‘Managing’ Managerialism: The Impact of Educational Auditing on an Academic ‘specialist’ School

Abstract

This article seeks to nuance arguments about the impact of broad policy technologies of auditing processes upon teachers' practices by providing empirical evidence of the effects of such processes, in context. Specifically, the article draws upon a cross section of teachers' accounts of schooling practices in a specialist, academically oriented secondary school and languages college in the British Midlands to reveal the complex ways audit practices influence teachers' work, professional development and student learning under current policy conditions. The article reveals that teachers endeavoured to actively ‘manage’ audit processes by strategically focusing upon student needs, and critiquing and problematising the more superficial aspects of performance management, systemic inspections and a narrow focus upon academic results. However, even as these tactics were employed, there was also evidence of a simultaneous focus upon simply ‘managing’ to cope, particularly when audit processes added considerable pressure upon teachers to improve students' test scores, and when they encouraged conditions antithetical to more educative concerns. This sometimes had dramatic effects upon student and teacher learning and teacher identity. Capturing this empirical complexity, in the context of specific schooling settings, provides evidence to nuance the more general literature on educational auditing, including in European and other transnational settings, and existing understandings of such practices at local sites more generally.