ABSTRACT
School effectiveness is a microtechnology of change. Change is brought about by a focus on the school as a site-based system to be managed. In this chapter, we wish to argue that the school effectiveness movement is an example of new managerialism in education. Education, like other public services, is now characterized by a range of structural realignments, new relationships between purchasers and providers and new coalitions between management and politics. Neo-liberalism has informed the development of social policy and policy has been implemented via the structures and value system of new managerialism. New managerialism in education has implied that the 3 Rs are best achieved via the 3 Es (economy, efficiency and effectiveness). Institutional analysis has replaced sociology of education (Ryan, 1995). Drawing on principles of systems theory advocated in the 1980s by influential reports such as the Hargreaves Report (1984), school effectiveness is an output-oriented, plan-based ideology. The school is seen as a series of interrelated elements which transform various inputs into desired outputs. As we argued in Chapter 3, it involves new structures, new rationalities and new regimes of regulation, introduced largely from the corporate context of the private sector ostensibly to promote efficiency, productivity, quality and cost-effectiveness in the public services. Values, as well as technologies and drive systems from the cultural world of business and commerce have been imported into education, bringing with them new meanings, priorities and truths.
