The Impact of Performance Management Policy on Standards in Schools

ion or at worse limits to its relevance. Finally, I made a brief comparison to other major strategies that could have been used in this study, namely Experimentalist and Constructivist approaches, and pointed out some of the potential deficiencies in relation to the Realist framework used here. The subtext to all of this is that the national policy for PM is a structure for social action, and within this I have identified the Leader, Teacher and Learner roles. Such a structure is based upon the assumption that a school is treatable as a microcosm and that there are structures within it that sustain and which can be related to other parts of the wider social structure. They have nevertheless been treated as distinct but not autonomous. The roles of learner, teacher and leader, within the Empirical Domain, have been changed by the inclusion of PM within a school. They have been changed by the dimensions of the policy. These are the powers that a structure like PM entails, namely internally related structures like Lesson Observation, Target Setting, Use of Baseline Data, CPD and Objective Setting. These powers are distributed within the Role Structure which makes Leading, Teaching and Learning different. It is reasonable to make an assumption about the existence of such structures given that as early as 2002, HMI found PM national policy to be operational in at least 67% of eighty-two schools in a case study (HMI 2002). To be clear, the roles of Learner, Teacher and Leader within PM have been assumed to be embedded within schools in a way that is similar to but not as pervasive as nor as distinct as the landlord and tenant relationship within the Capitalist Social System (Note 30). Such Leader, Teacher and Learner roles, it is suggested by the Case Study, are dominant PM structures within schools. Similarly, Landlord and Tenant are dominant structures within a capitalist society. PM structures like these and their associated powers, including what has been referred to as the ‘five dimensions of policy’ ‘add up’, as indicated by the Case Study and attainment trends in schools, to a rise in standards of attainment. A number of issues need to be properly addressed. First, the range of views of teaching and learning that gave rise to the evidence in the Case Study that the abstraction is based upon has to be considered. It is reasonable to suggest that these views are mutually supportive. Note 30: PM policy was reported by headteachers, at the initial telephone conversation, to be embedded in line with national requirements in each of the four schools of the Case Study. This would have been confirmed by External Advisers and Threshold Assessors, contracted by the DfEE at the time, during their annual visits.