The beatings will continue until quality improves: using carrots and sticks in the quest for educational improvement

Abstract

Education is not alone in becoming the focus of attention and anxiety about the quality of its activities and outputs, although it is perhaps unique in the degree to which it has been publicly and conspicuously subject to scrutiny and castigation for its ‘failings’. Certainly, public education throughout the Western world has been under attack and scrutiny for its perceived ‘low standards’ and the ‘crisis’ said to characterise it (although this crisis is, to many, a ‘manufactured’ one; Berliner & Biddle, 1995). Power (1994) contends that the tensions and contradictions of high modernity explain the widespread adoption of a model of ‘quality assurance’ based upon ‘the audit’, originally a financial phenomenon. The favoured style of auditing – ‘Style A’ – has as its characteristics long distance control, usually by external agencies, quantitative measures, low trust and ex-post control. These important features are linked: for instance, the involvement of outside bodies of experts in the oversight of activities has facilitated a shift in trust from operatives, the performers of activities, to auditors, those who police performance. The particular features of the auditing model adopted come to influence what are seen as acceptable ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’. This paper discusses some of these ‘solutions’ to the ‘problems’ of ‘low quality’ and the consequences for teacher practitioners.