Teacher Appraisal 1988-1998: A case study

In the drive to establish performance management systems in schools the experiences of teacher appraisal in the 1990s remain in people's biographies but have been officially silenced in recent policy texts. This article traces the development of teacher appraisal from the late 1980s through to the Green Paper teachers: meeting the challenge of change (DfEE 1998) and reports on a research project in one urban LEA in the north of England. Evidence shows how the LEA sought to establish and sustain a developmental model of teacher appraisal in an increasingly hostile climate, and while experiences showed the need for improvements many gains had been made. Developmental appraisal largely failed because it was starved of resources and was increasingly out of tune with the performance management strategy that came to dominate education policy by the turn of the century. It is argued that by telling the story through contemporary histories of teacher's work on appraisal then the experiences of developmental approaches, and the public sector values underpinning it, will not be lost. Furthermore, making this work visible is an important resource in supporting the production of alternative models to those being imposed from the centre.