School autonomy and the surveillance of teachers

ABSTRACT

A significant paradox of school autonomy is that it tends to constrain the autonomy of teachers, instead subjecting them to the increased controlling of their work, heightened monitoring, and greater accountability. This paper draws on interview data to show how teachers in accountability-driven and business-like schools face three different but overlapping types of surveillance: vertical surveillance involving both top-down monitoring from management in the form of lesson observations and bottom-up monitoring via student voice initiatives; horizontal surveillance by way of peer observations and parents commenting on teacher effectiveness; and intrapersonal surveillance through teachers engaging in the act of self-surveillance and management analyzing their paperwork and student performance data. In mapping out this surveillance, this paper demonstrates that teachers are aware of the stakeholders watching them, the tools and techniques used, and that this surveillance takes place at all times. Significantly, some teachers are willing participants in their own surveillance. With the element of opacity removed from the surveillance process, this paper ultimately shows that the oft-cited panopticon is no longer an appropriate metaphor for scholars to use in the literature to convey the intense monitoring teachers face as we have now entered the post-panoptic era.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international comparison of the performances of students on standardized assessments administered by the OECD. The OECD and the PISA reports have become increasingly influential in education on a global scale.

2. Scholars such as Hutchings et al. (2014), Courtney (2015), and Papanastasiou (2017b) detail three phases or sub-types of the sponsored academies program referred to by the 2013 Academies Commission: Mark I saw academies sponsored by philanthropists or business partners, Mark II reduced the focus on individual businesspeople and philanthropists and instead encouraged organizations such as universities and charities to act as sponsors, and Mark III loosened some of the controls on the funding agreements that previously existed and came to be characterized by school-led chains.

3. The considerably complex arrangement of academy schools should be understood as operating within an already complex arrangement of all schools in England. ‘Making sense of the current government-funded school system in England is not easy’ (Keddie & Mills, 2019, p. 2) and the introduction of various school types under the academy legislation has ‘contributed to the complexity of the scene’ (Salokangas & Ainscow, 2018, p. 6). It is in response to a neoliberal policy agenda that, as Courtney (2015) points out, there has been a dramatic rise in both the number and range of school types in England. Courtney (2015) found that including variations according to pupil sex and age, there are a staggering amount of different types of school in England, ranging between 70 and 90. Hence, there is no longer a school ‘system’ in England (Courtney, 2015, p. 800). As Ball (2018, p. 208) says, ‘to call the school system a system suggests more coherence than is deserved’. Instead, what England has been left with is an educational apparatus held together by a regime of testing and league tables that puts pressure on schools (Ball, 2018, p. 208).

4. It is stated in Page (2015) that this headteacher leads an academy.

5. Page’s ‘surveillant assemblage’ includes some additional features that are either not relevant to this paper (i.e. external inspections) or that were not at all mentioned in the interview data (i.e. CCTV, student mobile recording, physical monitoring, social networking). Similarly, while paperwork is not specifically mentioned in Page’s assemblage, it is the contention of this paper that the monitoring of paperwork is another routine form of surveillance in schools in the same vein as student performance data.

6. Intrapersonal surveillance in particular might be typically thought of as being ‘embedded within the ubiquity of reflective practice’ through appraisals and self-evaluations (Page, 2017a, p. 5) but ‘more recent forms of intrapersonal surveillance are far less reflective’ such as the production of student performance data (Page, 2018, p. 380). The submission of this data then becomes ‘conjoined with senior management evaluations derived from teaching observations, learning walks and data analysis’ (Page, 2017b, p. 999).

7. Considering the pressures they face to improve student performance, it is likely that academies serving disadvantaged areas are more rigid and authoritarian in terms of how they make use of their autonomy, whereas academies in more privileged contexts might be able to afford to take a somewhat more relaxed approach. Similar distinctions could be made between converter academies and sponsored academies (which often serve areas of disadvantage). As Keddie and Mills (2019, p. 20) explain, ‘converter academies are generally well performing schools that choose to become academies’ while ‘sponsored academies, in contrast, are generally seen as underperforming schools that are then placed under the direction of an institution of group of institutions such as a more successful school or network of schools that are held accountable for improving their performance (DfES, 2013)’.

8. This comment should be understood as some staff being motivated by the prospect of being promoted, which in turn means receiving a pay rise.

9. ‘Pupil premium students’ are students from low-income families. Additional funding is provided to schools in England to assist them improve the academic attainment of these students and narrow the attainment gap between them and their more privileged peers. During external inspections, close attention is paid to the academic performances and achievements of students eligible for pupil premium funding, and the strategies and interventions schools and teachers are using to raise their attainment. The value attached to recording and documenting this work for external purposes reinforces its value at an internal level and several interviewees mentioned internal requirements to have detailed seating plans and lesson plans that clearly indicated the pupils eligible for pupil premium funding and the actions they were putting in place for them.

10. While the intention here might be well meaning, in this particular instance, or certainly in this articulation, we see how pupil premium students are strategically seated in positions in the classroom that will impress observers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Craig Skerritt

Craig Skerritt is a researcher at the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, Dublin City University. Craig is also the Dublin City University School of Policy and Practice Scholar, the Policy and International Programmes Manager at the Royal Irish Academy, and a member of both the British Educational Research Association and the Educational Studies Association of Ireland. Craig’s research interests include education policy, teacher identity, student voice, and class-based inequalities in education.