaps -in order to 'protect' against unemployment in adulthood. It has been argued (Apple, 2004(Apple, , 2005Pratt, 2016;Stevenson & Wood, 2014) that this acquisition affords control of teachers' work too, turning them into co-producers of this capital that pupils must acquire for their success. Moreover, teachers themselves have their 'performance' measured and, following the model of industrial growth and productivity, must increase their 'output'…”

“…This has made pupils' assessment outcomes ever more important for them as individuals and thus assessment is increasingly being constructed as a private good for the teacher, rather than a public good (Pratt, 2016). Thirdly, by making the stakes so high, teachers have little choice but to invest themselves in this game and thus become complicit in the marketisation, competing for the highest grades they can extract from their pupilswho, as Keddie (2016) has shown, also increasingly invest themselves in the performance and language of neoliberalism.…”