Further Education performance indicators: a motivational or a performative tool?

Abstract

Ethnographic research in a further education College (Borough College) between 2000 and 2005 assessed the impact of performance indicators (PIs) within a department teaching GCSEs and A-levels. Research focused on PIs integral to the Learning and Skills Council funding formula, the Common Inspection Framework and newspaper league tables, and the extent to which these facilitated the utilisation of productive motivational inputs (e.g., lecturer and manager self-interest, altruism and intrinsic motivation) in line with New Labour’s goal of students improving skills for employability and its egalitarian goal of needs-based equity for disadvantaged students. Research in Borough College provided significant caveats for the current Coalition government to consider in the design of performance indicators in 2013 relating to the nature of governance within which the use of PIs is situated. In particular, it suggests that an over-emphasis on the hierarchy form of governance at the expense of open systems to meet targets set may lead to the marginalisation of productive motivational inputs such as intrinsic motivation and tacit knowledge within internal policy and procedure. It also suggests that an over-emphasis on the rational-goal form of governance at the expense of self-governance may lead to a culture of performativity and student commodification if disadvantaged student cohorts are expected to achieve in line with the ‘average’ student encapsulated in national benchmarks.

Keywords:

• marketisation
• governance
• benchmarks
• managerialism
• performativity
• deprofessionalisation