TY - JOUR
T1 - Surveillance, Governmentality and moving the goalposts
T2 - The influence of Ofsted on the workof schools in a post-panoptic era
AU - Perryman, Jane
AU - Maguire, Meg
AU - Braun, Annette
AU - Ball, Stephen
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - This paper asks the question: to what extent do inspection regimes, particularly the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), influence the work of a school, and how might that influence be conceptualised? It draws on an ESRC-funded study of ‘policy enactments in secondary schools’, which was based on case-study work in four ‘ordinary’ schools. Here the data set is re-examined to understand the extent to which Ofsted had an ongoing influence on the work of the leadership, management and teachers in these schools. We undertook a process of secondary analysis of the data from the project and found that the influence of the inspection agenda was strong in the schools, policy decisions were often being made to conform to Ofsted’s expectations and the influence on leadership and management was clearly apparent. In resisting this agenda we also found that schools to some extent performed ‘the good school’ for inspections. Finally, we relate this empirical evidence to conceptions of governmentality and post-panopticism to shed new light on their theoretical relevance to contemporary inspection regimes.
AB - This paper asks the question: to what extent do inspection regimes, particularly the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), influence the work of a school, and how might that influence be conceptualised? It draws on an ESRC-funded study of ‘policy enactments in secondary schools’, which was based on case-study work in four ‘ordinary’ schools. Here the data set is re-examined to understand the extent to which Ofsted had an ongoing influence on the work of the leadership, management and teachers in these schools. We undertook a process of secondary analysis of the data from the project and found that the influence of the inspection agenda was strong in the schools, policy decisions were often being made to conform to Ofsted’s expectations and the influence on leadership and management was clearly apparent. In resisting this agenda we also found that schools to some extent performed ‘the good school’ for inspections. Finally, we relate this empirical evidence to conceptions of governmentality and post-panopticism to shed new light on their theoretical relevance to contemporary inspection regimes.
KW - Foucault
KW - inspection
KW - policy
KW - schools
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029504753&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00071005.2017.1372560
DO - 10.1080/00071005.2017.1372560
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85029504753
SN - 0007-1005
VL - 66
SP - 145
EP - 163
JO - British Journal of Education Studies
JF - British Journal of Education Studies
IS - 2
ER -