Irish migrant teachers’ experiences and perceptions of autonomy and accountability in the English education system

ABSTRACT

With many Irish teachers migrating to England, and with the Irish education system moving in a more neoliberal direction as accountability slowly permeates the landscape, this paper reports on Irish migrant teachers’ experiences and perceptions of autonomy and accountability in the English education system, where accountability is perhaps more high-stakes than in any other jurisdiction. The primary research consisted of semi-structured interviews with Irish migrant teachers in England. The qualitative data not only offer insights into their experiences and perceptions of teacher autonomy and accountability in the English system, but also shed some light on how similar policies and mechanisms would be received in Ireland by Irish teachers. Ultimately, the participants had overwhelmingly negative experiences and perceptions of the English education system. They reported a very one-sided autonomy/accountability balance and unsustainable workloads, and consequently a range of negative emotions due to the critical and unsupportive manner in which they were judged, scrutinised, and held to account. The participants did feel however, that there was a need for classroom practice in Irish schools to become more observable but they were thoroughly opposed to an accountability framework similar to England’s being adopted in Ireland - as they also envisaged the teacher unions would be.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• accountability
• neoliberalism
• Ireland
• teacher identity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Patrick Bailey, Institute of Education, University College London, for his comments on earlier versions of the paper. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their supportive and constructive feedback during the review process, and of course, to the participants who gave up their time to speak so candidly with me - without them, this research would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Craig Skerritt

Educated at University College Cork and University College London, Craig Skerritt is a former post-primary teacher and school leader now working in the higher education sector. Craig is a researcher at the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, Dublin City University where he lectures on both undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programmes. Craig is also the Policy and International Programmes Manager at the Royal Irish Academy, and a member of both the Sociological Association of Ireland and the Educational Studies Association of Ireland.