The emotional impact of performance‐related pay on teachers in England

Abstract

This article reports on the emotional impact of Threshold Assessment on teachers and schools. Using data from an ESRC funded project, ‘The impact of Performance Threshold Assessment on teachers’ work' (ESRC R000239286), we seek to contribute to a growing literature on teachers' emotions by sharing some of the insights gained from 76 interviews undertaken in nine case study primary and secondary schools between 2001–2003. The research has revealed a number of (apparently) unintended consequences of Threshold Assessment as well as considerable variability of experience. We underline the significance of contextual factors in the way that the policy was handled in schools and in the degrees of vulnerability and exposure experienced by teachers as they struggled to come to terms with the demands of ‘performativity’.

… social policy needs a subject in which mind and body, reason and passion, self and other, agent and object are held simultaneously in mind without splitting one from the other. (Hoggett, 2000a, p. 143)

Notes

* Froebel College, University of Surrey Roehampton, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ, UK. Email: [email protected]

In 2001 the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) changed its name to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).

In future the external verification procedures will be based on sampling. We have written elsewhere about the training (Menter, et al., 2004) and experiences (Mahony et al., 2002) of TAs.

The Teacher Incentive Pay Project (TIPPS) is a two‐year study being undertaken by Ted Wragg, Rosemary Chamberlin, Gill Haynes and Caroline Wragg.

With 97% of applications having been judged successful these fears were not realized to the extent predicted for Round 1 of Threshold. They may, however, resurface in future decisions about progress on the UPS.

This is an issue which we are exploring in greater detail elsewhere.

See chapter 7, Mahony & Hextall (2000) for a fuller discussion of this point.

See the survey conducted by Wragg et al. (2002) of teachers who applied but were deemed ‘not yet met’.

Designations are deliberately withheld here in order to preserve anonymity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pat Mahony *

* Froebel College, University of Surrey Roehampton, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ, UK. Email: [email protected]