ABSTRACT
Accountability tells teachers what to do and how to do it; agency trusts them to know and take the right actions. Agency is concerned with teachers' ability to be active participants in their role as professionals. The Scottish Government have decided to learn instead from systems high on accountability, performativity, and underpinned by high-stakes standardised testing and narrow curricular focus. Little prominence was given to curriculum, learning and teaching, or the promotion of teacher agency, and references to all the drivers were couched in accountability language – standards and expectations. The two main national aims expressed by the Scottish Government in their National Improvement Framework are to ensure that every child "achieves the highest standards in literacy and numeracy" and "has the same opportunity to succeed, with a particular focus on closing the poverty-related attainment gap". "Key drivers" to meet its objectives were identified as: "school leadership, teacher professionalism, parental engagement, assessment of children's progress, school improvement and performance information".
