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Title: Primary school leadership in England: performativity and matters of professionalism
Author: Amanda Keddie
Corresponding Author:
Amanda Keddie
Research Fellow
School of Education
The University of Queensland
Brisbane, 4072
Queensland, Australia
Email: a.keddie@uq.edu.au
Fax: +61 (0)7 3365 7199
Phone: +61 (0)7 3365 9029
Word count: 7956 (including references)
Key words:
Performativity
Educator professionalism
School leadership
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Title: Primary school leadership in England: performativity and matters of professionalism
Abstract
This paper presents interview data from a study involving nine primary school leaders. Four are
leaders of local authority schools while four are leaders of schools within a large academy chain.
The paper examines their perspectives about the current regimes of performativity in the English
education context and, in particular, the accountability demands of Ofsted (Office for Standards in
Education). Mindful of contemporary concerns about the tensions between performativity and
professionalism in education, the analysis highlights the different ways in which each group
responds to external accountability demands. The paper illustrates how investments in traditional
and entrepreneurial professionalism continue to impact on how the current demands of
performativity are understood. It highlights the significance of conceptualising educator
professionalism beyond dichotomies that idealise the former at the expense of the latter.
Introduction
…there's a permanent underlying sense of anxiety in our job, permanent, and it's mainly
based around Ofsted and testing.
These comments are from Rebecca, the deputy head of ‘Saffron’ Primary School, one of the
schools featured in this paper. Through my contact with Rebecca and her colleague ‘Samantha’,
the head teacher at Saffron, I was introduced to the leaders of three other state governed primary
schools in close geographic proximity who had developed a strong professional and collegial
relationship. During the course of the two-month data collection period, I interviewed these five
women (most of whom were very experienced head teachers) at length about their views on
accountability. It became apparent to me that this group of schools and their leaders were
working together to support each other through what Rebecca describes above as the ‘permanent
underlying sense of anxiety’ characterising their work that stemmed from the broader demands of
high stakes testing. Part of this anxiety related to uncertainty about the future of their schools
amid changes brought about by the academies movement. Such changes had led to vast decreases
in levels of human and material support as a result of the decimation of the Local Authority and
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the reality that they could not sustain their status as stand-alone primary schools (see Hill 2010).
The head teachers in this group were particularly fearful in this environment of being forced to
academise as part of a chain. Indeed, they expressed particular aversion to the idea of chains.
Given these concerns, I made contact with and interviewed the executive director and four
primary head teachers within ‘CONNECT’, one of England’s most successful academy chains in
‘turning around’ ‘failing’ schools. As with the local authority schools, my focus in these interviews
was primarily on exploring matters of accountability within the broader demands of high stakes
testing. What struck me in analysing both groups of data were the different views these head
teachers expressed towards external accountability. In contrast with the fear and anxiety the head
teachers of the local authority schools expressed towards the performative demands of Ofsted
and testing, the head teachers in the chain seemed to embrace these demands. Such disparate
views appeared to be associated with the different ideas about teacher professionalism reflected
in each group. The local authority head teachers’ investments in traditional professionalism
seemed to engender fear, resistance and cynical compliance in relation to these markers of
‘success’, while the CONNECT head teachers’ investments in an entrepreneurial professionalism
seemed to engender a sense of opportunity to mark their success. These forms of professionalism
might be theorised along the lines of bipolar constructions that have idealised the former in
opposition to the latter (see Sachs 2001; Ball 2003). Consistent with recent key research, this
paper highlights the limitations of such ways of thinking about and categorizing professionalism
(see Wilkins 2011).
Performativity, schools and issues of professionalism
There has been intense research interest in matters of ‘performativity’ in education and, in
particular, how the current environment of hyper-accountability has changed not only what it
means to be an educator but who educators are (Lyotard 1984; Connell 2009; Ball 2003; Gunter
2011). Schools, teachers and head teachers are subject to an ever increasing array of targets,
comparisons and judgements that regulate their ways of working through highly public rewards
and sanctions. In this high stakes environment, educators are compelled to organize their work
around such targets, to live an existence of calculation. What counts as success in schools is what
can be measured through externally driven and standardized testing and inspection processes.
Given that a school’s worth is evaluated and publicly named (and shamed) in relation to its
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‘success’ on these measures (and their monitoring and regulation), they have become a central
pre-occupation and concern for schools.
!
The sociality of performativity that now drives the work of school leaders is said to reflect a very
different set of ethics to previous modes of professional judgment and co-operation (see Ball
2003; Gunter 2011; Wilkins 2015). This is a sociality that sets itself against traditional
professionalism in its alignment with the methods, cultures and systems of the private sector. The
language of business and enterprise animates this education landscape. Schools are driven by
incentives of performance, economic efficiency, productivity and value-adding. This is a language
and incentive structure that has rendered ‘old ways of thinking and relating dated or redundant or
even obstructive’ (Ball 2003, 218; Connell 2009; Day 2007; Gewirtz 2002).
While for some, this sociality is an opportunity for advancement and marking out success, for
others it generates anxiety, fear and resistance or cynical compliance (see Stoten 2013). The
present climate of constant and changing evaluations and expectations has, for many head
teachers, produced heightened uncertainty and instability – what Ball (2003, 220) describes as
‘ontological insecurity’ where educators are ‘unsure whether [they] are doing enough, doing the
right thing, doing as much as others, or as well as others, constantly looking to improve, to be
better, to be excellent’. For those invested in traditional professionalism, the ethics of
competition, performance and standards currently expected reflect mistrust, surveillance and an
undermining of creativity, autonomy and intellectuality (see Lingard and Sellar 2012; Evans 2011).
As Connell (2009) argues, amid the priorities of the current environment where the parameters of
educators’ work and success are defined externally, educators’ capacities for intellectual
engagement with and critique of these parameters are highly limited (see also Tseng 2015). Under
these conditions, educators have become the linchpin in the delivery chain of policy because
freedom and success are conditional on reaching these parameters (Barber et al. 2010; Stoten
2015).
Against this backdrop, a dichotomy has been produced where traditional professionalism is often
idealised (especially in the extant research literature) over entrepreneurial professionalism (see
Stone-Johnson 2014; Wilkins 2015). In this literature, as Wilkins (2011) points out, the prevailing
view is one of educators under siege; their professional autonomy eroded and undermined.
Consistent with Sachs’ research over 15 years ago (2001), entrepreneurial professionalism tends to
be criticised in much of this literature as being individualistic, competitive, controlling, regulative
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and externally defined. In particular, it is seen by many as generating ‘perverse’ or anti-
educational effects – its relentless focus on narrow academic targets seen as degrading curriculum
and pedagogy to a teach-to-the-test mentality (see Lingard and Sellar 2013). As Wilkins (2015)
points out, however, it is ‘lazy’ to assume ‘that if the teaching profession could be liberated from
performative constraints, a radical progressive agenda would naturally emerge’ – given that such
an agenda in relation, for example, to equity across education, did not exist in the pre-
performative era. Such idealising, moreover, as Wilkins argues (2011), fails to acknowledge the
overlap and complexity of teacher professionalism in today’s schools and classrooms. Many
educators who may take up an entrepreneurial professionalism – while embracing standards and
accountabilities as key to improving professional practice – also navigate through such imperatives
in far from perverse or anti-educational ways. Entrepreneurial professionalism does not
necessarily undermine a focus on students and equity and does not necessarily compromise
collaboration, pastoral care and creativity (see Wilkins 2011; 2015; Stone-Johnson 2014).
In light of these issues, this paper examines the perspectives expressed by two groups of head
teachers about the current regimes of performativity in the English education context and, in
particular, the accountability demands of Ofsted. Within the context of contemporary concerns
about the tensions between performativity and professionalism in education, the analysis
highlights the different ways in which external accountability demands are responded to by first a
group of local authority head teachers, and second, a group of academy chain head teachers.
Research processes and contexts
The data presented in this paper derive from a broader study concerned with identifying practices
of social justice in several English schools (see author 20xx). As noted earlier, my focus and contact
with the leaders of two groups of primary schools came about to further explore issues of
accountability and professionalism. These issues were of distinct importance to the leaders in both
groups. Four of the schools were local authority schools at the time of the data collection period in
mid 2014 and located in relatively close geographic proximity to each other. All of the leaders at
these schools expressed a desire to remain part of the local authority and a strong opposition to
the idea of becoming part of an academy chain. This was largely associated with a concern that
their schools would lose their autonomy within such governance.
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While becoming an academy is designed to grant schools greater autonomy from local governance
in relation to management, finance, staffing and curriculum, there are many different sorts of
academy models and networks operating under varying stakeholder arrangements and
governance structures. Most academies are ‘converter’ schools; generally outstanding’ schools
that choose to become academies. However, some are ‘sponsored’ academies; generally
underperforming schools that are placed under the direction of an institution or group of
institutions such as a more successful school or chain of schools that are held accountable for
improving their performance (DfES 2013). Academisation (particularly stand alone academisation)
tends to suit large and well-resourced schools with the leadership density to effectively manage
the responsibilities of autonomy. As such many primary schools with less funding and leadership
density have not converted to academy status, preferring to remain attached to the Local
Authority (see Hill 2010). However, as noted in the introduction, with the large decreases in levels
of local authority support brought about by the academies reform, the reality is that primary
schools will likely not be able to sustain their stand-alone status and, thus, in order to survive, will
be compelled to join a network of schools (see Hill 2010).
The other four schools featured in this paper are part of an academy chain ‘CONNECT’, which is
one of England’s top performing school networks. The network includes over a dozen schools both
secondary and primary. Run by a large and economically successful philanthropic organisation,
CONNECT’s mandate is to improve the educational standards of schools with highly disadvantaged
student cohorts. As with the ethos of other chains in the UK and the US, central to realising this
mandate is a relentless and prescriptive focus on literacy and numeracy, alongside a strong
emphasis on high expectations and robust discipline (see Ball and Junneman 2012; Lipman 2011).
Many of the schools CONNECT takes on have been rated by Ofsted as ‘inadequate’ or in ‘special
measures’ and have been directed by the DfE to take a sponsor. The chain has an impressive track
record of school improvement – Ofsted currently rates most schools in the chain as ‘outstanding’
or ‘good’.
The voices of nine school leaders (eight head teachers and one deputy head) are featured in this
paper. The local authority head teachers are referred to as: Samantha and Rebecca, the head and
deputy from Saffron Primary school, ‘Victoria’ from ‘Banksia’ Primary School, ‘Alicia’ from
‘Camellia’ Primary and ‘Cassandra’ from ‘Watercress’ Primary. All of these heads are highly
experienced in their roles. The academy chain head teachers are referred to as ‘Ashleigh’ from
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‘Diamond’ Academy, ‘Gwendoline’ from ‘Sapphire’ Academy and ‘Fiona’ and ‘Bronte’ from ‘Ruby’
and ‘Emerald’ Academies respectively (further information about these schools is elaborated in
the subsequent sections). Three out of the four CONNECT head teachers are young (under 30
years old) with their current headship being their first.
All of the leaders participated in at least one lengthy interview (lasting approximately 60-90
minutes). Given their concerns about matters of accountability as they were currently manifesting
for the schools (during the data collection period), these matters were a central topic of our
conversations. Interviews were loosely structured to explore the head teachers’ thoughts about
external accountability in relation to how it shaped their role and their school’s climate, how it
constructed students and how it impacted on teachers, teaching and learning.
Key theoretical concepts mentioned earlier in relation to matters of performativity and
professionalism were drawn on in analysing the data. These concepts provided a lens for
understanding the head teachers’ differential views of performativity and their effects. In
particular, from a vantage point of traditional professionalism, such performativity was viewed as
generating ‘perverse’ (i.e. anti-educational) effects (see Lingard and Sellar 2013), while from a
vantage point of entrepreneurial professionalism, performativity was embraced and seen as far
from anti-educational. The subsequent sections draw on these theories to provide a descriptive
and analytic account of the head teachers’ views.
The local authority schools
Anxiety about their Ofsted rating, either keeping it or improving it, was a major pre-occupation for
all of the local authority head teachers. For these head teachers, Ofsted controlled the ‘field of
judgment’ in terms of what counted as ‘valuable, effective or satisfactory performance’ (Ball 2003,
216). The following presentation of these schools under the Ofsted labels of ‘outstanding’ and
‘good’ (Ofsted 2015) is deliberate in illuminating this pre-occupation.
The ‘outstanding’ school
Banksia Primary School is situated in an economically privileged part of the borough (wherein the
group of LA schools is located). It caters to well over 400 students who are mostly from White
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British middle class backgrounds. Banksia is a high achieving and popular school. The school’s
Ofsted rating is ‘outstanding’ from an inspection conducted in 2007. Although, very pleased with
how her school is progressing, its climate, teaching and the achievement of students, the head
teacher, Victoria describes the last three years as ‘horrid’ and ‘really frustrating’ in terms of the
uncertainty of when the school might be inspected again. She spoke of being on ‘tender-hooks’
and keeping everything on ‘red alert’ because she had ‘no idea’ when the school would be
inspected.
For Victoria, being on ‘red alert’ involves a constant focus on student attainment data. Although
Victoria spoke in positive ways about this focus, she also expressed great anxiety at the increased
expectations associated with a consistently high achieving school like hers:
There’s now a focus and rightly so on progress as well as attainment … and there are
positives in that … but then the other big change for a school like ours where you’ve got a
lot of high achieving children is, there was the expectation of two levels of progress ... now
it’s three.
This ‘pressure’ to ‘raise the bar higher and higher and higher’ was, in Victoria’s words, ‘extremely
stressful’, as she noted, ‘there comes a point’ where ‘no one can get any higher … what worries
me [is] when are they going to stop? … if you want to remain outstanding you’ve got to be even
better and I’m just thinking ‘there’s only so much you can do ’.
The ‘good’ schools
Saffron, Watercress and Camellia Primary are located in close vicinity to each other in a less
privileged part of the borough to Banksia. They are closer to the area’s social housing estates and
the women’s refuge. They all cater to about 300 students whose backgrounds are quite diverse
especially at Camellia where two thirds of the pupils are from minority ethnic groups and
approximately half speak English as an additional language. The proportion of students assessed as
eligible for Free School Meals and as having special education needs is higher than the national
average at all three schools at around 25%.
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Despite being pleased with their current Ofsted ‘good’ ratings, like Victoria, the head teachers at
these three schools expressed similarly high levels of anxiety and frustration about the Ofsted
inspection process (see Thomson, 2009). Samantha from Saffron noted, for example, ‘I mean some
of the kids are basket cases during that week so are the bloomin’ staff, because everybody’s just
so stressed’. Samantha was particularly critical of Ofsted’s focus on test results:
…most Ofsted teams have made the decision before they’ve even got into the school
because they’ve looked at your data. They’re not interested in anything else. Well just
make a phone call [and say] ‘I’ve looked at your data and you require improvement’ …
‘Thank-you, we’ll get on with it now’. Why go through all the nonsense of it?
The other major anxiety about the Ofsted process at Saffron was the uncertainty about the
different expectations of inspectors and their impact on a school’s rating. Samantha explained,
‘literally, you are at the whim of whichever team you get, aren’t you? … the whole thing is a damn
lottery, basically [in terms of] who you get on the day’. Elaborating on this Ofsted ‘lottery’,
Rebecca reflected on her experience of the past five Ofsteds at Saffron with each team having a
‘different agenda’ which left the school ‘second-guessing’ about what they wanted and ‘constantly
beating [them]selves up about what [they] didn't do [or] could have done.’ The school had only
just regained its ‘good’ rating after slipping to ‘satisfactory’ a few years back after an Ofsted
inspection at a time when there was a ‘dip’ in the school’s data. The school was, in Samantha’s
words, ‘devastated’ with their downgraded rating.
Alicia at Camellia referred to the Ofsted process at her school as instilling a ‘climate of fear
because everybody is always feeling insecure’. For her, there was a ‘causal link’ at her school
‘between how far away [the] next Ofsted is, and how relaxed [her staff was] feeling’ about
themselves. Referring to her most recent Ofsted inspection in early 2013, she further explained:
… the quality of teaching in this school and the creativity improved once Ofsted was out of
the way … it got better, because actually people were so bound around thinking about,
‘I've got to be able to prove that I'm doing this’ … that … they spend a lot of time doing the
peripheries.
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Alicia went on to describe the relief that her staff felt when the school received its ‘good’ rating:
‘we were like “hey we did ok, you know, they're not going to come back for a few years”. This view
of Ofsted instilling fear in teachers and constraining their practice resonated with Cassandra at
Watercress, who remarked:
…after we had our Ofsted in January, and it was ‘good’ … I remember saying to teachers,
'now's your chance to really play around with teaching and learning, and to take a risk, and
to let the children take a risk, because nobody's going to be coming down on you and
say[ing], “that's not good enough”, you know?
The leaders of these ‘good’ schools expressed anxiety about the tendency for Ofsted to ignore the
‘story behind the data’ in their assessment. For Alicia at Camellia, for example, this ‘story’ was
about children at her school ‘suffer[ing] quite a lot of deprivation [with problems of] ambition,
resilience, and motivation’ and a lack of interest in doing well at school – factors that, in her view,
clearly impacted on how well the school performed in tests. While the Ofsted process and testing
mandates had, according to Alicia, been ‘very positive’ in prompting a ‘focus on the children who
are underachieving’, her major concern was with the ramifications associated with the publication
of results, as she remarked:
…the problem with the publication of results; raw data if you like, is that it puts those
middle class parents off coming to a school like this because they look and they think well
‘why would I go to Camellia where they only get 80% Level Fours when I could go to
Banksia where they get 100%?’
Cassandra at Watercress expressed similar concerns to Samantha about such reductionism. She
described the Ofsted process as ‘punitive’ and expressed concern about its demoralising effects on
her staff, as she elaborated: ‘nobody ever feels at the end of Ofsted, “oh we've been valued”, or
“We've been appreciated”.
The Terrors of Performativity: external accountability and its ‘anti-educational’ effects
These stories begin to paint a picture of the ‘terrors of performativity’ described in Ball’s work
(2003; see also, Thomson 2009; Author et al. 20xx). These head teachers are living an existence of
10
calculation. They organise themselves in response to (in this case) Ofsted evaluations and targets.
Ofsted ‘controls the field of judgement’ about what constitutes school effectiveness and
improvement. It determines what counts as valuable or satisfactory performance and what
measures or indicators are considered valid (Ball 2003; Gunter 2011). Through its inspection
process and rating system it reduces schools to auditable commodities able to be efficiently
measured, evaluated and governed (see Ball 2003; West 2010). It seems for these head teachers,
and consistent with key research, that Ofsted is a deliberate assault on their professional
autonomy (see Maw 1998; Wilkins et al. 2012).
The leaders at all four schools are necessarily strongly invested in living this existence of
calculation – it is key to their survival (as will be further explored below) (West 2010; see also
Pinto 2015). Living this existence, however, promotes ‘ontological insecurity’; to use Rebecca’s
words, it instils ‘a permanent underlying sense of anxiety’ about whether or not they are doing the
right thing or doing enough (Ball 2003). Such ontological insecurity is consistent across the four
schools despite their more than adequate performance (Thomson 2009). For Victoria at Banksia,
despite her school’s ‘outstanding’ status, there is pressure and anxiety associated with retaining
this status. Her anxiety is worsened by the uncertainty about when her school will be inspected
and the expectations that her privileged demographic will continue to achieve at increasingly
higher levels than currently being attained. For Samantha and Rebecca at Saffron, there is anxiety
and stress in maintaining the school’s only recently restored ‘good’ rating amid uncertainties
around the Ofsted ‘lottery’ and the ‘whim’ of the inspection team they are allocated. At this school
such uncertainties mean that they are ‘second-guessing’ what they do and they are ‘constantly
beating’ themselves up for what they didn’t do or could have done.
For Alicia at Camellia the Ofsted process is one of fear, insecurity and relief. Her anxiety relates to
the public availability of raw data that positions her school in competition with more privileged
schools and ‘put[s] middle class parents off coming to the school’. For Cassandra at Watercress,
the Ofsted process is punitive and demoralising. The sense of inner conflict, inauthenticity and
resistance that these head teachers experience in their attempts to ascribe to these regimes of
performativity is clear (see Ball 2003). Whether it be the frustration Victoria expresses about her
school ‘living on tender-hooks’ or the view Samantha articulates that the Ofsted inspection is a
‘nonsense’ given that they have already made their decision before they visit, ‘the contentments
of stability’ are ‘elusive’ (Ball 2003, 220). What we see here is resistance against, but cynical
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compliance towards, a re-professionalisation of these head teachers’ work around these regimes
(see also Biesta 2015).
It is important to note, as the stories indicate, that all of the leaders welcomed external
accountability as a core imperative of their work that enabled, in particular, a targeted approach
to supporting specific students and an accurate means of tracking student progress (see Sahlberg
2010). What they objected to were what they viewed as the perverse effects of external
accountability regimes (see Lingard and Sellar 2013; Thomson 2009). The leaders shared similar
concerns with the current testing culture as anti-educational. Certainly, they questioned the
assumption in this climate that linked more testing with raising attainment (see Sahlberg 2010;
West 2010; Biesta 2015). Samantha aptly summed up what she saw as the falsity of such
assumption with her analogy: ‘[just because you constantly] weigh the pig, doesn’t make it grow,
does it?’ Her firm view was that the tests and the broader data driven environment were ‘not
about the kids’ and their learning but rather about ‘policing schools’.
As clearly articulated in the stories, a major concern expressed by the head teachers related to
how the testing culture obfuscated or washed out the complex social processes and conditions
that make up their schools – translating them into simple figures and categories of judgement (Ball
2003; West 2010; Biesta 2015). Of particular concern here was how this culture tended to ignore
the conditions of social and material deprivation impacting on the learning of many of the children
they educated. For these teachers measures such as Ofsted distort the reality of their school in not
accurately capturing what the school is about (see Ball 2003).
Another key anti-educational effect of the testing culture, that the stories illuminate, is its impact
on the quality of teaching. Being preoccupied with the ‘peripheries’ of calculation (Ball 2003)
demanded by Ofsted, as Alicia and Cassandra noted, took their teachers away from a focus on
teaching creatively and the values of what is good at their schools (see West 2010; Pinto 2015).
For Samantha, this culture meant that ‘test preparation’ had become the ‘life’s work’ of many
schools because if ‘it’s not measured, it’s not important’. Cassandra agreed, ‘we are doing things
because we CAN measure them, and that becomes what is important and good [and not] … how
the education system feeds into the greater good of the community’.
For these head teachers, Ofsted inspections and measures are not an authentic or accurate
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indicator of their schools’ value or worth. In their view, they ignore the impact of background
factors on student performance levels, reduce schools to their capacity to raise attainment and
promote a teach-to-the test mentality (Ball 2003; West 2010; Glatter 2012; Gunter 2012). In this
respect, and quite aside from the anxieties they produce, Ofsted is viewed as generating anti-
educational effects. The head teachers seem in these accounts to be struggling for the ‘soul of
professionalism’ which Hanlon (1998) describes as a contest over the meaning of professionalism.
At issue here is trust and an objection to the mistrust that such regimes imply. These head
teachers are struggling to maintain a sense of traditional professionalism that respects their
autonomy and capabilities.
The CONNECT schools
In my interviews with the head teachers at the four CONNECT schools there was also a clear
preoccupation with Ofsted ratings. Ofsted was similarly seen as controlling the ‘field of judgment’
in what counted as ‘valuable, effective or satisfactory performance’ (Ball 2003, 216). However, in
contrast with the local authority head teachers, the Ofsted process did not instill a sense of fear
and resistance for the CONNECT head teachers. Rather, they welcomed this external
accountability as an indication that they were on the ‘right track’. For these head teachers, this
environment seemed an opportunity to mark their success and craft a triumphant identity (Ball
2003). As with the previous sections, the following presents these schools in relation to their
Ofsted ratings.
The ‘good’ schools
Diamond and Sapphire Primary Academies became part of the CONNECT network in 2011 and
2012 respectively. Before Diamond Academy joined CONNECT the school was in ‘special measures’
and directed by the DfE to take a sponsor. Its current grading of ‘good’ was received in 2012.
Sapphire, on the other hand, was already a ‘good’ school (according to Ofsted) on joining
CONNECT. Both of these schools are situated in highly disadvantaged areas. At both schools
approximately 30% of students are in receipt of Free School Meals. Diamond is situated in close
proximity to several women’s refuges with high levels of student transience while Sapphire is
located near a prison.
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Given these high levels of deprivation at Diamond and the school’s ‘special measures’ status
before joining CONNECT, Ashleigh described receiving their current ‘good’ Ofsted grading as like
‘getting gold in the Olympics!’ – because ‘everyone said this school was awful and everyone
[should] leave.’ She spoke of the pride staff and students at the school felt about being part of a
‘good’ school and about her personal ‘obsession with getting [an] “outstanding” [grade] in the
future to further lift the confidence of the students and staff and as recognition of their hard work
amid an environment that had previously given up on them, as she explained:
I’m obsessed with getting outstanding because I think these children need it … the staff
need it as well because they’ve worked so hard … Ofsted is a way of kind of demonstrating
that, that we’ve never given up on our children and nobody else should…
Gwendoline was similarly positive about her school’s current ‘good’ rating. However, she noted
that this was a dated grading and that they were overdue for an Ofsted inspection that ‘could be
any day’. She did not express anxiety about the impending inspection as evident in her view that
the school’s data driven monitoring processes over the past two years as a CONNECT school had
positioned them well, as she stated: ‘we really are a school on a journey and we’re now in a very
positive place’.
A key part of their success in this process, according to both Gwendoline and Ashleigh, was
preparedness. Ashleigh explained that knowing her school’s data and keeping up with changes
made by Ofsted were crucial in doing well and minimizing ‘pressure’, and that this meant focusing
on the ‘right areas’, as she elaborated:
…what drives me [is] to make sure we’re doing the right thing, so that’s why I can say
anyone can come in at any time, they can look at my data, they can see that we’re tracking
the children, what they’ve had or what they haven’t had … when I see Ofsted coming in I’m
saying ‘right it’s about them seeing and setting a point in time of where we are and where
we need to get to the next time’.
For Ashleigh ‘doing the right thing’ was, as these comments indicate, about ‘tracking’ and
improving student achievement on test data. For Gwendoline, tracking data around student
achievement was also seen as key to realising, what she described as her school’s ‘journey’ to
14
‘outstanding’. During our interview in her office she referred to the reams of colour coded graphs
and number charts covering the walls that displayed all of the children’s achievement data,
explaining in detail the level of performance and ‘aspirational targets’ the data represented. She
described the school as ‘very data driven’, as she explained, ‘we place a lot of emphases on
gathering that data and holding people accountable to what’s being produced and using that as
our baseline [for] moving forward and measuring success’. Like Ashleigh, Gwendoline welcomed
the move to measure success through working with and understanding data because, in her view,
it enabled the school to ‘raise standards’.
The new ungraded schools
Ruby and Emerald Academies became part of the CONNECT network in 2013. Ruby is located in a
seaside town while Emerald is situated in close proximity to central London. As with Diamond,
Ruby Academy was in a situation of being directed by the Department to take a sponsor following
an Ofsted grading of ‘special measures’. It is currently ungraded as is Emerald, which is a new-start
CONNECT academy established in 2013. Ruby Academy caters to about 300 students many of
whom are from highly disadvantaged family backgrounds. Over 50% of students are in receipt of
Free School Meals and 30% are EAL learners. Emerald Academy, in contrast, is situated in a middle
class area. It caters to around 100 students and, unlike other CONNECT schools, the number of
students in receipt of Free School Meals is below the national average at around 17% and the
school is far less culturally diverse.
The head teacher at Ruby, Fiona, reflected on her school’s forced conversion following the
previous year’s Ofsted rating of ‘special measures’. She described the rating as ‘really devastating’
for ‘staff morale’. Fiona noted that the high levels of student deprivation at Ruby contributed to
her school’s poor performance but that it was also the case that there were other schools in
similar circumstances who were ‘doing better with their children’. While somewhat critical of the
excessively ‘data driven’ focus of Ofsted as not accounting enough for some of the dire contextual
factors that impact on student achievement at her school, she described the standards expected
of Ofsted as ‘rightly rigorous as they should be so that children leave as measured appropriately’
and that such measures produced high expectations and outcomes.
15
Consistent with Fiona’s views, Bronte, the head of Emerald, welcomed rigorously enforced
external accountabilities as a ‘good thing’. She explained that ‘at the end of the day [teaching] is a
profession, and like with any profession there has to be accountability’. For her such accountability
led to schools and teachers being more ‘responsible’ which in turn led to better outcomes. For
Fiona school quality and progress ‘had to be measured’ through inspection processes like Ofsted
because ‘if you can’t’ measure it you can’t manage it’. She referred to these processes as about
being ‘answerable’ to the tax payer and community, as providing ‘value for money’ and thus ‘not
hiding’ from standards’.
Embracing performativity: external accountability and its ‘educational’ effects
Like the local authority schools, these stories also paint a picture of performativity based on an
existence of calculation in response to Ofsted evaluations and targets. For these head teachers
too, Ofsted clearly controls the field of judgement about what constitutes school effectiveness.
Unlike the local authority heads, however, these head teachers seem to welcome the process of
crafting themselves into auditable commodities so they can be efficiently measured, evaluated
and governed. Indeed, for Ashleigh in particular, this environment provides an opportunity to be
triumphant (McWilliams in Ball 2000).
Rather than generating a sense of ontological insecurity about their performance, the Ofsted
inspection regime is embraced – as an indication that the head teachers are on the right track. This
is most clearly illustrated by Ashleigh in her alignment of her school’s ‘good’ grading as like
winning gold in the Olympics and with her obsession with getting an outstanding grade. Ashleigh
spoke further about not being ‘phased’ by Ofsted given the ‘high expectations’ and ‘no excuses’
ethos of her school. As such, she spoke of preferring the current Ofsted practice of little warning in
the timing of their inspections as ‘working out’ well for her school because they were ‘on top of
[their] game’.
Also in contrast with the local authority head teachers, the external accountability regimes of
Ofsted were not seen as producing perverse or anti-educational effects. Indeed, for the CONNECT
head teachers they were strongly aligned with educative goals and, more specifically, guiding their
focus to raising student attainment in the basics. For all of the head teachers, the narrowing of the
curriculum to this focus (rather than being seen as a teach-to-the-test mentality) was justified
16
given the low levels of performance of their students and the extreme social and economic
deprivation many faced that was seen as contributing to this low performance, as Ashleigh
commented:
I think its been narrowed for a good reason … I always say if you don’t have those roots it
doesn’t matter what else you teach them, if they don’t have those foundations when
they’re adults and they want to get the job of their dreams how are they going to achieve
it?
In light of this significance, all of the head teachers expressed positive views about the ‘non-
negotiable’ programmes they were expected to administer as CONNECT schools in the areas of
literacy and numeracy, like the phonics scheme ‘Read Write Inc’. Fiona, for example, was in ‘no
doubt’ that these ‘schemes, as templates, as a way forward [were] brilliant’. Gwendoline referred
to these programmes as ‘prescriptive’ but as central to ‘driv[ing] consistency’ and ‘standards.’
Raising attainment through greater testing and more rigid standardisation was seen, in this regard,
in contrast with the views of the local authority head teachers, as squarely about the kids and their
learning. For the CONNECT head teachers, the data-driven environment was thus seen as key to,
rather than detracting from, raising these students’ attainment with this attainment viewed as
imperative for, as Ashleigh remarked, equipping her students with the skills and knowledges for a
better future. As with the local authority head teachers, the CONNECT head teachers
acknowledged the social and economic conditions that hindered their schools’ performance and
the failure of the testing culture to adequately recognise and allow for these conditions. However,
the CONNECT head teachers, in contrast with the local authority head teachers, viewed the data-
driven environment as positive in supporting these students and, indeed, as evidence that they
believed in their students and would not give up on them (as Ashleigh noted above).
What is apparent here is these head teachers’ embracing of the testing culture, and especially the
performative requirements of Ofsted. This is perhaps in part because, under the regimes of Ofsted
and the ethos of CONNECT, these head teachers are able to construct themselves and their
schools as winners, as triumphant. Unlike the local authority head teachers, these teachers do not
see this entrepreneurial professionalism as undermining trust in their capacities but as aligning
with their passion for excellence and their quest to deliver what is required (Ball 2003). These
17
regimes are seen as productive measures of their schools’ value and success. As such the means of
achieving this value and success through more testing and greater prescriptive programmes is
justified. The demands of Ofsted and testing, counter to the views of the local authority head
teachers are seen as rigorous and appropriate forms of accountability. Rather than complying
cynically with these regimes, these teachers actively embrace them and, indeed, see it as their
professional and moral responsibility to take them up (Shamir 2008; Tseng 2015).
Concluding discussion
What these stories illustrate are different ideas about professionalism. For the local authority
head teachers who are invested in a traditional version of professionalism, the increasing gravity
and high stakes of regimes like Ofsted signify a mistrust in their capacities to effectively educate
the students in their schools. The significance of accountability per se is not in question for these
head teachers. What is in question is the intrusiveness of these regimes on their schools and what
they see as their perverse or anti-educational effects. As we saw, such regimes, in these head
teachers’ views, are inauthentic and inaccurate measures of school effectiveness and worth, they
fail to capture the specificities of their school contexts and their students’ backgrounds and they
narrow curriculum and pedagogy through promoting a teach-to-the-test mentality. In light of such
views, it is not surprising that these regimes generate anxiety for these head teachers. Strongly
opposed as they are to the undermining of their professionalism within these regimes, it is also
not surprising that their compliance is cynical. These arguments against the high stakes testing of
the current audit culture are very familiar in the extant research literature as this paper has
highlighted.
There is an alternative sense of professionalism expressed by the CONNECT head teachers. Unlike
the local authority head teachers, the CONNECT head teachers do not see the high stakes testing
regimes of Ofsted as subordinating their professional judgement but rather as elevating the status
of their professionalism. Gwendoline, for instance, referred to being part of CONNECT as elevating
the professionalism of schools and teachers to be ‘on par’ with the ‘business sector’. There seems
to be no struggle for the ‘soul of professionalism’ for these teachers (Hanlon 1998). They actively
take up the entrepreneurial professionalism expected in the current environment. All four of the
CONNECT head teachers expressed their strong commitment to the network and its ethos of high
expectations and no excuses. They described CONNECT in highly positive ways – to draw on
18
Bronte’s words, as a ‘forward looking’ environment committed to making a difference in the lives
of disadvantaged students. Indeed, as the data presented in this paper indicate, all of the
CONNECT head teachers align making this difference to rigorous external accountability and the
business imperatives of efficiency, standards and value-adding.
Some researchers attribute resistance to the current performative regimes as generational (see
Day 2007; Stone-Johnson 2014). Work conducted by Stone-Johnson (2014), for example, finds that
older and more experienced educators (who are invested in traditional professionalism) exhibit far
greater tendency to object to current performative demands because they see them as eroding
their professional autonomy, detracting from a focus on student learning and equity and
undermining their moral purpose. Younger and less experienced educators, on the other hand, are
more likely to accommodate and work with these demands. It appears that the new generation of
educators is more accepting of, and compliant with, the demands of performativity (Goodson
2014; see also Wilkins 2015). They are ‘post-performative’ professionals who tend to see such
demands as a given (see Wilkins 2011). This observation seems to ring true in relation to the data
presented here with all of the local authority head teachers generally very much older and more
experienced than the CONNECT head teachers.
There remains strong opposition to how entrepreneurial professionalism of the sort reflected at
CONNECT has taken hold of education systems. Such opposition tends to position it in bipolar
relation to traditional professionalism with the latter idealised and associated with pursuing a
quality and equitable education. Traditional professionalism is aligned with authentic practice
where the focus is on teacher professional autonomy and student learning while entrepreneurial
professionalism is associated with inauthentic practice and a focus on data and outputs that
necessarily detract from teacher autonomy and student learning. The data presented here can be
read as strengthening such binary views. When considering the stories from the local authority
leaders, it is clear at least in their view that current regimes of performativity undermine their
professionalism and generate anti-educational effects. And when considering the stories from the
CONNECT leaders, it is worrying that they seem to accept such regimes uncritically – as
ideologically free (see Ball and Junemann 2012; Gunter 2012).
It is clear that the business imperatives of efficiency, productivity and competition within
entrepreneurial professionalism can lead to anti-educational effects and this needs to be both
19
recognised and challenged. However, it is also clear that these imperatives are, as in the case of
CONNECT, leading to vast improvements in school success and learner attainment. While the
measures of success articulated by Ofsted are indeed narrow in focus, the success of this chain on
these measures is an indication of the quality and effectiveness of CONNECT schools. Although the
ways in which this success is being realised at CONNECT through a relentless focus on literacy and
numeracy might be prescriptive and excessively data driven, it cannot be said that such a focus is
not about students and their learning. It cannot be ignored then that entrepreneurial
professionalism is currently supporting many disadvantaged students to achieve on the same
measures of success as their more privileged counterparts. These are the measures of success that
will be crucial in supporting these students’ capacities to gain future access to the material
benefits of the social world (see Author 20xx).
It is important to recognise, as this paper has illustrated, the ways in which current performative
demands are impacting on educator professionalism. While it may be problematic that success
within these demands necessitates a degree of entrepreneurial professionalism, it is equally
problematic to idealise traditional professionalism in bipolar opposition and to under-
acknowledge the role entrepreneurial professionalism is currently playing in improving schools
towards a better future for disadvantaged students.
Acknowledgement:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship Scheme, grant
number: FT100100688
20
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