Policymakers in recent decades have pursued a top-down approach to improving public services. This IPPR report suggests a road map to how an alternative approach of improvement through empowerment - of both teachers and schools - can drive excellence in education.
The top-down approach to improving public services was broadly inspired by new public management (NPM), a theory of public sector reform which argued that the absence of market forces in public services meant they suffered from weak incentives to innovate and improve.
In schooling, the NPM approach has largely manifested through the use of Ofsted as the schools’ inspectorate, combined with high-stakes, top-down, and often punitive, regulation from the Department for Education, and the use of choice and competition through league tables.
This report suggests that we need to shift the drivers of better schooling from high stakes top-down accountability to a system which empowers schools and teachers to innovate and improve.
According to the report, skilled, empowered teachers are our best hope for improving schools. yet compared to other OECD nations, the professional development offer we provide to our teachers is woefully inadequate. This makes it harder for them to do their job properly and undermines retention – damaging pupils in the process and resulting in unsustainable costs to taxpayer.