‘Getting through’, ‘getting on’ or ‘getting out’? The impact of Performance Threshold Assessment on schools in England

Ian Menter, Pat Mahony and Ian Hextall

Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, University of Exeter, England, 12-14 September 2002

Contact details

Professor Ian MenterUniversity of PaisleyFaculty of Education and MediaUniversity Campus AyrBeech GroveAyr KA8 0SRScotlandTel: 01292 886201ian.menter@paisley.ac.uk

Professor Pat Mahony Froebel CollegeUniversity of Surrey Roehampton Roehampton Lane,London SW15 5PJTel:020 8392 3172P.Mahony@roehampton.ac.uk

Ian Hextall Froebel CollegeUniversity of Surrey Roehampton Roehampton Lane,London SW15 5PJTel:020 8392 3172ianhextall@tinyworld.co.uk

Work in progress: not to be quoted or reproduced without authors’ permission

This paper reports on aspects of a current ESRC project, ‘The impact of Performance Threshold Assessment on teachers’ work’ (ESRC R000239286). Round 1 of Threshold Assessment occurred in 2000 and marked the introduction of a new pay structure. From induction up to the Threshold (originally reached after about seven years of teaching, now reduced to five), teachers

progress by yearly increment. Those who reach the Threshold are eligible to apply to cross to the upper pay spine (UPS). To do this they are required to meet eight performance standards, which are assessed by their headteacher and then verified by external threshold assessors (TAs)1. In this paper we explore some of the themes emerging from our completed case studies. We conclude by summarising some of the major issues emerging from our explorations of the ‘wider context’ within which Threshold and Performance Management are located.

One element of the project involves providing a detailed record of the enormous quantity of documentation on Threshold and Performance Management. We are currently categorising this as:

• general background literature;• official documentation and policy statements;• materials produced by and for unions and professional associations and• research papers.

Within these categories there exist a number of large scale surveys of teachers’ views and experiences of Threshold (Neill 1999; Marsden 2000; Marsden 2001; Morris 2000; Neill 2001; Purslow 2000; MORI 2001; Wragg 2001) which we will be attempting to analyse in terms of phasing, methodologies, topics and scope. In advance of this detailed audit we can already report that none of the surveys makes for joyful reading. For example the MORI survey commissioned by the DfES reported that: training for heads was poor, standards needed clarification, teachers resented having to submit themselves to the process, the application process was time consuming and dogged by unstable technology, the majority of teachers ‘were largely negative in their views of the Threshold policy’ and ‘a similar number were critical of the effect of the Threshold on their school’ (p. 78). As well as providing valuable data that forms the backcloth to our own research, we have used the surveys to steer the directions of our case studies by seeking, for example, to dig deeper into the nature of and reasons for teachers’ negativity.

Case StudiesBy the end of our project we will have undertaken twelve studies selected to take account of location, size, demography and age phase and to ensure information-rich contexts. Nine of these case studies are located in schools (four secondary, three primary, one nursery and one special), two are in LEAs to access the experiences of teachers employed in non-standard settings and one is a focus group of teachers drawn from a range of schools. A full range of actors within the schools are being interviewed including the headteacher, deputy head, teachers, TA and Governor. Below we report on two broad themes emerging from transcripts - the emotionalimpact of Threshold and variability in its implementation.2 We shall also make brief reference at the end of the paper on some broader issues3.

The emotional impact of Threshold

... social policy needs a subject in which mind and body, reason and passion, self and other, agent and object are held simultaneously in mind without splitting one from the

other. (Hoggett 2000a p. 143)

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Threshold Assessment presumes that teachers are motivated by money, that what is ‘measurable’ via a technology of ‘standards’ (their ‘performance’), can be demonstrated by completion of a form and the provision of documentary evidence that ‘proves’ the claims made. As such it is but one expression of the culture of performativity that has increasingly come to dominate and shape both the nature of policy-making and definitions of ‘professionalism’. Even if the Threshold policy were to be judged as an elegant exemplar of technical, calculative, rational policy making, (a judgement we would challenge), there is a further question about its impact on the emotional lives of teachers, on their personal/professional identities and on their cultures. As Troman and Woods (2001) have written:

There is little appreciation [by government or Ofsted] of the emotional labour … engaged in by teachers, the work they put in to make learning meaningful to their students, but which also makes them vulnerable ‘when the conditions of and demands on their work make it hard for them to do their “emotion work” properly’ (Hargreaves, 1998c: 840). Rather, teachers become involved in emotional politics … as they wrestle with countervailing and superior forces. (p.42)

It is perhaps indicative of just how dessicated current modes of policy making have become that Hoggett (2000b) from a psycho-analytic perspective and Goleman (1997) leaning on recent discoveries in neuro-science, seek to justify why social policy needs to take account of the emotional dimensions of human existence. Yet the need for such justification is surely bizarre? If policy-makers do not understand in general terms that human emotion matters and that it is inextricably connected to questions of ethics, then it is difficult to imagine what arguments could persuade them. At the very least one might expect that people who claim to want to improve teacher morale and motivation would be perturbed to find that their policies are having the opposite effect.

The following analysis is based on twenty six one hour interviews with a range of actors from four of the completed case study schools. Bankside Secondary is an inner-city, multi-ethnic, mixed-sex school of 1,200, with over 50% of students receiving free school meals. Parklake Secondary, situated in SE England was described by the head as a ‘mainstream comprehensive school with 1,600 students, 6th Form about 250 and a fairly normal range of ability’. Clearview Primary is a multi-ethnic school of about 450 children in the SW of a large city, serving a mobile community and Riverton Primary with 350 pupils is on the fringe of a city in SW England in a depressed area with high unemployment and few local amenities. Riverton had experienced a period of great difficulty from which it was just emerging.

It has been noticeable that in advance of beginning their interviews, many teachers have prefaced their remarks by apologising for having little to contribute - it was all so long ago and they had forgotten about it, they said. Yet their transcripts tell a different story.

Initial Responses to ThresholdTeachers’ negative feelings towards the initial announcement of Threshold ranged from. resignation, (‘... here we go again’ (Teacher 4/f Clearview Primary)) or ‘... oh another

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bureaucratic exercise’ (Teacher 1/f Clearview Primary)), through scorn, (‘...what a load of old rubbish’ (Teacher 1/m Bankside Secondary)) and resentment (‘I felt a bit resentful, that you know, I have to jump through hoops to get some more money’ (Teacher 2/f Clearview Primary)) to anger, (‘... on principle, angry. I felt that one teacher was supposed to be trying to prove that they were better than the next one, in order to get more money’ (Teacher 2f Parklake Secondary)). Four teachers from Riverton expressed varying degrees of opposition to the ‘unfairness’ of Threshold. At its strongest, negativity was expressed in these terms.

I absolutely hated it. I thought it was a terribly divisive thing. I thought that the Unions should have been stronger in opposing it. I thought that as a school we would be able to oppose it much more effectively. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I didn’t apply. (Teacher 3/f Bankside Secondary)

From a wider perspective such negativity was confirmed by the TA from Parklake.

I can’t think of many other ways of introducing an initiative and putting people’s backs up. It came with all that New Labour macho stuff, which came as a surprise, I hadn’t expected them to be so anti teachers. ... a lot of teachers were angry. There was an awful lot of bad feeling in school. ... a large number of teachers saw it as a rod to beat them with. They thought it was iniquitous that some people were going to get this money and some weren’t. That you had to prove to someone, who didn’t know you at all, that you could do it, you know, all this evidence.

At Bankside Secondary the introduction of Threshold was vividly inscribed in the institutional memory of the school.

... it was a very difficult, ...I had all the staff together and said, ... I want to tell you how to apply for the Threshold. ... and people said, we don’t want to know about this.... it was a very touching speech about, “we’ve all acted to work together in a collegiate way and we now don’t think that some people should be paid for performance. We don’t believe in performance related pay in any form and we don’t want to hear about it”. I wasn’t quite sure what to do.... So it was a very, it wasn’t a pleasant meeting particularly. As Bankside meetings go, we don’t often get those big difficult staff meetings. (HT/m Bankside Secondary)

Although the Head expressed uncertainty about what to do, the Deputy described him as:

... very clever, he stopped them walking out because that would have split the staff. ... normally we’re very close, we don’t operate by confrontational methods.(Dep Head/m Bankside Secondary)

One of the issues we shall be exploring when all the case studies are completed is the extent to which the expression of emotional response is gendered. In these excerpts there are indications that the ‘rules of display’ of emotion (Brody 2001; Shields 2002) are stereotypically ‘male’. The situation was ‘difficult’, the meeting not ‘pleasant’ and the head, ‘clever’. Contrast this with a female teacher’s account of the same meeting.

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I can still remember one member of staff’s exact words, and she stood up and she said, “My husband has just been made redundant ... and I still wouldn’t apply for it”. ... I felt really sorry for the management in the school, And, I felt, let’s not make any more trouble. ... one of the senior staff got quite upset about it. ....And, he was quite upset. (Teacher 2/f Bankside Secondary)

Given these negative feelings why did teachers apply? The teacher above who ‘hated it’ applied in Round 2 because:

... it was a lost battle and, I could have kept my principles but the only person that would know about them, was me. (Teacher 3/f Bankside Secondary)

Those in the first Round 1 gave as their reasons: deserving the money; needing the money; boosting their pensions and not wanting to be ‘left out’ in a school where others were applying. One teacher described her decision to apply in the following terms:

I suppose in a way I began to think in a very selfish way. I thought, well, I am an experienced teacher and if this money is available, why shouldn’t I be part of it, if I can. I still felt uneasy about it. (Teacher 3f Riverton)

Others felt forced: either by a sense that ‘as a senior member of staff it was also my duty ... to be a role model for other people’ (Teacher 6f Clearview Primary); or because it would raise questions about:

... how teachers are going to be perceived, if they haven’t gone for it. Is that gonna’ suggest that, I don’t think I’m good enough or something like that. (Teacher 4f Riverton Primary)

There is a good deal of evidence that teachers (primary and secondary) were generally under-whelmed by the ‘something for something’ model of salary enhancement that Threshold represents.

I know two of the people who didn’t apply, are single parents and probably could have done with that money quite a lot. (Teacher 3/f at Bankside Secondary)

Even the teacher claiming salary increase as the ‘only reason I went through it’ does not claim pay as the main (de)motivating factor.

If I didn’t need the money, if my husband had been in a good job - if we were very comfortably off, I would not have gone through it. I’m only teaching for the money at the moment. I love the teaching. I love the children and I love the staff here. It’s a lovely school. But, I just hate everything else. The pressure, deadlines and the extra work. I’m totally, at the moment, thinking about my pension. That’s what I’m thinking about, you know. Get as good a pension as I can, as soon as possible. (Teacher 2/f Clearview Primary)

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This comes as no surprise. As long ago as 1968, Frederick Herzberg questioned whether pay is a 'motivator' at all. In his two-factor theory, Herzberg suggested that while money and working conditions have the capacity to stir dissatisfaction, effective motivators are the need for achievement, recognition, responsibility and the intrinsic rewards from the work itself.

One teacher at Clearview Primary told a poignant story about her experience at her former school that underlines the importance of recognition.

... the head didn’t encourage anybody to go through the Threshold. The whole staff en masse, didn’t go through it. We were all rubbish. ... I left two terms later. ... it didn’t connect to anything because, before the head came we had an excellent OfSTED report. I’m sorry, but it is painful - I was so ill and I lost 2 stone in weight and my hair was falling out and my husband in the end said, get out, even if you haven’t got a job to go to. I’m not living with you like this, you know. It was terrible. (Teacher 3f Clearview)

She went on to point out that technically she will not be eligible to apply for the Round 2 even though the head was encouraging her to do so:

I will have no evidence from that last place, because I washed my hands of it. And, everything with the headed notepaper or signature, just got burnt. I just could not cope. Which is my own fault really. But, it’s just my character. I just couldn’t cope with it any more. (Teacher 3f Clearview)

At this point in the interview the teacher became very upset and asked for the tape-recorder to be turned off. As well as raising real issues about the ethics of delving into people’s evident pain, we felt unable to tell her that our evidence suggested that TAs vary in their interpretation of the eligibility rules. We return to the issue of variability later.

The processWe know from the surveys that the process was fraught with difficulties mainly related to the technology of the form although many found the standards to be repetitive and unclear. Teachers adopted a variety of devices to beat the space restrictions on the application form.

... the form I felt was badly organised, ... nothing lined up. Fortunately, I’ve got a photocopier at home... it was question of cutting bits out, reducing it, sticking it on. It took an enormous amount of time and I was very cross by the end of it. (Teacher 1/f Parklake Secondary)

Others spoke of their lack of confidence as leading them to leave nothing unsaid even if this meant folding up their entries concertina fashion. Some were just angry at being required to ‘prove themselves’ as this Round 2 applicant indicates.

... when I was filling it in I was feeling quite angry and full of rage. You know, if you want me to prove my whole school commitment. I ... almost want the whole process to feel ashamed, how dare they. How dare they ask teachers to prove themselves? If

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they’re going to ask me, I’m going to tell them. I’m going to tell them all the things that I’ve done. And in lots of places the form wasn’t big enough. So I had it on size 10 font, I could do much more if I put it on size 10 font, without having to print out bits and fold it up and fit it in the form. (Teacher 3/f Bankside Secondary)

It seems that for some teachers, anxiety was not just provoked by the technology but the sense of exposure and vulnerability that the process triggered.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so stressed in my entire teaching career, as the time when I was trying to fill out that application. ... you kind of doubt yourself really. ... it’s that constant worry that you know, will I get through it? And, it’s not so much, I’m not going to get through it, so therefore I’m not going to get my money. It’s more the fact, that I’m not going to get through so I might as well give up teaching. If I can’t get through the Threshold, what am I doing being a teacher because I obviously shouldn’t be in this profession. That’s how I felt. (Teacher 4/f Clearview Primary)

There was also the discomfort at what a number of teachers felt was ‘selling’ themselves.

Do you pitch it towards being judged for performance management or do you really give a true picture of what teaching is all about…? It made me feel a bit cynical because I thought this is ridiculous. But on the other hand it reminded me of how wonderful it can be when you’ve had time to do what I thought I was in teaching for, which was to inspire, to care for, all of those things that actually go by the board… because we just don’t have time and we’re exhausted (Teacher 1/f Parklake)

Whilst some explained their aversion to the commodification of self in terms of professional culture and not being used to ‘blowing our own trumpets’ (nor being good at it), one cited nationality – ‘I’m British. I’m English. And the English don’t like selling themselves’. We would suggest that a more convincing explanation would be the gender composition of the cohort studied which is predominantly female. Women both tend to under-rate their achievements and to proclaim them less than men (Collinson and Hearn 1996).

A sample of applications from each school was selected by the TA and teachers were required to submit evidence in support of their claims. Many teachers did not assemble their evidence until they received notification that they were in the sample. This was not the case for this teacher.

... the reason I did it, was thinking, I might have to do it. ... I only work part-time, I work three days and I’ve got a young son. So, I know that I can’t just do things, you know, with a few minutes to spare. If I want to do something well, I’ve got to plan it well in time. (Teacher 2/f Bankside Secondary)

She went on to say ‘I hope that people do want to look at it. Because, I’ve spent so long getting it together. (Teacher 2/f Bankside Secondary)

This was not generally the case. Echoing Jeffrey and Woods’ (1998) work on the impact of OfSTED on professional attachments this teacher said:

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... it felt like OfSTED again. I thought, “Oh my God, if I haven’t put something there as evidence, she’s going to fail me”. And also, because it was a sample you felt that you were going to let somebody else down. And, I really felt low and down then. I tell you, it was like, you know when you’re sort of like trapped somewhere and you want to walk out and escape, I felt like that. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I really wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Absolutely. It was horrible. (Teacher 6/f Clearview Primary)

For the Heads, the process, though time consuming did not carry the same emotional impact though the Head from Parklake Secondary did describe feeling:

... slightly uneasy about the fact, when we looked through it, about 60% of the staff had at least one proper formally recorded lesson observation which supported them. But about 40% of them didn’t and I was slightly uneasy about that.

In the event the TA did not question this as the Head ‘fobbed him off with this strong feel that with the data systems we’ve got, it would be a very brave assessor that came in and wanted to turn it over’. For the Round 2 and with a different TA, the process was not quite as smooth.

... the head’s telephone manner made me absolutely certain that I would go in having prepared to the nth degree. I suppose in that sense I was intimidated. I thought, “Oops, can’t get anything wrong here.” So, I spent ages on these forms and I discovered some problems with them, in that, two of them did not seem to me to meet the criteria for eligibility. There was a great deal of unpleasant dispute about all that. Then I’m set to go into the school. I’m chewing my fingernails thinking, “I don’t want to do this.” It was stressful. It was horrible. I had a rotten day. I paid for almost all of the phone calls and it took me hours and hours and hours doing all this and I didn’t get any extra money. I got my normal fee and I worried myself silly. I was really upset about that. (TA/f Parklake Secondary)

Response to outcomesThe vast majority of teachers who applied in the Round 1 were judged to have met the standards. Those in our case study schools mostly expressed ‘relief’. Relief however was tempered by ‘but’: – ‘but I still don’t think its fair’; ‘but I deserved it’; ‘but it was an anxiety making affair’; ‘but it was a lot of jumping through hoops’ or ‘ ... totally relieved and then you think, I’m never going to do that again ... like giving birth, you’re never going to do that again’. Asked to imagine what it would have meant to have not met the standards and the answer was either ‘devastating’ or ‘angry/cross/furious’. Everyone emphasised that they would not remain in teaching. There was little evidence, even though teachers had been successful that Threshold, has done anything to redress the ‘deep alienation in the work of many teachers’ (Menter and Muschamp 1999p. 75).

Apart from four teachers in our four case study schools who said they would definitely want to progress up the Upper Pay Spine (UPS), considerable reluctance was expressed by the rest. Some with commitments outside the school said they would not want to progress if it meant more work. Others did not ‘want to go through that again’. One felt that existing salary discrepancy between her and her nursery nurses did not justify a further salary increase and did not ‘really want the

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pressure of having to sort of perform any more’. Others returned to the issue of fairness and questioned how it would be possible to compare teachers working in very different areas of the curriculum.

Asked about the impact on their practice, teachers were emphatic that Threshold had had:

None. I’m quite a conscientious person. I was already working to my full potential before Threshold. I haven’t got any more energy left, you know. I don’t know how you can suddenly - because you’ve got a Threshold payment, you can improve your performance as a teacher. Because, all self-respecting teachers will be working their hardest anyway for the children in their class. (Teacher 2/f Clearview Primary)

However, teachers were more conscious of the need to save evidence ‘because you never know when you’re going to need it’ (even though they had no intention of progressing up the UPS). One teacher believed that her stress and anxiety about the process had impacted negatively on her teaching because ‘you don’t deliver as clearly as if you were really calm and relaxed’ (Teacher 4/f Clearview Primary). Others objected to the reductionist model of assessing their work.

... anyone can get a folder of evidence together. I wish they could actually be me for a day, follow me and see everything I do. ... see what my day consists of. (Teacher 2/f Bankside Secondary)

In terms of the effects on their professional identities, teachers at Riverton reported being ‘given a boost after our difficult patch’ and ‘seeing the positive things which I do as a teacher’. For others however, Threshold represented ‘a looming factor’, a reminder that ‘it begins performance management’.

... and now we’ve got performance related pay and all of that. So, it’s kind of like, it never really goes away. ... I’m not saying that I’m a model teacher and there’s nothing I can do that’s any better. Because, you’re always reviewing practice and wanting to make things better. And, I’ve always done that anyway. But, now it’s constantly like, constantly under scrutiny. (Teacher 4/f Clearview Primary)

Being under constant surveillance, being ready to ‘prove yourself’ were not responses confined to those who wanted to progress. There was a perceived tightening of the managerial culture that teachers sometimes referred to and for which they tried to seek justification by appealing to the language of accountability. The parent governor at Parklake Secondary who had had experience of PRP in her job as a Personnel Director was also concerned about the effect on students.

... you’re setting objectives a lot of the time which are actually to do with children’s performance, not necessarily just the teachers’ performance. And I think, children are now feeling more under pressure to perform. ... they think, oh, all you’re interested in is how well we do for the school.

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Stance towards policyThreshold was widely regarded as a hoop to be jumped through rather than a real indicator of performance. Whilst recognising the damaging effects of ‘failure’, some felt that the high proportion of teachers who had passed Threshold devalued its currency. This was not just a matter of ‘someone should fail but not in this school’. Teachers felt that they deserved a pay rise, not a rise in pay dependent on performance. Many agreed with the idea of there being ‘something to aspire to for a classroom teacher’ but resented having to ‘prove themselves’. This could be a temporary phenomenon related to the number of long-serving teachers applying in the first round. Perhaps as Threshold becomes part of the established career structure more teachers will come to agree with Teacher 1/m at Bankside Secondary, that ‘Threshold’s a bit like winter, it comes and goes. It’s something you put up with, when it’s there’. This was certainly the view of Heads and their Deputies. Only one teacher thought it was a good idea ‘because I think we’re so wrapped up in every day things and there’s so much to do, you don’t ever really take the time to reflect on what we actually do’. (Teacher 3/f Riverton Primary).

Responses in these transcripts to the issues surrounding the UPS (gathered before the government’s settlement with Headteacher Unions) have alerted us to possible differences between male heads and female teachers.

... it’s open to interpretation, from one school to another, as to whether one person gets the money, and one doesn’t. So, it’s all a bit concocted I think. ... we’re talking about people’s emotions, people’s feelings here, you can be professional and still have feelings. You know, if you’ve got effective methods for observing, work scrutiny, positive feedback methods for people growth, you don’t need this business about targets linked with pay. (Teacher 1/f Clearview Primary)

By contrast male heads tended not to object in principle but to point to ‘interesting questions’ that would emerge were there to be insufficient money to reward those who had met their targets and to the need to set ‘hard-nosed targets’ in order to avoid this. Where difficulties in the PRP element of the Performance Management policy are discussed, it is as ‘flaws’ in the system or as ‘tensions’.

... if I’ve got 10 staff, if all of them are of the standard, they should get the money, fair enough if I’ve got 10 staff and 2 of them haven’t met the standards I have no problem. I wouldn’t like it but I have no problem, professionally and conscience wise in actually saying to people, look for these reasons, you have not sufficiently passed through, you know. So, I’m not recommending you for a pay rise, fine. At the end of the day, I can do that. ... I don’t think it is right for me to be put in a position with the 8 ... that are left, saying to 4 of them, congratulations. And to the other 4, congratulations you have fulfilled your targets but I’m sorry, you don’t get anything. ... I don’t think [that] is something which managers should be put in that position to do even though managers should be put in the position of taking tough decisions. (HT/m Clearview Primary)

He went on to point out that for schools like Clearview that rely heavily on supply teachers (one of whom he described as ‘so laid back he could be horizontal’):

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... there is going to be a tension in any system if you’re saying to one group of people, right you jump through this hoop. You jump through this hoop. And, to another group of [supply teachers] ...”Oh no you don’t have to jump through these hoops”. Fine. So tensions. I think that could impact on performance management at some point.

It is widely known that Heads’ training in Performance Management was of poor quality and that Heads reactions were ‘vitriolic’ (Wragg 2001). Less is known about the experience of the personnel employed to ‘deliver’ the training. One of the TAs we interviewed had added ‘Heads’ Training in Performance Management to a whole armful of badges’. The training took place when ‘everyone’s on their knees’, at the end of the summer term, ready for implementation in September. She remembered her experience vividly.

.... and then to give them training that was insulting by its lack of thought. They came seething and they went away seething. ... some of the secondary heads were extremely rude, some of them were appallingly rude, you know. They came spoiling for a fight and had it. It was awful. Standing up there delivering things, a) that I couldn’t defend and b) didn’t always understand why I was doing it. ... as it went on, one subverted it, one made it better and I mean, better in the proper sense. Because, I actually do believe that performance management handled well, moves things forward which is why I did it. ... If I hadn’t agreed with it, I couldn’t have done it just for the money. .... I just think it was introduced so badly that it almost made it fail.

By contrast a civil servant whom we interviewed was of the view that overall ‘... the general consensus and I think that’s actually true for the professional associations, as well, is that the actual process worked pretty well’. Seen in purely logistical terms, this is no doubt the case but the evidence presented above suggests that this is a limited view based either on ignorance of its effects on thousands of staff or on a belief that such effects are unimportant. The latter belief seems to be one espoused by Michael Barber, one of the main actors in the thinking behind the policy (Mahony, Menter and Hextall 2002).

There is a popular misconception about the process of change. It is often assumed that the key to successful change is to ‘win hearts and minds’. ... winning hearts and minds is not the best first step in any process of urgent change.... Sometimes it is necessary to mandate the change, implement it well, consciously challenge the prevailing culture and have the courage to sustain it until beliefs shift. The driving force at this critical juncture is leadership .. it is the vocation of leaders to take people where they have never been before and to show them a new world from which they do not want to return. (2000 quoted in Jones 2001)

There is no evidence that in the case of Threshold, the ‘new world’ into which teachers have been led (or forced) is one ‘from which they do not want to return’, on the contrary. Furthermore, the process that Barber recommends is one in which moral and political issues are transformed into technical and procedural ones – a device more appropriate to dictators and despots than to governments in advanced democracies.

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Variability In this section we build upon the preceding accounts of the emotional impact of the Threshold Assessment process by considering dimensions of variability in the way in which the procedures were implemented.

The major training programmes which were put in place for TAs and headteachers, who then ‘cascaded’ the training into their own schools, have been criticised for their quality and for the changing messages which came through as implementation progressed. However, the aim of these programmes was to assure consistent and professional delivery of the assessment process. It is neither surprising nor automatically objectionable that in implementing an innovation of this scale there should be considerable variation. This is inevitable given professional and contextual circumstances. However, given the claims of fair and purposeful assessment which were made by the Government (not least in their defence to the Unions), any deviations from universal and standardised approaches that raise questions of fairness and probity ought to be matters for concern and should be rigorously debated.

In analysing our case studies we have identified numerous ways in which the process appears to have varied. We draw here largely on the accounts given by managers (particularly heads), TAs and the teachers themselves, many of whom applied to go through the Threshold in Round 1. The account which follows builds on these three key sources, which in any particular case relate to each other in a triadic fashion, not dissimilar to that which exists in the assessment of teachers in training (Menter 1989). As in that situation, the triadic relationships demonstrate unequal power and teachers in particular frequently experience a lack of power, simply by nature of the responsibility of the other two parties for making judgements about them.

In offering an account of the variability of experience which emerged from our case studies it is possible to identify two main elements which give rise to that variability in any particular situation. The first is the characteristics of the individuals (or groups of staff) involved. Thus the workings of each triad are very much influenced by the professional and personal dispositions of the people involved. As we shall see, some heads, for example, demonstrated a fundamentally benign approach to the whole process while others saw it as more of a hard-edged tool which could be used for management purposes. Similarly, some teachers took a pragmatic or cynical approach, others were self-deprecating and nervous which smudges the boundary between issues of variability and those concerning emotional responses and orientations. The second element in giving rise to variability is the particular context within which the triad is operating. This is of course partly determined by the particular personnel involved, but there may also be many other factors, for example, the culture and ethos of the school, the social-demographic nature of the community which the school serves and the influence of external processes such as OfSTED inspection, union or LEA activity or the particular life and career histories of the teachers concerned.

We give primacy to each of the triad members in turn, starting with heads, then looking at teachers, before drawing on threshold assessors’ accounts. In each case we demonstrate variability through a series of questions, dilemmas (Berlak and Berlak, 1981) or issues which have arisen. In most cases these inevitably interact with the account from other triad members.

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HeadsGetting them through or sorting them out?We came across a range of approaches from headteachers. All had been to similar training courses, but had come to quite different conclusions about how to manage implementation in their schools. At one extreme was the Head at Bankside who saw the whole process as potentially destructive and divisive and from the outset was determined to ‘work hard to get people through’ (Bankside HT/m). All who applied at Bankside did indeed ‘get through’.

The Head at Riverton, by contrast, would have been:

... happier with the impression that I got from the first training where... if you’re doing an unsatisfactory job then the competency models kicks in ... satisfactory, you get your pay. Good and above, then the Threshold. That’s what I would have liked to have seen. I’m very comfortable with performance related pay’. (Riverton HT/m)

Many heads were all too aware of the effect of any ‘failure’ by a teacher in their schools.

You have to consider the implications of any decision you make and I mean, if I were to fail one teacher now, say, then I’ve got to be very confident that they are a failure. If I'm convinced of that, I'll do it. But the impact in a school like this when I'm doing that, will almost certainly… destroy that teacher’s career… I could certainly destroy their confidence… If she’s borderline, I’ll pass her, or for the good of the morale of that teacher and the context of the rest of the school. (Parklake HT/m interview 2)

Passive acceptance or a useful management tool?A number of heads saw the implementation of Threshold as a very valuable ‘driver’ for some of the goals they were trying to achieve within their school. One recently appointed head was very clear about this.

… two members who applied were on the SMT and I just said, “I’ll be available to support, but you take a lead on supporting each other” and they did. So when they got the support group, they had about two or three meetings to put together and think about each other's application. I wanted them to become more pro-active professionals and it was their opportunity to take part of that role and think beyond, “Oh it’s just another innovation, nothing to do with me” and I think that’s the sort of mind-set shift that I’m trying to generally do in school. (HT/m Riverton primary)

However, the same headteacher appears also to have felt compromised when it came to making the judgement as to whether or not to support some of the other teachers’ applications. As he explains:

… how can any teachers in this school be good enough to be paid extra money when they are the teachers who are part of the problem. And [they] are also the teachers who have refused to accept any responsibility for the problem. ... In terms of their ability to move the school forward, they are likely to be resistant to change, negative and not have the capacity to help the school improve. In fact they are against it, to stop it improving. ...

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There was an OfSTED and they got us through but they got through with a lot of propping up. … There was a sort of celebratory event that could start laying the ghost of the past and looking forward. ... And Threshold Assessment came right at that point. At that point, I could be very helpful and supportive which I decided to go for.

But, he adds:

If we’d gone into special measures I would have been very happy to say “no” to three of them. (HT/m Riverton)

This school’s external assessor was a serving headteacher from a neighbouring authority.

When the TA came, in the discussion she said, “well you know, which way do you want to play it, because I’m happy to say this is not met or this is met, you know, you’re the head, you’ve got to manage the fallout of this, where do you want it to go?” But I mean her judgements of the applications and the strength were exactly the same as mine and the borderline was very borderline and depends which way you want to look at it. It could have been met, it could have been not met. I mean the standards are not cut and dry and objective. (HT/m Riverton)

The account from the TA herself was rather different.

I thought they were all very good applications. Everything was well prepared, they were working hard, monitoring was good. … I was impressed given that it was a depressed area. I felt impressed. (TA/f Riverton)

She had no recollection of having to make borderline decisions at Riverton.

We quote at some length from this case because it captures very well the way in which the judgements about teachers’ performance may be profoundly influenced by management priorities, rather than by a detached and dispassionate view of an individual teacher’s performance. This head is essentially saying that he did not believe these three teachers had genuinely met the Threshold, but that the impact on the school, in its ‘recovery’ phase, of them failing, would actually be counterproductive and he was not willing to take that risk. The TA was more than willing to support this. If the school had been a stable and successful one or if the TA was one who viewed her independence as crucial, then it is very unlikely that all three would have passed.

Bending the rules or playing it straight?It was also clear that some managers stuck as closely as possible to ‘the rules of engagement’ while others applied the maximum flexibility. The Bankside Deputy Head said:

… we gave them as much time as we possibly could – we extended the deadline… forms that were given to the head that weren’t up to scratch he gave back to me saying, “Can you sort it?”… (DH/m Bankside)

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Some, but not all, schools put very explicit support arrangements in place. In large secondary schools, Deputy Heads sometimes provided structured support.

I interpreted the guidelines for them and I worked with staff after school, individually if they wanted. And I helped them. They had problems trying to interpret what the whole lot meant… Everybody worked together and sort of showed one another their forms and it was very open. They were very, very worried about it. (Parklake Dep/f)

On the other hand the Head of Clearview Primary took almost the opposite stance.

…the general impression I gave to my staff was that it was largely their responsibility to provide the evidence (HT/m)

Or as the recently appointed head of Riverton put it:

I found it a very difficult position to be in, you know, because as a head you want to be supportive of people’s career development and professional development, yet at the same time having to make judgements. I couldn’t give people any clues or support in the process.

TeachersTo apply or not to apply? Teachers’ decisions as to whether to apply for Threshold were influenced by a range of material circumstances. Sometimes these were directly tied to a teacher’s emotional response to the demands of the technology of application. For example:

One of our members of staff who was excellent but part-time, just completely opted out of it and said I don’t want anything to do with it. I can’t cope with it at all. She’s since left. She’s a brilliant teacher. Absolutely fantastic teacher. And just the kind of teacher that the Threshold is for, really, you know…. She really couldn’t handle it. Maybe she was frightened of actually not getting it. I think she just couldn’t cope with the … paperwork and having to prove everything, you know. She just said, I’m not going to justify my existence. (Dep/f Clearview)

It is at this point that the boundary between emotions and opportunity becomes less easy to distinguish.

In other cases teachers were concerned that domestic responsibilities would impinge upon their ability to make the kind of contribution to the life of the school which they saw Threshold demanding.

I mean a friend of mine who teaches here is a single parent, she’s got two children and her nursery fees cost her £1000 per month. She only earns about £1500. Now, she can’t do anything after school. She has to work through her lunch hours, as well… because when she goes home she’s got to look after children… But she shouldn’t be discriminated

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against not getting the Threshold because she’s not, you know running this extra club, or that extra club. (Teacher 3/f Bankside)

Circumstances of time and accessibility also affected teachers’ decisions about whether or not to apply.

Most people reckoned it would take 15-20 hours and I’d already planned things to do that half-term, which I would have had to cancel. Plus, I wasn’t working right near home. I wouldn’t have access to the paperwork and the facts and figures. I would have to spend most of that week in the school, trying to find my way around the system, to be able to fill in the form adequately. (Teacher 2/f Parklake)

Individual or collective?Once teachers had decided to apply, there were many differences between the ways in which they approached the process. Those who supported each other found the experience generally more positive than those who carried out the task in isolation. Troman and Woods (2001) have suggested that schools where teamwork and collaboration prevail are generally much lower stress institutions and are often more ‘successful’ against conventional measures. Yet it would seem that Threshold has been another opportunity to create divisions and increase stress.

In some schools self-help support groups were set up.

…it was a chore. But what we did was set up our own support group, so over a period of 3 sessions after school. (Teacher 1/f Clearview)

Such teamwork could be confidence boosting.

We worked collectively, that was a help, I gave somebody to read it, just to sort of see how it flowed. Or is it too pretentious because you’re embarrassed because although you’re doing it, it sounds like you’re showing off. But when we all sat down together and said well, we’re all doing the same thing, you didn’t – well you didn’t feel somebody’s doing it to get better off than somebody else. (Teacher 6/f Clearview)

A teacher at Riverton got help from someone outside the school who had apparently become something of an expert:

.. one of [my] friends … said to me, I’ll go through the form with you. She said I’ve done it with three other people already. I know the sort of thing that needs to go in and how to word it. She went through the questions with me and said this is the sort of thing they want. (Teacher 2/f Riverton)

But another teacher in the same school said:

I wasn’t supported very well for it. I remember feeling totally confused and thinking I don’t know – I don’t know what I’m going to be needing for this…. And looking at the

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actual wording of the standards, even now I look and think, well what did they mean by that? (Teacher 3/f Riverton)

Another teacher at the school had been under the impression that none of her four colleagues were going to apply. When she came back from the half term break she discovered that they had all applied.

I felt very let down that nobody had sort of told me that they were going to go ahead and do it. And especially because it was like they had actually got together as well, sort of talked about it together and nobody had contacted me. (Teacher 4/f Riverton)

In Round 2 she did apply but:

I’ve done it completely on my own… I don’t feel actually able to ask for any help because they had all done it last year… (Teacher 4/f Riverton)

The emotional dimension of these circumstances also meant that some teachers were concerned about the fairness of making an individual application, when they were convinced that any success in their school was a result of collective effort and that their own contribution could not be isolated in the way assumed within the Threshold process.

I feel guilty saying ‘me’, because I mean, it’s not just you, there’s all the sort of staff have an influence on the children. (Teacher 1/f Parklake)

As long ago as 1985, Her Majesty’s Inspectors for Schools were also commenting on the difficulty of assessing individual teacher performance, in their document Good Teachers.

A successful teacher may rise above some organizational barriers, may bring coherence to a teaching programme where a school or department provides little, and help to compensate for social deprivation or handicap among the pupils. But the contribution of even the best teachers can be limited by outside factors, and appropriate weightings need to be employed in assessing the effectiveness of teachers operating in highly favourable conditions, and those working against a backcloth of severe disadvantage, shortages of necessary resources, or inadequate management. (quoted by Walsh, 1987, 162)

Threshold assessorsHow to deal with borderline candidates? The balance of power and responsibility between the heads and the assessors rarely surfaced as a clear issue during the process. However the interviews sometimes revealed very difficult tensions, such as in a case where a head was determined to fail an experienced member of staff, yet the TA felt her to be borderline:

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… there was one woman [in a school, not Riverton, with a new headteacher], older teacher in the school who had been acting Deputy Head in a school with weaknesses…[she was] against change, not a proactive woman. I felt she was borderline. CEA told me they thought I should go with the head’s judgement. I went to the school and asked the HT are you sure? So I went with the HT. The woman appealed, applied for a review, the union got involved. The application was abysmal but the woman passed. What a waste of money. You wonder. I knew this would happen. This woman is the type of teacher, done it for 20 years, will retire, was acting Deputy Head. (TA/f Riverton)

This contrasts strongly with the following comment where TAs were ‘invested’ with negative powers which heads did not want.

Some heads didn’t want to bite the bullet and tell people that they weren’t going to recommend they go through. So, they wanted me to do it. (TA/f Parklake)

Collusion, persuasion or confrontation?In other cases TAs and heads operated in a state of collusion. For example, the Bankside headteacher who was determined to get his staff through was clearly aided in the process by the TA.

He picked up which was my weakest one… and he said, “if this person gets through, would it devalue the whole Threshold assessment process, in your eyes?” And I said, “no”. And so, he took her out of the sample and he also took out … someone who … came from a school that was closing and there was such chaos and no one could verify the evidence. (Bankside HT/m)

Sometimes the relationship was negotiated within a mutual awareness of the contextual variability of the Threshold standards.

As I would discuss with the head, what does it do for your professional standing if word gets out that I’ve come in and said, you couldn’t do your assessing. Do you want me overturning it? Now if you think you’re completely right and I’ve got it wrong, then you have to stick with it. In most cases where they weren’t sure we gave them the benefit of the doubt. Because they’re standards, they’re not absolutes and that’s the problem of interpreting them. It’s a subjective interpretation. … there’s only one that I really, really regret. I think I made the wrong decision. In one or two cases I’ve been talked into it. (TA/f Parklake)

In the following case the Head makes clear the ‘confrontational’ nature of the relationship.

... I fobbed [the Threshold Assessor] off with this strong feel that with the data systems we’ve got, it would be a very brave assessor that came in and wanted to turn it over. And that was precisely what happened, I mean. He came in, he only spent 30 minutes with me, at the beginning of the first day. Some threshold assessors are more aggressively challenging. (HT/m Parklake)

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The following comment suggests that teachers were well aware of the emerging issues of fairness and probity.

…you hear that the process is so varied, in some places they [the TA] come in and just had a chat with the head and [are] gone by break-time. I would have felt it was very unfair. I would have wanted to know more about, well how come that school got away with doing that. How did – there was no consistency in the process. A very closed process as far as I was concerned. (Teacher 6/f Clearview)

We are not suggesting that anyone should be surprised by the range of approaches taken and practices adopted across our case study schools. What this pattern shows however, is that we can be far from confident that ‘meeting the Threshold’ means the same thing in different contexts or to different people.

As Ingvarson comments:

The standards appear to have been implemented before a trial period and without any research into their validity or feasibility. There is a long history of research on teacher evaluation … but little evidence that this has been drawn on. (Ingvarson, 2001, p. 169)

He concludes:

The method used for assessing teacher performance at the Threshold is almost breathtakingly crude. (ibid.)

The very nature of the standards inevitably requires judgement by experienced and well qualified professionals. However each real situation is so complex that were it not for the fact that the great majority of candidates so far have been judged to meet the Threshold, there might well have been considerably more disquiet from the teachers and their organisations over the process than there actually was. This fact of course cannot be reassuring for the small number of candidates who have been judged not (yet!) to have met the Threshold nor does it bode well for future decisions about who is to progress on the UPS.

It is clear that while there have been attempts to make the system fair and to avoid bias or nepotism, the variability demonstrated above lead us to question whether there has been a significant shift from what Grace found in his study of inner-city schools in the 1970s.

…teachers’ competence was more likely to be assessed on the basis of features such as personality, relations with other teachers and pupils and bureaucratic efficiency than the ability to teach. (as summarised by Walsh, 1987, 163)

Crucially, if there is inconsistency in the implementation of the assessment process, then teachers will have no confidence in it. As two of us put it when discussing the introduction of Standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS):

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Consistency in applying the Standards is crucial – otherwise, what it means to have achieved them evaporates into a profusion of different expressions and claims to fairness within the system disappear. (Mahony and Hextall, 2000, p.36)

Yet, as the same study also concluded, consistency is unachievable given the nature of professional standards. There are not slide-rules or thermometers that can be used to measure teacher achievement despite the apparent ‘objectivity’ and neutrality of the language in which they are framed. As the Head of Parklake put it ‘it would help if they were standards, which they aren’t and never have been. I don’t think there’s a yard stick in them myself’.

So far, our evidence suggests that Threshold Assessment has in part been more of the same for teachers – more change, added pressure, increased surveillance and regulation, more assessment, more bureaucracy – but in part new dimensions have been added. The connection between pay and performance has been established; the strong element of ‘self-assessment’ involved in completing the form and collecting evidence, the establishment of ‘standards’ for classroom teachers are all new. So ‘the project’ has been and will continue to be very significant in defining the nature of the profession and the nature of teachers’ work.

In the trend to redefine teachers’ work, we will continue to see some teachers getting on quietly and resignedly coping with the bureaucracy which surrounds their commitment to be what they judge to be at least competent as a teacher. These are the teachers who ‘get through’. For some however, this is the straw that finally leads them to leave the profession. Of these some are, no doubt, teachers who are not successful, whilst others are valued by colleagues and managers. These are the teachers who ‘get out’. As the policy beds down there may be some for whom this new technology of Threshold assessment is affirmative and supportive of their career ambitions. These are the teachers who ‘get on’. We have yet to interview any who see Threshold Assessment as performing this role.

The wider contextThe case studies are but one element of our project. In following through the development and implementation of this policy we have gained considerable insights into the manner in which ‘Third Way’ politics have impacted on the policy process. One specific concern for us is the implications which these policies carry for issues of social justice. We have also been alerted to the deep infiltration of private sector organisations into those sectors of public provision which have historically been keystones of the social democratic state. Trade unions or professional associations have also changed their relationship to the policy process and in many ways appear to have become agents of policy implementation as much as defendants of their members’ collective interests. Developments such as these raise questions about public accountability in contemporary democracy in both national and global contexts.

Private sectorThrough a detailed examination of policy formation and implementation, it has become apparent that there exists a very heavy involvement of the private sector in the development and implementation of Threshold. Private sector engagement in this particular policy constitutes an expression of a much broader and deeper phenomenon which is having an important impact upon the social architecture of educational provision and even more extensively upon public

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accountability and democratic governance. Whilst sensitivity to the increasingly porous boundaries between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ is not new, the extent to which the private companies involved in Threshold connect to (or are owned by) multi-national and multi-functional corporations that are adding ‘edu-business’ to their commercial portfolios has surprised us. Although the forms and ‘presenting symptoms’ vary, public-private relationships are also being reconfigured in different nation-state and regional contexts. This has lead us to the international literature and to utilise cross-national contacts. Our work has been informed by Hatcher (2001) and Whitfield (2001) in the UK and via the general debates on globalisation and the increasing role of trans-national organisations in the policies of IMF, World Bank, OECD and other policy defining bodies.

Social JusticeOne of the major concerns identified about Threshold and Performance Management has been their potential to discriminate unfairly between various cohorts of teachers, eg. women and minority ethnic teachers. While we have material arising from interviews, we will not be able to report on any national picture. The DfES and unions formally committed themselves to monitoring the outcomes of Threshold to ensure that patterns of consistency and equity were established. This has not occurred.

In relation to the 1st Round (comprising 200,196 teachers) the DfES did not undertake any monitoring since only 40% of the applicants filled in the monitoring form and also, because it was a detachable form, it became separated from the applications and the two elements did not ‘speak’ to one another. In the 2nd Round the Equal Opportunities questions were included in the body of the form but the DfES did not want the private contractor to include this information in the database of those meeting (or not) the Threshold standards. As it was not costed into their contract the private contractor did not include it. All the forms from which the information could be gained have now been returned to their owners. The GTC registration database includes EO data and a record of those teachers who have achieved Threshold but they do not have a record of who has applied and hence their data can’t be used for EO analysis.

The deficiencies in monitoring procedures are by no means limited to the Threshold. We find the same shortcomings in both the AST and Fast-Track procedures and in the QTS Skills Tests. (Hextall, Mahony and Menter 2001). Others have argued the same points in relation to monitoring school student policies. As we have delved deeper into the overall politics of monitoring it has become clearer that the malaise is present in other arms of policy provision and delivery, eg. health care, housing, welfare, overall patterns of employment, etc. It remains to be seen what difference the new (May 31st) ‘duties to promote race equality’ including ethnic monitoring will make.

Role of the unionsThe unions were given the opportunity to influence policy through the bi-lateral discussions with key civil servants with the result that, according to one union official ‘more of the unions were willing to push it favourably, than oppose it’. Clearly this represents a significant shift in the role of unions in England which will bear comparison with developments in US, Scotland and Europe. To what extent unions are a central part of the specificity of national conditions and

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whether Third Wayism necessarily signals a changing role are questions that we shall be pursuing in subsequent papers.

ConclusionEach of these three issues raises questions about levels and forms of accountability which apply to major policy initiatives. This is not the place to revisit debates about the many varieties of accountability. However, we should note Rouse’s comment:

The distinctive public service values include equity, fairness, community, citizenship and democracy. The distinctive conditions include the democratic process, public accountability and openness of decision making. This presents an extremely rich and diverse notion of performance and quality in the public domain… (Rouse, 1999 p.78).

And the link between these concerns and the emotional impact and implications of variability in the assessment process is indicated in Elliott’s statement about teaching and accountability:

It is precisely because quality development in teaching requires an investment of trust in teachers, that society – in the form of its representative bodies – has the right, at particular points in time to call them to account for their practice in terms of its outcomes for students and others. This kind of accountability implies trust but not unconditional trust. (Elliott, 2001:208)

In other papers we will be exploring in greater depth both the issues around accountability in public policy and the extent to which performance management and threshold assessment for teachers in England are part of transnational and global developments.

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1 For fuller details of the introduction of Threshold Assessment see Mahony, Menter and Hextall (2002)

2 We would like to stress that these are ‘provisional’ analyses. Until we have completed the collection and analysis of all case study data we would be grateful if people would respect this ‘provisionality’.

3 This section is reported in fuller detail in our paper, Learning to Perform: The impact of Performance Assessment on teachers in England ECER Annual Conference 2002, Lisbon, September 11-14.

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Mahony, P. and Hextall, I. (2000) Reconstructing Teaching: Standards, Performance and Accountability, London: Routledge/Falmer

Mahony, P., Menter, I. and Hextall, I. (2002) ‘Threshold Assessment: another peculiarity of the English or more MacDonaldization?’ International Studies in the Sociology of Education (forthcoming).Mahony, P., Menter, I. and Hextall, I. (2002) Learning to Perform: The impact of Performance Assessment on teachers in England. Paper to ECER Annual Conference 2002, Lisbon, September 11-14.

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Whitfield, D. (2001) Public Services or the Corporate Welfare: Rethinking the Nation State in the Global Economy. London: Pluto Press.

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