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To cite this article: John Elliott (2002) The impact of intensive value for money performance auditing in educational
systems, Educational Action Research, 10:3, 499-506
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Educational Action Research, Volume 10, Number 3, 2002
THEORETICAL RESOURCES
JOHN ELLIOTT
University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
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ABSTRACT This article examines some of the consequences of value for money
audit systems on professional practices in general and those of teachers in
particular. The article argues that value for money audit actually prevent
professionals from evaluating their practices. This is because it confuses
outputs with outcomes and fails to empirically validate the former as indicators
of effectiveness in particular contexts of action. The article also argues that the
shift from external to internal audit and evaluation processes should not be
misunderstood as a move towards greater professional autonomy and a higher
trust form of accountability. It is argued that internal audit is a more exacting
expression of power over the activities of professionals than external audit.
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John Elliott
VfM audit drains too much trust out of the system where it counts, at the level
of the work place
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VALUE FOR MONEY AUDITS
By confusing outputs with outcomes VfM audit neglects the difficult task of
understanding the complex connections between service activities and their
consequences, which is central to evaluations of the effectiveness of activities
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John Elliott
VfM audit is intolerant of time and insensitive to context and thereby renders
much evidence about the real impact of practices invisible
The prevailing technologies of audit rest upon the assumption of fixed and
immutable performance indicators that do not vary across time and context.
For example, they leave little room for a view of teaching effectiveness as a
time-dependent and context-bound phenomenon. The impact of teaching on
students, the chain of effects it creates in particular contexts, takes time to
unfold, and our understanding of the connections between processes and
outcomes therefore changes over time and is never perfect. Teaching, argues
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VALUE FOR MONEY AUDITS
conditional upon teachers being trusted to engage in the process free from
the unremitting gaze of audit. This is because it is a process, which is
essentially invisible to audit. The more the technology of audit the creation
of information systems and audit trails for the purposes of inspection
encroach on and shape teaching and learning, the less space teachers have
for quality development and becoming effective teachers.
It is precisely because quality development in teaching requires an
investment of trust in teachers that society in the form of its
representational bodies has the right at particular points in time to call
them to account for their practice in terms of its outcomes for students and
others. Teachers can exercise accountability by demonstrating at these
points their ability to make transient use of evidence about the impact of
their teaching in ways that improve their practical judgments and decisions.
Such demonstrations would consist of public accounts of reflective practice.
This kind of accountability implies trust, but not unconditional trust.
There comes a point at which the strengthening of performance audit
at the level of classrooms becomes counter-productive. At this point it
disrupts rather than enhances the development of teaching quality, drains
away the necessary amount of trust such development depends on, and
renders teachers largely unaccountable for the outcomes as opposed to the
outputs of their teaching. The strengthening of accountability through
audit may bring more comfort to policy-makers, and perhaps the
consumers of education, as a guarantor of minimal standards, but it is
likely to depress quality development. It is not that accountability within
educational systems is not in need of further strengthening, but this needs
to be based on a different logic of evaluation to the one that shapes
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John Elliott
Given its intolerance of time for development and its aspiration to render
performance totally transparent to its gaze, performance auditing places
practitioners in the role of the ever-active performer. The audit culture is
intolerant of time because it is shaped by a sense of urgency. From its
perspective, the system is in a state of crisis and disaster is always
imminent. Things have to be done now to ward it off. People within the
organisation therefore have to be kept in a continuous state of activation.
This implies changes to the way in which professional selves are
conceptualised and developed. In the case of teachers the aim of professional
development would be to promote the auditable, competitive and ever-active
performer in the place of the inspiring teacher (see Strathern, 2000).
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Concluding Remarks
Before the rise of performance auditing, the accountability procedures for
rofessionals was very weak and it can be justifiably argued that too much
trust was invested in them unconditionally. However, the solution to the
problem is not to keep on extending a compliance model of accountability
derived from the private sector. When it is extended to the point where most
of the trust invested in practitioners has finally drained away and teachers
are kept so busy improving their fitness for audit that they have no time left
over for reflectively developing the quality of their practice, such an
accountability system becomes dysfunctional. The solution is to develop a
new model of professional accountability that invests conditional trust in
practitioners and is underpinned by a different logic of evaluatory practice.
Correspondence
Profesor John Elliott, CARE School of Education and Professional
Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom
(john.elliott@uea.ac.uk).
References
Galton, M., Gray, J. & Rudduck, J. (1999) The Impact of School Transitions and
Transfers on Pupils: pupil progress and attainment, Research Report RR131.
Nottingham: DFEE Publications.
Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society. Oxford: University Press.
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REINTERPRETING EVIDENCE-
BASED PRACTICE:
A NARRATIVE APPROACH
506