Getting Through , Getting on Or Getting Out

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‘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 Menter

University of Paisley

Faculty of Education and Media

University Campus Ayr

Beech Grove

Ayr KA8 0SR

Scotland

Tel: 01292 886201

Professor Pat Mahony

Froebel College

University of Surrey Roehampton

Roehampton Lane,

London SW15 5PJ

Tel:020 8392 3172

Ian Hextall

Froebel College

University of Surrey Roehampton

Roehampton Lane,

London SW15 5PJ

Tel:020 8392 3172

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 Studies

By 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 emotional

impact of Threshold and variability in its implementation.[2] We shall also make brief reference at the end of the paper on some broader issues[3].

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)

ThresholdAssessment 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 Primarywith350 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 Threshold

Teachers’ negative feelings towards the initial announcement of Threshold ranged from. resignation, (‘... here we go again’ (Teacher 4/fClearview Primary)) or ‘... oh another 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/fClearview 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/fBankside 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.

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/fBankside Secondary)

Those in the first Round1 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/fatBankside 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/fClearview Primary)

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 process

We 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 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/fClearview 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)