Introduction

In Chapter 3, we explored issues of policy and wellbeing and, in Chapter 4, we examined the practice in schools to promote wellbeing, with a particular emphasis on the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme. Policy (and its resulting practice) is dependent on measurement. The purpose of policy is to enable change, and change can only impact on those aspects of social life that can be measured. Measurement is necessary as part of processes of the examination (Foucault, 1991a) of the public body underpinning the ability of the state to regulate the lives of its citizens and to control their destinies.

Such measurement is focused on the ‘social body’, through the action of the ‘body politic’ (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1987). Policy also impacts on the phenomenological body of the person. Through the discursive practices of examination and the modern concept of intervention, the measurement of wellbeing is increasingly used to identify problems in the population (especially children) as part of an accepted policy strategy of early intervention: spot problems early and they can be eradicated. The shift towards emphasis on the phenomenological body, as opposed to action focused on the social body, reflected a shift in the neo-liberal agenda pursued by New Labour during their term of office. In 1997, on taking power, Tony Blair emphasised activity focused on the failings of the phenomenological body: