Assessment technologies in schools:'deliverology'and the 'play of dominations

This article was downloaded by: [Professor Stephen J. Ball]On: 26 September 2012, At: 04:21Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Research Papers in EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rred20

Assessment technologies in schools:‘deliverology’ and the ‘play ofdominations’Stephen Ball a , Meg Maguire b , Annette Braun a , Jane Perryman a

& Kate Hoskins ba Institute of Education, EFPS, Bedford Way, London, UKb King’s College London, London, UK

Version of record first published: 18 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Stephen Ball, Meg Maguire, Annette Braun, Jane Perryman & Kate Hoskins(2011): Assessment technologies in schools: ‘deliverology’ and the ‘play of dominations’, ResearchPapers in Education, DOI:10.1080/02671522.2010.550012

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2010.550012

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Research Papers in Education2011, 1–21, iFirst Article

ISSN 0267-1522 print/ISSN 1470-1146 online© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/02671522.2010.550012http://www.informaworld.com

Assessment technologies in schools: ‘deliverology’ and the ‘play of dominations’

Stephen Balla*, Meg Maguireb, Annette Brauna, Jane Perrymana and Kate Hoskinsb

aInstitute of Education, EFPS, Bedford Way, London, UK; bKing’s College London, London, UKTaylor and FrancisRRED_A_550012.sgm(Received 5 May 2010; final version received 18 December 2010)10.1080/02671522.2010.550012Research Papers in Education0267-1522 (print)/1470-1146 (online)Original Article2011Taylor & Francis0000000002011Prof. [email protected]

This paper, based on ESRC-funded research work in four case study schools,explores the ‘pressures’ to ‘deliver’ which bear upon English secondary schools inrelation to GCSE performance. It further illustrates the ways in which pressure istransformed into tactics which focus on particular students, with the effect of‘rationing’ education in the schools. Foucault’s analysis from Discipline and Punishis deployed to examine these tactics and to relate them to more general changes inthe regime of techniques and ‘play of dominations’ operating in English schools.

Keywords: assessment; Foucault; performance pressure

[E]very child doesn’t matter, what matters is getting A to C grades above a certainpercentage. (Neil, Wesley, English)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument oftyrants; it is the creed of slaves. (William Pitt, House of Commons, 18 November 1783)

Introduction

One of the major education policy commitments and policy preoccupations of theNew Labour government (1997–2010) had been ‘raising standards’ of school perfor-mance, specifically those performances indicated by Standard Assessment Testing(SATs) and GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examination‘passes’. This version of ‘standards’ continues to hold centre stage in the politics ofeducation in England and is also a major concern of the present Conservative–Liberalcoalition government. The issue of ‘raising standards’ has been a constant theme inministerial speeches and official documents. Under New Labour the DCSF website(Department for Children, Schools and Families) had an extensive dedicatedStandards Site (www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/) and the coalition government lists‘improving standards in all schools’ as one of its policy priorities on its Departmentfor Education website (www.dfe.gov.uk). Nonetheless, the ‘standards discourse’ ofeducation policy has been complex and polyvariant, it inter-connects individualstudent outcomes to national economic competitiveness and to issues of social inclu-sion (so called) and individual opportunity. As one example among many we wouldrefer to the 2005 Education White Paper Higher Standards, Better Schools for All:

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

2 S. Ball et al.

More Choice for Parents and Pupils, which states that: ‘The aim is to ensure thatevery school delivers an excellent education, that every child achieves to their poten-tial [as indicated and represented by their performances in public examinations] –whatever their background and wherever they live’ (DCFS 2005, 7). However, in rela-tion to the enactment of the ‘standards’ agenda in schools we will suggest that thingsare not that simple!

The discourse of ‘standards’ works to articulate a particular version and vision ofwhat schooling is and should be – more, higher, better! Such a discourse exists at anabstract level but it has the ability to arrange and rearrange, form and re-form, posi-tion and identify whatsoever and whomsoever exists within its field and it has a‘heavy and fearsome materiality’ (Probyn 1993, 167), as we go on to demonstrate.This discourse is ‘operationalised’ – that is ‘enacted’ within institutions: as ‘newrelations between institutions, new procedures and so forth; “inculcated” as newways of being – new identities; and indeed “materialised” as new ways of organisingspace and time’ (Fairclough 2005, 2).

Here we are interested in the standards agenda in terms of a set of practices bothelicited and specified by policy. As a policy standards ‘works’ through a very simplebut effective and very public technology of performance – made up of league tables,national averages, comparative and progress indicators, Ofsted (Office for Standardsin Education) assessments and benchmarks. These together are intended to instil intoschools what is called a ‘performance culture’. In addition the New Labour govern-ment set national targets for performance for itself which were meant to operate asgeneral indicators of policy success. This policy technology creates a set of pressureswhich work ‘downwards’ through the education system from the Secretary of State tothe classroom and the home to create expectations of performance ‘delivery’ (seeFigure 1). That is, the delivery of improved systemic and institutional performancesand the achievement of examination benchmarks by individual schools – all of whichare part of a broader ‘audit culture’ embedded in the public sector.Figure 1. The ‘delivery chain’: passing on the pressures to perform.Using a different terminology this is what (Barber 2007) calls ‘the deliverychain’, that is hierarchies of ‘expectation’ that connect the ‘front line’ service deliv-ery to the responsible minister by ensuring ‘sharp focus’ on performance priorities(rather than purposes) and create what (Loveday 2008, 120) calls ‘a tyranny ofconformity’ or what (Elmore 2009) calls ‘tight-coupling’. A conformity and acoupling that produces ‘subjected and practiced bodies’ (Foucault 1979, 138) andparticular ‘capacities’. In education this constitutes what Jones (2003, 160) calls ‘aregulatory system’ which works by establishing strong links between ‘the micro-world of classroom interactions and macro-level objectives of standards and achieve-ments’. As described by Foucault these specific and rather mundane techniques ofgovernment, some of which are presented below, give rise to a general method ofdiscipline, producing a general and essential transformation. It is a method of ongo-ing transformation that is applied to education, health, policing and almost all otherfields of public service. It is ‘deliverology’, a science of delivery, a response to the‘productivity challenge’ (Barber 2007). All of this draws on an historically contin-gent, fragile but commonsensical political rationality – that is a particular version of‘how things are or how they ought to be’ (Dean 1999, 11). A political ‘intelligibility’and a morality that renders social problems governable and in this case delineates aproper task and function for schools and roles and responsibilities for teachers.

According to Barber the key elements of deliverology are: the use of good data,setting targets and trajectories, consistent, regular and frequent stock-taking (reporting),

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 3

figuring out the ‘Delivery Chain’ and tracking progress on a regular basis, all of which,as we shall see, are evident in the data presented below. The standards agenda is a partic-ular and very clear example of the techne and episteme deliverology at work and indeedin 2001 Michael Barber was appointed as head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit(PMDU), to concentrate on specific targets, such as casualty [accident and emergency]waiting time, school tests, league tables, street crime, transport, etc.

The pressures/expectations and the effects of delivery in practice were very clearin our case study schools. These pressures may be less intense in very ‘successful’ stateand private schools, and we will return to the positioning of our schools at various pointsin the paper, but there is no real escape from the expectations and necessities of perfor-mance for any English school. These produce day-to-day ‘pressures’ for and ‘aware-ness’ of and a ‘focus’ (see below) on ‘standards’, as a new meta-narrative of schoolingas performances. Three examples from interviews with teachers will start us off:

It’s all about awareness of grades going up, awareness of parent pressure, awareness ofgovernment pressure which comes from some form of business statement about what

Figure 1. The ‘delivery chain’: passing on the pressures to perform.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

4 S. Ball et al.

kids are supposed to be like [what Foucault calls ‘normalisation’] … you are aware of awhole series of pressures. (Neil, Wesley, English)

[E]verything should feed into standards. (Manuel, Campion, Senior Leadership Team[SLT])

Standards, definitely! And there is a lot of – teachers talk about standards a lot more thanany other school. Well, not any other school I’ve been in before but, you know, there isdefinitely a focus on standards. (Caroline, Atwood, SLT)

In this paper we are going to attempt to map and analyse the specific technologies ofperformance delivery that operate across a set of case study schools and that link whatgoes on in institutions, departments and classrooms to the government’s standardsagenda. To do this we will deploy a language and a set of tools of analysis drawn fromthe work of Michel Foucault, and specifically his book Discipline and Punish (1979).And we will end in more general terms by considering what Foucault’s insights, asapplied here, suggest about the ‘play of dominations’ which are currently in evidencein English education standards policies, and what this says about the social class poli-tics of contemporary English education and the form of society within which we arenow expected to work and live.

The paper draws on an ESRC funded study of ‘policy enactments in secondaryschools’ (RES-062-23-1484), which is based on ‘case-study’ work in four ‘ordinary’schools. The study has two main objectives, one theoretical, that is, to develop atheory of policy enactment, and one empirical, that is a critical exploration of thedifferences in the enactment of policy in ‘similar’ contexts. It focuses on four mainissues: (1) the localised nature of policy actions, that is the ‘secondary adjustments’and accommodations and conflicts which inflect and mediate policy; (2) the ways inwhich many different (and sometimes contradictory) policies are simultaneously incirculation and interact with, influence and inhibit one another; (3) the interpretationalwork of policy actors; and (4) the role of resource differences in limiting, distorting orfacilitating responses to policy. We are working in four co-educational, non-denominational and non-selective secondary schools. The schools are moderatelysuccessful schools with a sound track record of academic achievement, performing ataround the national average. They have experienced and established head teachers inpost. The sample of schools is from different Local Authorities, including one that isin inner-London (Atwood), two in different parts of outer-London (George Eliot (GE)and Wesley) and a fourth in a county town (Campion). We are collecting four kindsof data: (1) contextual information from each school; (2) policy texts – national, localand school-centred; (3) observations of meetings, training, etc.; and (4) semi-structured interviews. We are also conducting a ‘policy audit’ in the schools. Theresearch will generate a data-set of 93 digitally recorded and transcribed interviews(80 completed thus far) together with a wide range of documentary and observationaldata. Initial coding has involved content analysis and critical discourse analysis.Analysis, theorisation and writing are ongoing and are fed back into data collection toenable progressive focusing and identification of new themes and issues.

Focusing on standards

It is reasonable to argue, we think, that the ensembles of school policies that we havebegun to map and examine in our case study schools are dominated by the drive to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 5

‘raise standards’ – that is to drive up, by any means possible, the test and examperformance of pupils and schools in relation to national benchmarks and thecomparative performance of neighbouring and similar schools – specifically thenumber of students gaining five or more A–C grades in GCSE examinations. Inalmost all of the interviews at all levels in the schools, ‘standards’ are identified asthe major priority, as the scientists of deliverology would expect in relation toschools like ours. The word ‘focus’ is used repeatedly in interviews to describe theorientation of schools and staff to the question of standards. One assistant head atAtwood school (Caroline) uses the word 32 times in her interview almost always inreference to standards raising – as in:

[K]eeping a really strong focus on you should be, you know, increasing two levels overthree years, so two-thirds of a level this year and then reporting that to parents.

[M]aking teachers – traffic lighting the data so that the teachers are aware of the studentsthat they need to focus on. (see ‘triage’ below)

[T]hat is constantly the focus, how are these students doing, what are we doing to makesure, then that becomes everybody’s priority.

So there’s all stuff like that, which is really, really good and it would just be much betterto just focus, say, ‘Okay, we’re going to keep the focus up on Assessment for Learning.Assessment for Learning is really important’.

[T]he focus on the data, the focus on who’s underachieving, what are we going to do,learning from previous year groups.

And part of what I like about the head is that he is very keeping things simple, focus onstudents making progress; quite a tough discipline system, if they do something then theyknow what’s going to happen to them.

[T]he good thing will be about keeping the focus really straightforward and not always,kind of, changing initiative and … but just keeping a, really, a focus on the basics, really,to enable the students to make progress.

[T]he focus can wholly be preparation for GCSE.

[L]ook at the schools that are doing really well, what are they focusing on? Well, youknow, they’re not focusing on every initiative that comes out of the DCFS.

Now apart from its relation to the pressures to deliver outlined above the word ‘focus’is interesting in other ways, it suggests the idea of bringing a lens to bear, a close upview, a point of concentration, bringing things into visibility. It suggests precise, orga-nised and efficient action. It is also used in relation to different subjects and objects.That is, teachers, pupils and schools and pedagogies, procedures, performance, dataand initiatives all of these objects and subjects are to be ‘focused’ on raising standards.You can focus on people or on things, and you can work to get people focused onthings, on achievement, on standards, on performance. One of us has written previ-ously about this and its implications for teachers as performativity (Ball 2003). Theprimary and final point of focus is on students, or as we shall see on some students,and one effect of their visibility is also their classification, that is ‘the objectificationof those who are subjected’ (Foucault 1979):

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

6 S. Ball et al.

[T]he deputy heads of year have been given a responsibility that they look at the data andthey focus on which are the groups of students that we need to focus on, so that’s – that’sbeen built into the culture of the school. (Caroline, Atwood, SLT)

Students are objectified as talented, borderline, under-achieving, irredeemable, etc. Asexternal policy changes focus on different metrics of performance, these changes arereflected in changes of emphasis within the schools to focus on different sorts ofstudents:

We’re not allowed to focus on that any more [value added] which was really demoralis-ing because maybe we’re going to be picking out different kids now … there was C/Dborderline intervention last year, more so than was done in the past and it looks like it isgoing to be stepped-up. (Naomi, Atwood, RE)

So while attention to a ‘value-added’ indicator may make the contribution of allstudents significant, the A–C grade indicator does not. While the pressures of andfocus on standards is not always well-received by teachers, and various ‘discomforts’were expressed (see further on), it is the case that the processes work, most of the time,to ‘necessitise’ and naturalise ‘results’ as part of a policy obviousness, a ‘necessarianlogic’ (Watson and Hay 2003) that drives what schools need to be doing ‘obviously’and ‘clearly’ (see below for further examples of these terms in use). Most teachers inour study appear to be thoroughly ‘enfolded’ into and part of the calculated technolo-gies of performance. Its obviousness needs no explanation:

The Head’s emphasis is always just on results, clearly. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

The school’s definitely very concerned about the GCSE results in maths. (Daisy,Campion, Maths)

They’re [SLT] very driven by this A* to C figure, it seems to me to be the number onething. (Martin, GE, Maths)

The Head wants a complete revision package starting in February. (Nicola, Atwood,English)

We have a really special focus on the underachievers with a special focus on our, youknow, our C/D borderliners with English and maths because, obviously, you know howwe are assessed as a school. (Anjali, Campion, English)

I understand why they [SLT] are doing it and they have to get all these results, I meanthat’s the bottom line, we have to do them. (Roger, Campion, Maths)

The rhetoric of necessity here legitimates, generates and naturalises a varied andcomplex set of practices and values, which colonise a great deal of school activity andteacher–pupil interaction particularly in relation to Year 10 and 11 students, particu-larly in maths and English, particularly in the second half of the school year, but tosome extent at all times and increasingly in relation to all students in our sample ofschools. The totalising and individualising of performance is disseminated and drivenby an infrastructure of technical methods such as Assessment for Learning, which isbeing rolled-out nationally, and which the QCA describes on its website as ‘a power-ful way to improve learning and raise standards’ (http://www.qcda.gov.uk/4334.aspx,accessed 5 February 2010). Nonetheless, this obviousness rests upon a form or version

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 7

of social inclusion, which is built on a commitment to getting qualifications andcredentials for students who have not been well served historically in this way byschools. However, it could be argued that the forms of teaching and learning involvedhere are still not serving them well.

The passing down of pressures and construction of focus is evident in a complexmatrix of emotions, anxieties and role changes and relationships which produceparticular meanings for practice and values, and success and self-worth – for teachersand students (Reay and Wiliam 1999). This is one aspect of what in the USA isreferred to as ‘high stakes testing’ (Thomas 2005):

I’m slightly dreading the summer because this is my first results summer as head ofdepartment so I can’t tell you exactly how this will be. I know the heads of core subjects[English and maths] have interviews with the Head pretty much immediately at thebeginning of term which go on for a number of hours where you go through all of theresults and you will be asked a lot of questions … that’s quite nerve wracking. (Nicola,Atwood, English)

[Y]ou’re constantly harassed for the names of kids that are improving … you are encour-aged to concentrate on the students that you think are the one’s you need to worry about.(Neil, Wesley, English)

[W]e just know that we have to do well. We still have some teachers, individualsperhaps, who are not focused … it was blamed on the student you know. (Daisy,Campion, Maths)

We’ve changed the pastoral system of the school. We’ve tried to shift the focus awayfrom predominantly behavioural issues much more towards making heads of year havean over-arching responsibility for the achievement of the year group. (Hazel, Wesley, SLT)

I had a C/D borderline GCSE group this year and that concentrates your mind, becauseit’s quite a pressure group to teach, it’s quite important that you get them their Cs … youjust feel there’s an expectation there. (Eric, Atwood, Maths)

Maths and English are now the subjects*. (Martin, GE, Maths) (*a separate performancemeasure is 5 A–C grades at GCSE including English and maths)

For some teachers (and perhaps some schools) pressure is offset by confidence. Thedegree of anxiety, especially as experienced in maths and English departmentsseemed related to the degree of coherence, mutual support and sense of confidence incolleague’s teaching skills:

I don’t feel pressure personally because I feel confident in the job that I do and I thinkmost of us feel that way in the maths department. (Daisy, Campion, Maths)

As is evident here, the relationships, techniques and expectations of delivery work onand through teachers, heads of department, senior leadership teams, parents andstudents to ‘focus’ them and their effort in relation to this over-riding institutionalpriority. Campion school has ‘a countdown to GCSEs’ on its webpage and publishesa revision timetable in its weekly e-zine for parents. ‘Focus’ renders the enactment ofthe standards agenda into a set of more or less sophisticated technologies andtechniques – which are discussed below. Within which ‘the individual has to betrained or corrected, classified, normalised or excluded, etc’. (Foucault 1979, 191),

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

8 S. Ball et al.

with the aim of maximising the production of docile bodies but productive minds. Aswe have argued elsewhere (Ball et al. 2009), even behaviour policies are now predom-inantly oriented to learning – Behaviour for Learning!

A ‘swarming of disciplinary mechanisms’ (Foucault 1979, 211)

The description and discussion of this machinery of standards and performanceinvolves re-visiting 10 years on Gillborn and Youdell’s (2000) exemplary analysisof what they call the A–C economy. But the primary focus here is on the technolo-gies (literal and metaphorical) that drive the machinery of delivery, as enactmentsof policy, rather than on its differential consequences for students who are ‘objecti-fied’ by the technologies as in Gillborn and Youdell (2000). That is to say, what isof concern here is the ‘multiplicity of often minor processes’ (Foucault 1979, 138)by which policy ‘pressures’ – the ‘delivery chain’ – are translated in practices andthe ways in which pressure creates ‘focus’, for all of those concerned. However,the analysis also reiterates Gillborn’s and Youdell’s point that a focus on somestudents means the systematic neglect of others and patterns of uneven access toexpenditures and efforts, with the effect of producing a structured distribution ofidentities and opportunities and exclusions based on ethnicity, social class andgender.

Across the four case study schools there were an immense array of activities, initi-atives, programmes and interventions which in most cases were aimed at thosestudents on whom it was judged they would have a positive impact with the resultingeffect of boosting the overall performance of the school in terms of national indicators,most specifically the percentage of students obtaining 5+ A–C grades in GCSE exam-inations. Some were limited to one school, most were used by all four schools, andanecdote and media coverage suggest these techniques are widespread:

Schools focus on average pupils to ‘flatter league tables’, claim Lib DemsSchools are increasingly focusing on average pupils in an attempt to ‘flatter’ officialleague tables, according to research by the Liberal Democrats. (Paton 2009)

The list below shows a diverse range of often very imaginative techniques whichoverlap and reinforce one another:

● Mike and Ben sat down with about twenty intervention strategies of how theywere going to do it. (Roger, Campion)

● Easter revision classes● Saturday revision classes (extra pay for teachers)● Buying-in revision teachers● Targeting marginal groups (C/D borderline)● Targeted students meeting regularly with SLT● Changing staff mindsets. (Duncan, Wesley, SLT)● Challenging staff. (Hazel, Wesley, SLT)● Using data to identify under-achieving students (see below)● Course work clubs● Gifted and talented programmes● Mentoring● Enrichment activities

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 9

● School trips/residential weekends ‘we went to Dorset with a group of kids whichis gifted and talented’ (Duncan, Wesley)

● Interviews of ‘under-achieving’ students by SLT● Photographs in the staffroom of targeted students (‘there are 35/36’ – making

teachers aware of who they are)● MTLs (motivational team leaders) (teams of five students)● Cards/points – ‘we give them a doughnut’ – a prize for ‘positives’● After-school meetings● Changing examination board● Another group went to the Springholme centre … and another group somewhere

else (Duncan, Wesley, SLT)● School targets (‘73% A* to Cs this year’)● League approach, creating teams, and competition between the boys● Meeting for parents ‘to get them on board and support their children’ (Hazel,

Wesley, SLT)● Planning meetings – setting down the year’s strategy● Maths club● Software and website for revision (e.g. My Maths/SAM learning)● Writing to parents● Entering students early for exams/fast tracking/re-sits● Moving students from their ‘failing’ subjects to more time on core subjects● Interventions during tutor group registration time● Use of software to track student performance/regular and repeated testing● Timetabling for intensive revision classes (maths to replace PE)● One-to-one sessions with Local Authority advisors

The pressure to perform is enacted through these interventions. All teachers areexpected to mobilise a set of targeted activities that will maximise student perfor-mance in the A–C range, although these pressures are most acute in maths andEnglish, which was very clear in the data. Teaching and learning are ‘adapted’ to theprocesses of ‘output’ (see later). Nonetheless, to an extent, the experience of pressureand the extent of focus will ebb and flow across the school year:

At the beginning of term everyone’s focused on their teaching and learning-type policiesand by the end very much on their target setting, and panicking. (Naomi, RE, Atwood)

[W]e are called-in to have a meeting to say, when we sit down with our lists of targetstudents, what are we doing for those individual students … so we are accountabledirectly to the Head in terms of GCSE target groups. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

[O]bviously, you do extra coaching and you’re going to do Easter revision classes andthings like that. (Martin, GE, Maths)

[S]omebody comes to find us with this grid [revision timetable] and we fill it in … itsevery day that something is going on … it just looks grotesque … there are pages andpages of it … suddenly you realise things from the students’ point of view, its horren-dous. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

The key point is that: ‘Disciplinary punishment is, in the main, isomorphic with theobligation itself; it is not so much the vengeance of an outraged law as its repetition,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

10 S. Ball et al.

its reduplicated insistence’ (Foucault 1979, 180). Repetition is the method of disci-pline and its effect is to achieve intended outcomes, not punishment or deterrence forits own sake. We try to mirror this reduplication and insistence in our deployment ofdata in this paper:1

[W]e started enrichment, which is after school activities in maths, right back in October… all the maths department turn up for it every week … in the last month before theexams we worked out a timetable where they had maths 3 hours a day some days and 2hours a day on other days. (Daisy, Campion, Maths)

We’ve got revision materials made up for smartboards that we’ve all produced over theyears. (Sonja, Atwood, Maths)

[W]e were talking the other day, why are we not intervening in year 7, when they’re abit more malleable. (Roger, Campion, Maths)

With some exceptions the emphasis of interventions is on ‘strategic teaching’ and‘strategic learning’ with little attempt at ‘deep learning’. Teaching and learning arefirmly oriented to the requirements of examination passing, that is, short-term knowl-edge and ‘surface learning’ (Marton and Saljo 1976).2 Information rather than under-standing!:

I don’t like the idea of force-feeding information into people’s heads so they pass theexam, I don’t think any teacher does. But that’s what you end up having to do. (Roger,Campion, Maths)

Motivation

Part of what is involved here, as some of the examples indicate, is work on thestudents’ souls as well as their brains. That is to say, there are programmes of motiva-tional support, and incentives and sanctions which are brought into play for thosestudents who are targets of interest. As Foucault puts it ‘the mechanics of training’(1979, 180) work together with techniques of ‘expiation or repentance’. This is also‘a micro-economy of privileges and impositions’ based on a ‘continuous calculationof plus and minus points’ (Foucault 1979, 180–1). The targeted students are made tofeel (very directly and individually) their worth to the school as well as the conse-quences of failure (for themselves and the school), they are selected out for specialattention but they are also monitored, subject to interventions and expected to performat predicted levels or above – they are even more under pressure than others. None ofwhich seems to sit too easily with the other responsibilities of schools to ensurestudents’ well being:

[M]otivation wasn’t good … we organised a confidence boosting session. (Nicola,Atwood, English)

[T]hese are the students who are like C/D borderline so what she does is like the lady[LA numeracy consultant] she has a one-to-one conversation with this particular kid. Itcould last half an hour. She does motivate a lot, I don’t know what she says in that room.(Darshan, GE, Maths)

I think after the mocks a lot of them got quite scared … that woke them up a bit. (Daisy,Campion, Maths)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 11

[W]e organised somebody to come in to do some focus on MCing and things, to try andget the energy of some of our boys up, rather than doing practice papers that wasn’tworking. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

[I]t’s motivating to do exam questions … the students think they’re doing somethingthat’s going to help them. But I think it’s more about motivation than imparting anyknowledge. (Sonja, Atwood, Maths)

If you got to the staffroom you will see photographs of all the [targeted] kids … atthe moment we have Easter revisions and interviews with the SLT and each with amotivational team leader, so they’re in teams of 5 and we meet after school eachWednesday. The team with the biggest score get a substantial prize. (Duncan, Wesley,SLT)

Grids – ‘they can click on a child’

These techniques of ‘repetition – reduplicated insistence’ (Foucault 1979, 180) relyincreasingly heavily on the collection and analysis of data, in the form of measurementand monitoring software. These provide ‘small techniques of notation … arrangingfacts in columns and tables’ (Foucault 1979, 190) to represent students, which in turngives rise to a taxonomy – which ‘makes possible the measurement of quantities andthe analysis of movement’ (1979, 149) – a new kind of technical professionalism:

Its taken quite a long time to work with Middle Leaders to realise that the data is therefor them to use, that they should be using data to identify underachievement … thereforehow are they going to respond to it … they can dig deeper if they want, they can clickon a child and find out more. (Hazel, Wesley, SLT)

As noted, some students are identified ‘for’ very specific monitoring and intervention,others are by default identified for relative neglect. Taken together these small detailsand ‘acts of cunning’ produce ‘the coherence of a tactic’ (Foucault 1979, 139). Theyexemplify the form of ‘discipline’ that Foucault portrays as realised through meticu-lousness, fussiness and trifles. Nonetheless, the monitoring technologies which areused are becoming ever more refined, ever more specific:

[S]o this is our assessment that you’re just seeing there. So when they come, they comewith key stage 2, which I’ve converted into a two decimal place by interpolation. TheirYear 7 target will be 14% on that … from the line of best fit, it looked like a 14%increase was a decent sort of figure to work with … its quite fine lines if you’re doingpercentages, its not As, Bs and Cs. (Martin, GE, Maths)

[T]here’s been a lot closer monitoring of how students are progressing, there’s muchmore emphasis on analysing the data, any student who isn’t making their three levels ofprogress over two key stages would be a focus for intervention. (Nicola, Atwood,English)

Assessment Manager, that’s quite good because it can calculate for you whether they areon target and comes up colour-coded and pretty when you do a graph. It does help youto pick up people maybe you didn’t notice. But its very divisive, it is like a machinesuddenly that is everything, you know, you are in these categories and you’re supposedto go to all of these slots. (Naomi, Atwood, RE)

Students are also encouraged to monitor themselves and parents are encouraged tomonitor their children:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

12 S. Ball et al.

[I]n every students’ contact book there are graphs, one for English and one for maths …they join them up and they should see progress, they should be able to see whetherthey’re heading for the target or not … they’ll be able to look at the APP (see below)sheet and say hang on, I can do all the level 4 things but I can’t work out the meaning ofthings … We test quite early on then we test again and then we test each half term, I thinkwe test too much and now with APP that might not be necessary. I think we’ll be morespecific about what a student can do and what they cannot, rather than their level is 4B.(Martin, Maths, GE)

The targeting of students begins earlier and earlier. The point here, and the samewould be true of the other examples listed above, is not that all of these activities arein themselves negative or misguided. Clearly, systems which can identify under-achieving students are not bad in themselves. Rather it is the accumulation of effectsand consequences in terms of pressures and the distribution of opportunities and worththat can be held to question:

I said when I came here; those Level 3 writers are our potential C/D borderliners. Theyneed to be targeted from the moment they set foot in this door. (Carla, English, Campion)

The measurement and monitoring software systems, which are deployed in all fourcase study schools, are used to derive ‘a distribution of individuals in space’ (Foucault1979, 141) – but these are not taken to be ‘fixed position(s)’, as least not in all cases,for progress is required. Through these techniques the educational space is made into‘a learning machine’ (Foucault 1979, 147), a machine for ‘supervising, hierarchisingand rewarding’ (Foucault 1979, 147). The school becomes a ‘centre of calculation’(Latour 1987, 235), a space in which information is used by professionals in anauthoritative manner. Clearly, this is a refinement and intensification of what Englishstate schools as institutions have always done:

We use SIMS, so we do nine-weekly data collection where we give them attitude scoresout of five, based around the new PLTS (Personal Learning and Thinking Skills) systemand then you level them as well on national curriculum levels. (Molly, Campion, English)

There are profits to be made from these monitoring and recovery technologies.Commercial providers now offer a range of tracking software, virtual learning envi-ronments, revision software and other materials.

However, the machine is not infallible. When things go wrong the delivery chainacts upon those ‘responsible’ and renewed and still more tightly focused pressures arebrought to bear:

[W]hen we had our awful results summer, the head and the deputy head came to talk tothe whole department at great length, and basically we were pretty much roundly told offfor the results, so I don’t think she [head of department (HOD)] was able to shieldanybody from anything … lot more emphasis this year on making the HOD accountablefor their team … you will have been, sort of, monitored yourself in doing these things …we’ve been supported a little more in the lead up to results: supported, obviously havingmore demands made of you. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

‘Necessary interventions’ (Nicola, Atwood, English) – working on the C/D boundary

The key point of focus is produced by the system of indicators by which performanceis measured and, as indicated, the A–C metric in particular. As other researchers and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 13

commentators have noted this is the point at which efforts and intervention can havemost effect in terms of school performance. Obviously, this becomes the site of great-est activity and anxiety, and it is this which generates patterns of neglect. This is whatGillborn and Youdell (2000) call the ‘A-to-C economy’ which produces and drivespractices of ‘educational triage’. Put crudely, techniques of monitoring, labelling andselective attention identify those who can be left to succeed on their own, those whocan be boosted across the C/D boundary with sufficient intervention and support, andthe remaining ‘hopeless cases’:

The C/C kids got first choice of revision classes, the C/D kids get an expensive weekendaway, where they’re meant to bond … the C/D kids get mentors and motivators that aremeant to harass and bully them into thinking about work all the time. A huge amount ofbudget goes on the C/D borderline. (Neil, Wesley, English)

I’d like to think we target everybody, I’d certainly like to think that way. Maybe sub-consciously all schools will target the C/D borderlines. And if I am to be honest we dohave our most experienced teachers tending to teach those classes … I am not happy justfocusing on these, but in maths we do it all the time … we have after school classes,lunchtime sessions with them, that seem quite popular. (Martin, GE, Maths)

[T]hese kids that are on the borderline, taking them out of a subject they may be failingin and putting more time in English and maths instead of continuing with that one subjectthey are not going to get a grade in. (Molly, English, Campion)

[O]bviously, as everybody else, C/D borderline is our first target group. (Nicola,Atwood, English)

[M]ine were the bottom set so they weren’t targeted in the same way … obviously thebottom set wasn’t, if we got a couple of Cs that would be amazing … they’re middle setsand obviously middle sets are the ones that could possibly get Cs, obviously the top setwill be OK … we did a lot of extra activities when we took them out of PE and thingslike that and we would work with them. We took days off the timetable when they didmaths and extra maths. (Daisy, Campion, Maths)

The delivery chain, as intended, is enacted through an accretion of minutiae. All ofthis becomes part of the normal life of schools, it becomes ingrained in routines,patterns of work, assumptions and perspectives. Indeed, it is impossible to over-estimate the significance of this in the life of the school, as a complex of surveillance,monitoring, tracking, coordinating, reporting, recording, targeting, motivating. AsFairclough puts it, again interestingly using the chain metaphor:

Power is exercised not only in particular types of event but across chains of events whichare shaped by relatively stabilized and institutionalized genre chains, and the balancebetween cooperation and conflict in negotiating differences of interest is conditional uponthe chain of events and the genre chain, not just the particular event. (Fairclough 2005, 10)

Gillborn and Youdell make the same point about their case study schools: ‘Our casestudy schools have responded by interrogating virtually every aspect of school life forits possible contribution to the all consuming need to improve the benchmark level offive or more higher-grade passes’ (2000, 199):

[O]bviously, as everybody else, C/D borderline is our first target group. (Nicola,Atwood, English)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

14 S. Ball et al.

[W]e run invitation only revision classes for C/D borderline students based on their mockresults … people who are invited to that are nice kids, kids who are willing to work, wedon’t just invite anyone who’s got a D and could get a C. If they’re not students who putan effort in lessons they don’t get invited. (Sonja, Atwood, Maths)

[W]e took the A and A-star students out of school for a day, back in November. We tookthe C/D borderline students out of circulation for a day in school, just a whole day out.We’ve – we write letters. (Adrian, Campion, Maths)

These patterns of systemic neglect are based on and perpetuate an internal economyof student worth, a literal economy which values individual students differently3 andrations educational opportunities accordingly! Foucault suggests that the distributionof students in a hierarchy is also a form of punishment and reward (1979, 181).

Costs

There are costs of various kinds involved here. Specific funds are allocated to supportmany of these activities, including the buying in of agency teachers, away days, week-ends and visits, paying teachers for overtime and tutoring, producing and buyingrevision materials, etc. Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) are also allocated tosupport specific interventions. Schools were able to apply for, but do not always get,money from the ‘intervention budget’ which was part of the Standards Fund adminis-tered by the DCSF. There are also costs in terms of the distribution of teachers’ time,effort and attention, which are also part of the rationing process outlined above, andthere are opportunity costs in relation to other kinds of classroom work and otherkinds of learning experience which are not attended to; although we do not want tominimise the difficulties involved here in the ways in which finite resources are allo-cated. Equity arguments can be deployed to support different sorts of distributions:

We got an outside agency in to do the Easter holiday sessions. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

[I]ts amazing how much time you spend chasing up kids to attend these things. (Sonja,Atwood, Maths)

[W]e had examiners come in from the exam board. I don’t think that worked that well… we can do it in-house in future rather than paying Edexel [Examination Board] quitea lot of money. (Martin, GE, Maths)

[I]t costs the school a lot of money to re-enter them [for exams]. (Molly, English, Campion)

[Y]ou get more support, you get more budget … it balances out. (Daisy, Campion,Maths)

[Targeting] determines the allocation of LSAs. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

And certainly they were talking about some extra after school lessons, maybe paid, forkids that are on that C/D borderline. (Douglas, Wesley, Maths)

This is this new government scheme that they’re going to pay teachers extra money todo extra hours of tutoring on a one-to-one basis … is £25 an hour … It’s quite a difficultprocess, the deputies identify the students who are borderline, who would benefit fromone-to-one. It’s quite controversial because you’re going to get parents saying ‘thischild’s getting it, why isn’t my child getting it?’ (Molly, Campion, English)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 15

For the schools these costs are also investments. First, in the immediate returns theymay generate in terms of boosting examination outputs, and second, as a result, inmaking the school more attractive within the local performance economy.

Student and parent responses

While the techniques of motivation and reduplication may be targeted at particularstudents, the responses of those targeted vary. Not all interventions attract interest orwilling participation. While some students are recruited as self-monitors and identifythemselves in terms of the grids of representation in which they are caught, others aremore elusive and resist recruitment. Participation and non-participation themselvesbecome part of the process of representing student worth:

[W]e’re constantly being asked by children to come up with grades and put grades onwork, they’re obsessed with the levels that they are meant to be. (Neil, Wesley, English)

The students are very aware, obviously. They mostly talk about C as a pass and D as afail … we’d have these little graphs showing where their target was and what they’ve gotso far in half-term tests. We’re trying to share with them as much as possible. So every-one’s aware of all the data. (Sonja, Atwood, Maths)

[I]t’s not enough to be on the C/D border, if you’re a pain you won’t get invited, if theydon’t turn up for a couple they’re no longer invited. (Eric, Atwood, Maths)

Where possible parents are also recruited into the programmes of motivation andintervention, as co-workers towards the raising of performance. Parents are both pres-sured and pressuring. But not everything works well and there are limits to the reachof intervention. As noted below, the technology of performance works through itsoverall and general effects. It contains a surplus or redundancy of efforts and tactics,some of which are bound to fail, or be partial, or ineffective:

There’s a succession of letters that you have to send home, increasingly threatening sortsof things, but they’ve been entirely unsuccessful. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

[N]ot many of them came to the extra after-school things. (Daisy, Campion, Maths)

[T]here’s a lot of borderline kids I don’t know how much effect it actually has. (Sonja,Atwood, Maths)

It’s been quite well attended because Rona’s run round forcing people to come, and somepeople want to come because they’re good students. (Roger, Campion, Maths)

I also did a bit of tutoring; it didn’t really work because the kids who were down for itdidn’t come. But the school is very keen obviously, to get its five Cs. (Sonja, Atwood,Maths)

[W]e run a revision session very Tuesday in the run up to the exam but the take-up wasextremely poor. They were strong-armed into coming. (Nicola, Atwood, English)

These points of ineffectivity tend to work to reinforce the distribution of attention andopportunity, and inasmuch as they are responsive to the competitive ‘interests’ ofsome students and their families and ramify the differential efforts of parents as theydeploy relevant capitals in the home to boost their children’s achievement:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

16 S. Ball et al.

[I]f the students are not getting what they want from school, their parents go elsewhere[for maths tutors]. (Martin, GE, Maths)

Discomforts

It is also the case that not all teachers are convinced by the rhetorics of performance,and many teachers are not convinced all of the time. Some discomforts were expressedin interviews, but public expressions of concern seemed to go unheeded in the face ofthe pressures to perform and the risks of underperformance. The technology does notrespond to dismay or dissent, and it operates not by the success or sincerity of any oneof its specifics but by the combinatory and relentless effects of its myriad constituents.Indeed, the responsibilities which are generated by the delivery chain mean that manyteachers find it difficult to establish a clear ethical position in relation to the techne ofperformance:

All of this pressure on the C/D borderline is obscene in lots of ways … it’s incrediblydivisive between kids that have got a hope and kids that have not got a hope. And asmuch as the lady that runs the SEN department will pipe up and say every year ‘Whatabout the kids that are on F and want to get an E’. The school will say ‘Yeah, no, it’s ashame but this is government policy so we’re putting every ounce of money we haveevery ounce of effort we have, into kids on the C/D borderline’. (Neil, Wesley, English)

[B]ut focus is genuinely on doing the best for our kids [but] ‘I think we are more focusedon the outcome, so we do have more of an eye on the assessment’. (Nicola, Atwood,English)

[N]o doubt the people who came up with these ideas would be able to justify it fully interms of maximising the students’ life chances. (Martin, GE, Maths)

Year 9 tutor groups are now disbanded and a tutor group will now receive interventionduring registration times, now I feel, myself that that’s a bit too far. (Martin, GE, Maths)

It means that a lot more effort is put into kids who are on the C/D borderline than kidswho are on D/E borderline. And you can question whether that is fair. (Sonja, Atwood,Maths)

We’ve opted to put our current Year 11s in for the language exam early … it was acontroversial decision in terms of being able to justify why you’re putting those childrenin early … how do they feel if they haven’t passed, our focus has been on the exam …and some want to re-sit to get higher grades which defeats the object. Some of us thoughtit was a good idea some of us didn’t. (Molly, Campion, English)

What is highlighted in these examples are the tensions between the interests of theschool and the interests of the students. It is not always clear that students as a whole,or some students in particular, are well served by the strategies and methods forraising performance. In some examples it is the overall A–C percentage and thecompetitive interests of the school that are the focus of attention rather than individualstudents’ needs or student well-being. The rhetorics and rationales which are deployedare not always convincing even to the main protagonists. Pragmatism and necessitytrump wider responsibilities towards students:

I think sometimes SLT don’t agree with the policies that are coming in, and do it anyway… [the head] started his presentation saying ‘obviously this is a contentious issue but thisis what we have to do for Ofsted’. (Naomi, Atwood, RE)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 17

The imminent arrival of Ofsted is perhaps less likely to be a factor which bearsupon schools that have earned autonomy through their performance successes.

An infrastructure of ‘malicious minutiae’

Alongside the ‘work’ of competition and benchmarking which drive the focus onperformance in and into schools and animate the performance delivery chain there arealso a set of programmes (state and commercial as indicated above) and some new‘disciplinary professionals’ that constitute an infrastructure of performance, or an‘anatomy’ or ‘physics’ of power as Foucault would put it. That is, a further set ofinstruments and procedures, and specific ‘disciplinary’ professionals, many of whomwork as freelancers. In particular, there is now a system of compulsory ‘support’ forschools – School Improvement Partners (SIPS) – to provide ‘professional challengeand support to the school, helping its leadership to evaluate its performance, identifypriorities for improvement, and plan effective change’ (DCFS 2009, 3). The first offour guiding principles for the improvement partner’s work is ‘focus on pupilprogress and attainment across the ability range’ (DCFS 2009, 3). Furthermore, thepartners ‘need’ (DCSF) access to ‘core data’ in going about their task, includingamong many other things: ‘performance management policy arrangements’, ‘schoolsdata analysis from RAISEonline’, ‘Fischer Family Trust data analysis for the school’and data from the ‘Learner Achievement Tracker’ (DCFS 2009, 17–18). SIPS at thelocal level are run or ‘brokered’ by LA School Improvements Services (SIS). Andwhile we have sought to indicate that performance technologies lead to patterns offocus on certain students and neglect of others, SIPS and other programmes likeAssessing Pupil Performance (APP) do seek to address the whole ability range. ‘APPis a structured approach to periodically assessing mathematics and reading and writ-ing so teachers can: track pupils’ progress from Year 1 through to the end of Year 6;use diagnostic information about pupils’ strengths and weaknesses’ (http://national-strategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/18522 accessed 11 February 2010). APP mate-rials sets out a language for assessment which is intended for use in classrooms andwhich Ofsted inspectors expect to see in use; although APP is not compulsory inschools at present, many schools are using the materials as part of their repertoire ofinterventions.

For both student and teacher this technical matrix of ‘malicious minutiae’(Foucault 1979, 226) produces ‘an indefinite discipline: an interrogation without end,an investigation that would be extended without limit to a meticulous and ever moreanalytical observation’ (Foucault 1979, 227). And it is a ‘cellular’ system that is inclu-sive and exclusive simultaneously through its constant use of divisions. Students areboth ‘branded’ (as being outside or beyond redemption) and ‘altered’ (see APP above)(as subject to further intervention). One or other is to the fore at different points inschool careers.

Concluding thoughts: towards a general model of society?

We are very much aware that this paper draws on a sample of just four schools andthey are schools for which the pressure to perform is very immediate. Nonetheless,accounts in the media do indicate that the practices described here are commonplaceand widespread, and indeed the teachers we interviewed referred to this same regimeof tactics in other local schools and other schools in which they had worked (see also

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

18 S. Ball et al.

Gillborn and Youdell 2000) and, as noted, the DCSF provided funding for just thesekinds of initiatives:

Currently, schools are ranked by the number of pupils gaining five A* to C grades inexams … They are prioritising teenagers on the cusp of getting C grades – officially agood pass – at the expense of the very brightest, it is claimed.

Figures show the number of pupils getting these grades in GCSEs has increased quickerover the last decade than in other areas.

Focusing on so-called ‘borderline’ candidates can dramatically improve schools’positions in national rankings. (Paton 2009)

Despite the caveat we want to conclude with three points, two substantive and onemore abstract and general. First, what is portrayed here is a particular ‘policy technol-ogy’ (see Ball 2008), a technology of performance, a techne of government, whichgets policy ‘done’ in very effective ways by creating an economy of visibility whichbrings students, teachers and schools into the gaze of policy. It is rendered into theparticular form and language of the ‘delivery chain’ and the ‘standards agenda’ andjoins-up all sorts of day-to-day, often humble and mundane practices in schools andclassrooms, that establish connections ‘between the aspirations of authorities and theactivities of individuals and groups’ (Rose and Miller 1992, 183). This is a politicalproject for education in relation to national competitiveness and the forces anddiscourse of globalisation. This purports to make students into economically usefulcitizens, although there are other policies currently in play (and we are thinking inparticular of PLTS) which construct quite different versions of the useful student. InFoucault’s words this ‘economic geometry’ builds a ‘house of certainty’ (1979, 202),within which every student is ‘known’ and positioned and ‘treated’ accordingly,although we have indicated that certainty is never absolute. The focus here is notlearning or understanding but the examination itself. That is the object and method of‘delivery’.

There are other policies in play, like ECM (Every Child Matters), like Diplomas,like AfL (Assessment for Learning), which articulate different orders of worth oresteem or frameworks of recognition, but what is evident here is the coherence, repe-tition and insistence of particular mechanics of objectification and visibility. This isalso a form of power which is automatic and generalised, a form that has its principlein mechanisms and arrangements rather than persons. The workings of the mecha-nisms of performance require the enrolment and coordination of a whole variety ofdifferent individuals to enact its techniques and procedures.

Second, as we have argued and as is indicated in the data, this ‘policy technology’differentiates, describes, analyses, normalises and hierarchises, making students andparents, and sometimes teachers, objective and calculable, and concomitantly and conse-quently it distributes opportunity, dignity and esteem, both by attention to and the neglectof individuals within systems of comparison, evaluation and documentation, atparticular points in time. There are positions of advantage and exclusion within thegeneral field of measurement and ‘value-giving’, and across its frontier of normality.These are undoubtedly patterned in relation to social indicators, as the work of Gillbornand Youdell (2000) has identified.

Third, we need to think about the historical location and consequences of thesetechnologies within a whole general regime of policy that is firmly and decisively

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 19

focused on performance (Ball 2003). That is to say, this regime and this technologycan be seen as a re-invention, as a form of power, of discipline, constituted within asecond liberalism – what is called neo-liberalism – where the first invention was in thelate eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the period of the first liberalism. AsFoucault put it: ‘The “Enlightenment”, which discovered the liberties, also inventedthe disciplines’ (1979, 222) (which he meant in both senses of the word). This secondliberalism signals the end of the half-hearted and mostly unrealised welfare experi-ment in education, the era of supposed universalism and its discourses of equity andtheir replacement by the discourses of utility. This is a definitive move away from anyattempt to create a common or universal or comprehensive form of education andtowards (or back to) one which characterises, classifies and specialises studentsdistributed along a scale, around a norm, in a system of infinitesimal disciplines whichoperates on the ‘under-side of law’ as Foucault puts it – that is laws, in this educationalcase, like those ranging from ‘Every Child Matters’ to ‘the UN declaration ofchildren’s rights’ – and below the level of great political struggles, to disenfranchise,‘disqualify and invalidate’ (Foucault 1979, 223) certain educational subjects (it isprofoundly classed and raced in both respects). It is part of a political transformationof education through machinery that is, at the same time, both immense and minute.It is also as Foucault suggests a re-distribution, or perhaps here more appropriately areiteration, of class domination. As Foucault says history is an ‘endless repeated playof dominations’ (Foucault 1984). Furthermore, this transformation and reinventionalso has a primary effect of tying education more firmly to the functions of the econ-omy and of commodifying education (Ball 2008) – a further aspect of neo-liberalism.These elements of a general model of society are not here offered as a speculativeconstruction but rather as the specific ‘architecture, anatomy, mechanics’ and‘economy’ (Foucault 1979, 167) of an unequal but disciplined ‘mercantile society’.

Notes1. Even so we have only selectively quoted from the relevant data we have on this topic.2. The ‘achieving’ or strategic approach to learning can be summarised as a very well-

organised form of surface learning, and in which the motivation is to get good marks. Theexercise of learning is construed as a game, so that acquisition of technique improvesperformance (see www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm accessed 16February 2010 and Marton and Saljo [1976]).

3. While there are now Contextual Value Added measures available to compare schools,which take all performance changes into account, in media coverage and policy action theyare consistently marginalised or subordinated to the A–C grade raw score indicator.

Notes on contributorsStephen Ball is Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education,University of London. His research is focused on issues of social class and education policyanalysis. Recent publications include: The education debate: Policy and politics in the 21stcentury (2008) and Education plc: Private sector participation in public sector education(2007).

Meg Maguire is a professor of Sociology of Education at King’s College London. Herresearch is in the sociology of education, urban education and policy and the work and livesof women teachers. Her recent books include Becoming a teacher: Issues in secondary teach-ing (2007); Education, globalisation and new times (2007) and The urban primary school(2006).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

20 S. Ball et al.

Annette Braun is a research officer at the Centre for Critical Education Policy Studies, Instituteof Education, University of London. She is working within the fields of sociology of educationand education policy and her particular research interests are in gender and social class andprofessional identities. She has articles published in a number of journals, including Commu-nity, Work and Family, Journal of Education Policy, Critical Social Policy and SociologicalReview.

Jane Perryman is a lecturer in education at the Institute of Education, University of London.Her research interests centre on accountability and performativity in secondary education,inspection regimes and discourses of school effectiveness and school improvement. She haspublished widely, including in Journal of Education Policy, International Journal of Qualita-tive Studies in Education, Cambridge Journal of Education and School Leadership andManagement.

Kate Hoskins is a senior lecturer in Education Studies at Roehampton University. Her researchdraws on the sociology of education and education policy, with a particular focus on socialclass, gender and ethnicity. She has articles published in Women’s Studies International Forumand the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education.

ReferencesBall, S.J. 2003. The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education

Policy 18, no. 2: 215–28.Ball, S.J. 2008. The education debate: Politics and policy in the 21st century. Bristol: Policy

Press.Ball, S.J., K. Hoskins, M. Maguire, and A. Braun. 2009. Disciplinary texts: A policy analysis

of national and local behaviour policies. Paper presented at British Educational ResearchAssociation Annual Conference, September 2–5, in Manchester, UK.

Barber, M. 2007. Instruction to deliver: Tony Blair, the public services and the challenge ofdelivery. London: Methuen.

DCFS. 2005. Higher standards, better schools for all: More choice for parents and pupils.Norwich: The Stationery Office.

DCFS. 2009. A new relationship with schools: The school improvement partner’s brief. 3rded. London: DCFS.

Dean, M. 1999. Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. London/Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.

Elmore, R.F. 2009. Building a new structure for school leadership. http://www.ashankerinst.org/Downloads/building.pdf.

Fairclough, N. 2005. Governance, partnership and participation: Cooperation and conflict.Paper presented at the conference of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis,May, in Bucharest.

Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and punish. Harmondsworth: Peregrine.Foucault, M. 1984. Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In The Foucault reader, ed. P. Rabinow,

76–100. London: Peregrine.Gillborn, D., and D. Youdell. 2000. Rationing education: Policy, practice, reform and equity.

Buckingham: Open University Press.Jones, K. 2003. Education in Britian: 1944 to the present. Cambridge: Polity Press.Latour, B. 1987. Science in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Loveday, B. 2008. Performance management and the decline of leadership within public

services in the United Kingdom. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice 12, no. 1:120–30.

Marton, F., and R. Saljo. 1976. On qualitative differences in learning: 1 – Outcome andprocess. British Journal of Educational Psychology 46, no. 1: 4–11.

Paton, G. 2009. Schools focus on average pupils to ‘flatter league tables’, claim Lib Dems.Telegraph, February 11.

Probyn, E. 1993. Sexing the self: Gendered positions in cultural studies. New York: Routledge.Reay, D., and D. Wiliam. 1999. I’ll be a nothing: Structure, agency and the construction of

identity through assessment. British Educational Research Journal 25, no. 3: 343–54.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012

Research Papers in Education 21

Rose, N., and P. Miller. 1992. Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government.British Journal of Sociology 43, no.2: 173–205.

Thomas, R.M. 2005. High-stakes testing coping with collateral damage. New York: Routledge.Watson, M., and C. Hay. 2003. The discourse of globalisation and the logic of no alternative:

Rendering the contingent necessary in the political economy of New Labour. Policy andPolitics 31, no. 3: 289–305.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Prof

esso

r St

ephe

n J.

Bal

l] a

t 04:

21 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

2012