Doing without believing – enacting policy in the English primary school

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how six English primary school teachers enact assessment and attainment-focused policy and asks what this performative policy work does and whether it shapes or requires a new kind of primary teacher subjectivity. The paper draws on a small study of policy enactments in two primary schools in Greater London in order to discuss two dimensions of policy enactment that emerged from our data: first, shifting assessment regimes in primary schools which create an enactment environment of second-guessing policy; second, a shift in focus from the individual child to targeted groups that raises questions about more traditional primary school values. The paper concludes with a reflection on the effects of contradictory values and practices and how this policy context creates a form of ‘doing without believing’ in the English primary school.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• performativity
• policy enactment
• primary school
• primary teachers
• teacher subjectivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, inspects all state-maintained schools in England at regular intervals and grades them on a four-point scale: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.

2. Age 7.

3. Age 11.

4. The English government’s ‘areas of learning’ for the Early Years Foundation Stage are: communication and language; physical development; personal, social and emotional development; literacy; mathematics; understanding the world; expressive arts and design. https://www.gov.uk/early-years-foundation-stage.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annette Braun

Annette Braun is a Lecturer in Sociology of Education at UCL Institute of Education. Her main areas of interest are in critical policy analysis, teacher identities and teachers’ work.

Meg Maguire

Meg Maguire is Professor of Sociology of Education at Kings College, London. Her research is in the sociology of education, urban education and policy.