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Abstract
This paper considers two examples of recent policies affecting teachers' work, Performance Threshold Assessment in England and Chartered Teacher status in Scotland. Through tracing their origins and motivations, a comparative analysis is offered, which seeks to explore the extent of the influence of national contexts on developments in the restructuring process. Both policies purport to meet the professional needs of teachers who are a few years into their careers, yet the Scottish example is strongly oriented towards professional development, while the English example is oriented towards performativity and teacher assessment.
Notes
* Corresponding author: University of Paisley, School of Education, University Campus Ayr, Beech Grove, Ayr KA8 0SR, UK. Email: [email protected]
The value of such ‘home international’ comparative studies has been identified by Raffe (Citation1998), who argues that the differences in policy between the constituent parts of the UK are especially interesting because of the wider shared political framework.
Comparative work on initial teacher education in Scotland and England is being pursued in a project at the University of Paisley by Ian Menter, Ian Smith and Estelle Brisard.
In 2001, the DfEE changed its name to DfES. We have used both names in the text in order to identify their publications and the phases of policy development.
A full account of the origins and development of the Chartered Teacher programme is provided by some of its leading progenitors, Kirk et al. (Citation2003).
Head teachers already had powers to refuse to allow a teacher to progress to the next increment, but this would not be an option where a teacher was already at the top of the scale.
Research relating to the standards was commissioned by the DfEE from the consultants Hay McBer who described their study as understanding the ‘inputs, throughputs, and outputs’ of the profession.
The emotional impact of the experience of threshold assessment was extreme in some cases, as explored in Mahony et al. (2004).
One example would be Jack McConnell's move to change the status and constitutional position of HMI from being a government department to being an agency. More recent strains have included a debacle in 2002 over the guaranteed induction year for new teachers, leading not only to major management problems for education authorities, but also to considerable instability in the initial teacher education system, with the Scottish Executive reducing the allocation of student places to the Teacher Education Institutions at very short notice.