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16 - Measuring the performance of England's primary school teachers: purposes, theories, problems and tensions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Andrew Brown
Edited by
Andy Neely
Andrew Brown
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, UK.
Andy Neely
Affiliation:
Cranfield University, UK
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Summary

Introduction: background and historical context

The past decade has witnessed a revolution in how public services are managed around the world. Although a variety of slogans and labels, such as “new public management” (NPM; see, for example, Hood, 1991, Dunleavy and Hood, 1994, and Lane, 2000) and “reinventing government” (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992), have been used in different countries to describe their various public sector management reforms, many of the characteristics are similar. Kettl (2000), for instance, identifies six common core ideas: the search for greater productivity; more public reliance on private markets; a stronger orientation towards service; more decentralization from national to “sub-national” governments; increased capacity to devise and track public policy; and tactics to enhance accountability for results.

With regard to national education systems, Moos and Dempster (1998) argue that different countries and different segments of the public sector in those countries have introduced their own forms of new public management, with particular versions being influenced by a combination of historical and cultural conditions, political agendas and economic conditions. However, their analysis of changes in the English, Scottish, Australian and Danish school systems led them to conclude that NPM was characterized in all four by the following five trends.

  1. A movement towards school self-management.

  2. The imposition of greater demands for financial accountability.

  3. An increase in the extent of consumer control over what goes on in schools.

  4. The expectation that schools expose their performance to public scrutiny.

  5. Increasing pressure for outcome-based assessment of pupils, heads and teachers.

Type
Chapter
Information
Business Performance Measurement
Unifying Theory and Integrating Practice
 , pp. 339 - 362
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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