ABSTRACT
The idea of ‘performance indicators’ did not emerge from within the professional culture of teachers. It is essentially a construction of ‘outsiders’ rather than of ‘insiders’: a device for establishing a technology of surveillance and control over the performance of schools and the teachers who work in them. This chapter provides an example of one creative response to this challenge by a group of Italian teachers. The Labour Party knew that it was vulnerable in the lead-up to the General Election of 1992 to the Government’s claim that it would increase public spending on education. The idea of performance indicators had not an unproblematic accommodation for Jack Straw, although he defined the problem as one of degree of technical sophistication. The performance of schools and teachers intrinsically manifests educational quality if the performance satisfies appropriate quality criteria. Quality indicators can never be fixed bench-marks.
