Producing the docile body: analysing Local Area Under-performance Inspection (LAUI)

Abstract

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), declared a ‘new wave’ of Local Area Under-performance Inspections (LAUI) of schools ‘denying children the standard of education they deserve’. This paper examines how the threat of LAUI played out over three mathematics lessons taught by a teacher in her first year in the profession. A Foucauldian approach is mobilised with regard to disciplinary power and ‘docile bodies’. The paper argues that, in the case in point, LAUI was a tool mediating performative conditions and, ultimately, the docile body. The paper will be of concern to policy sociologists, teachers, school leaders, and those interested in school inspection.

Keywords:

• inspection
• docile body
• performativity
• neo-liberalism

Notes

1. The inspection landscape is a changing one (Baxter, 2013; Dean, 2006). During the writing of this paper, major amendments were made to the inspection process. In January 2014, OfSTED (2014a) announced ‘no notice’ inspections of schools where poor student behaviour had been identified and in March 2014 that schools rated as good or outstanding would be inspected over one day, by one inspector, every two years.

2. Expected progress is defined as three National Curriculum levels of progress between Key Stages 2 and 4.

3. The pupil premium gives schools extra funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils up to Year 11.

4. Gaps in attainment include the difference between the average point scores in both English and mathematics in national assessments at the end of Key Stage 2, and at GCSE at the end of Key Stage 4.

5. The end of compulsory schooling in England at Year 11 is signified by many students taking GCSE examinations. The number of A*–C GCSE grades attained by its students governs the position a school holds in national performance league tables and forms part of the data-set used by inspectors to rank effectiveness.

6. Level 5 is the national expectation for the end of Key Stage 3.

7. I was asked questions similar to this by students in all three lessons.