ABSTRACT
School league tables and associated mechanisms constrain a school to closely follow government policy in areas relating to public examination. This has implications for the curriculum offer. A public framework of league tables helps normalize the conception of schooling as a kind of commodity, and education itself as available for discussion in market terms. This is of a piece with the continuing attempt by neoliberal governments to privatize or corporatize (Gann, 2020) the public sector. This chapter firstly examines how school league tables and related mechanisms work before describing the adverse consequences which result for students and teachers, the ecology of schools within a local area, and the notion of what is valuable in education.
