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

Abstract

This article focuses on how assessment practices are used by teachers to develop and maintain their own professional standinghow assessment works for them as professionals and the work they must do with it to be successful. Reporting on an empirical study involving interviews with 12 primary Key Stage 2 (7-11yrs) teachers and using an analysis based on Bourdieu's (1986) capitals and a framework from Bacchi (2000Bacchi ( , 2009) the paper examines how teachers construct assessment data in particular, often carefully managed, ways. This, in turn, subjectifies both pupils and the teachers themselves in ways which create tensions in practice. The paper argues that high-stakes accountability through assessment is unlikely to be helpful in two ways:firstly, it does not actually do what teachers claim in accurately measuring pupils' progress; secondly that it is likely to lead to pedagogy that has negative effects on them as learners.

The policy and practice of mathematics mastery: The effects of neoliberalism and neoconservatism on curriculum reform

“…And, we would argue, of teachers and schools too, since they are similarly fabricated by the demands on them to take up TfM, within a wider culture of neoliberal individualism and its attendant forms of neoconservatism which ‘restore a sense of moral purpose’ (Harvey, 2007, p. 83). Even though, as we have illustrated, there may be tensions in this approach to teaching, it appears that the logic of practices is enough to sustain it; TfM provides a convincing science of mathematical development, offering teachers and pupils a controllable, ‘best practice’ pathway to personal success (Pratt, 2018).…”

“…In the modern classroom this might seem taken as read, but we note again the quote above from the non‐statutory guidance for the original 1989 curriculum, just 33 years ago, suggesting directly the opposite—that learning ‘was difficult to predict’ (National Curriculum Council, 1989, p. B8). Elsewhere we have argued that the shift to a professional discourse of control of learning has relied on discourses of willing participation in, and an acceptance of, responsibility for pupils' progress, affording a belief in the kind of meritocracy that underpins neoliberalism (Pratt, 2018). The logic of practice in TfM is that opportunity is equalised by the system of teaching, so it will be those who strive hardest (and are most talented, perhaps) who are successful.…”

“…For this reason, neoliberalisation is often associated with controlling discourses: authoritarianism, in some cases, but more usually neoconservatism in democratic societies (Apple, 2004; Harvey, 2007). Neoconservatism acts alongside neoliberalism in two ways: first, ‘in its concern for order as an answer to the chaos of individual interests’ (Harvey, 2007, p. 82)—in this case the competitive interests of schools, teachers (see, for example, Pratt, 2016, 2018) and commercial educational suppliers (Ball, 2004); and second, in the way it ‘seeks to restore a sense of moral purpose, some higher‐order values that will form the stable centre of the body politic’ (Harvey, 2007, p. 83). Such conservatism has been strongly apparent since the 2010 Conservative/Liberal Democratic alliance, and even more so in consecutive Conservative‐majority governments thereafter.…”

Who is feedback for? The influence of accountability and quality assurance agendas on the enactment of feedback processes

“…Hopfenbeck et al, 2015) and where teachers themselves are assessed on their students' outcomes (e.g. Pratt, 2018). Dann (2018) warns against feedback 'just being visible for no clear purpose than providing evidence for inspectors' (p. 92).…”

Primary teachers’ experiences of neo-liberal education reform in England: ‘Nothing is ever good enough’

“…Whilst the curriculum is often viewed as political, and central to the exercise of control over teachers (Apple 2004), the correlating high-stakes assessment policies are also pivotal in this regard (Stevenson and Wood 2014). As part of the assessment reforms, the simultaneous dismantling of the assessment framework signalled as dramatic a 'seachange' in primary education (Pratt 2016;Bradbury and Robert-Holmes 2017;Braun and Maguire 2020). Making excessive demands on teachers at the time, the Government's decision to abolish national curriculum levels as the mechanism for reporting attainment is now appraised as momentous (Roberts 2018).…”