ABSTRACT
Unless we address the issue of school culture in a direct way there is little chance that school improvement will be achieved.
(Hopkins et al., 1994, p. 85)
My interest in school improvement began some years ago when I was teaching in an inner city primary school, judged by Ofsted to be under performing and placed in ‘special measures’, following an inspection. A school in special measures is subject to the criteria and monitoring arrangements that require Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector to ‘arrange for the inspection of all schools’ (Ofsted, 1999, p. 1). Following the inspection, a report is published and where the school is judged to be failing – or likely to fail – to provide an acceptable standard of education, it is made subject to special measures. This judgement is based on criteria set out in the Framework for the Inspection of Schools (Ofsted, 1993). This meant that the school became directly accountable to what can be
seen as a harsh audit regime. In response to this accountability, intense pressure was put on teachers to improve their teaching, and in so doing, improve academic attainment. As a result, the teachers felt that they were being blamed for the school’s failure and that they were not doing a good job. Inevitably, this had a negative effect on staff morale and made it increasingly
hard for us to be motivated to work on the improvement agenda. In addition, a rigid timescale was imposed on the school to demonstrate its improvement. This meant, of course, that not only was raising academic standards the priority, but that all efforts were focused on standards. Consequently, other aspects of school life, such as staff development and pastoral care, were largely neglected. All of this made me even more conscious of how national policy views of
improvement have played a significant role in encouraging the audit culture within schools. In particular, I saw how it uses the test and examination success of pupils in order to make judgements about school effectiveness. An improving school, according to these criteria, is one that moves in an upward direction in the league tables on the basis of its test results. Motivating staff to raise the academic standards of those children who are working at significantly lower levels than the majority of the children therefore becomes the main focus for a head teacher. Although the government claims that there has been an improvement in
national test results, there is evidence that many students are marginalized, particularly those from economically deprived areas and from certain minority groups (Ainscow and West, 2006). Some researchers have called this kind of improvement, in which schools have to prove their competence by the power of audit, as ‘quick fix’ improvement (Stoll and Myers, 1998). They argue that improvement efforts are focused on raising pupils’ attainment without developing sustainable systems at the same time to support that improvement. My experience of working in such a school was that although it was indeed possible to improve the test results, sustaining that improvement would prove to be far more problematic.
