The Educational Costs of Managerialism



Richard Bates
Faculty of Education
Deakin University
Vic 3217
(rbates@deakin.edu.au)



Paper presented to the Joint Conference of the Educational Research 
Association, Singapore and the Australian Association for Research in 
Education
Singapore Polytechnic, November 25-29 1996

Abstract




Managerialism  is an ideology with two distinct claims: a) efficient 
management can solve almost any problem and b) practices which are 
appropriate for the conduct of private sector enterprises can also be 
applied to the public sector (Rees, 1995). This paper examines these 
claims in relation to education as a public service and in particular, 
contrasts the practices of managerialism with the requirements of the 
message systems of schools: curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. 

As Rees (1995:15) suggests 'Managerialism is an ideology with two 
distinct claims; a) efficient management can solve almost any problem 
and b) practices which are appropriate for the conduct of private 
sector enterprises can also be applied to public sector services.  Rees 
goes on to argue that such claims are fraudulent and fictional. 
Nonetheless such claims are persistent and pervasive, not only within 
management culture, but also within the media and certain political 
cultures. The result, as Pusey (1991) so clearly points out, is the 
subversion of any notion of public service within the Public Service 
and the abandonment of any notion of the social and cultural 
responsibilities of government.  Specifically, the redefinition  of the 
state as a mechanism for facilitating the operation of market forces is 
advocated through an ideological attack on the social responsibilities 
of government mounted by governments themselves through their embrace 
of economic rationalism. 

The 'carrier' of economic rationalism is indeed a notion of 'strong 
management' through which public and private, individual and collective 
interests are managed through competition in various markets. As Rees 
(1995:15-16) puts it:

Economic policies have nurtured the ideology of managerialism and the 
rise of managers who advocate its precepts. More specifically, it is 
the policies of economic rationalism which the new breeds of managers 
are employed to implement even if they only comprehend those policies 
in terms of cliches and prescriptions: cut back on the responsibilities 
of government and rely on market forces; introduce private competition 
into public sector services; promote independence as a means of 
ridiculing the welfare state, and question the existence of 'society'.

The invasion of government by such ideologies and their articulation 
into the 'public' sector contributes to the pathological reduction of 

any terrain on which governments can be held accountable for cultural 
and social responsibilities. Yet these responsibilities are all the 
more crucial in societies increasingly dominated, not by traditions of 
community and solidarity - even at the level of the nation state- but 
by notions of global markets (Horsman and Marshall:1994). But, as 
Touraine (1984, quoted in Pusey 1991:196) reminds us:

Only the state can integrate social actors who are separated by the 
market, opposed to each other by class relations, atomised by rational 
individualism.

Managerialism, however, is an ideology and a practice that is blind to 
such imperatives, even while managers themselves may bewail the decline 
of family values, morality , duty, loyalty and responsibility which 
their organisations both depend upon and simultaneously undermine.  
Managerialism is not then simply a technology, but also a set of 
practices which carry heavy ideological baggage  and which undertake 
significant work in the diminishing of structural and social practices 
which have historically served purposes of cultural and social 
integration. As Rees (1995:16) puts it:

Managers are not neutral technocrats. They derive their cues and their 
scripts from a set of policies which contend that an economy needs to 
be run like a market with as little interference as possible, that 
human effort can be counted a commodity, and that in the conduct of 
organisations financial accountability is the criterion to measure 
performance.

The results of such an ideology and its accompanying practices are 
argued by Rees (1995)  typically to be the intensification of work, 
increased stress, lowered morale and decreasing commitment to 
professional or organisational goals . 

If these are the internal results of organisational managerialism then 
they are matched by external outcomes where increased focus on 
managerialism is accompanied by increasing social and economic 
inequalities and a resulting diminution of social solidarity and 
integration (Rees 1995, Raskell, 1993, Stillwell, 1993). Unsurprisingly 
the internal practices of management, especially the pursuit of 
efficiency through more intensive 'human resource management' 
(i.e.shedding staff) and the appropriation of resulting profits to 
themselves and to shareholders involve very considerable human costs:

The human costs of greed are multiple. The humaneness of those who 
accept such rewards, believing they are merited, is diminished. Costs 
endured by those subjected to managerialist practices include 
unemployment and associated poverty; part-time work and accompanying 
insecurity; stress, anxiety and loss of morale among employees; a 
persistent sense of powerlessness; and illnesses which may lead to 
premature death.
(Rees, 1995:209).

The human costs are not unrelated to organisation costs. While there 
may be short term (essentially financial) 'benefits', longer term costs 
are incurred.

While short-term gains to company profit and redistribution of social 
product away from the employee and towards the employer have been made, 
there are natural human limitations to the methods of increasing 
productivity adopted by the managerialists; limitations made obvious by 
the virtual epidemic of occupational stress-related illness.

(Solondz, 1995:213) 

Moreover, within the practices of managerialism the notion of 
efficiency is a very restricted one, related only to the internal costs 
of the organisation. Thus, by displacing costs elsewhere (on to other 
organisations, government, employees, clients, the environment etc) the 
particular 'efficiencies' of the organisation may be increased even if 
the collective cost of the practice increases through increases in 
unemployment, social welfare or health related costs, reduced standards 
of living, destruction of the quality of life or the environment.

For example:

...technical efficiency can also be increased by displacing costs 
'off-budget', so that they are not taken into account in the 
cost-benefit calculations through which they are measured. An example 
of this is the practice of state public hospital systems shifting costs 
from themselves to the Commonwealth by bulk billing public hospital 
patients for medical and diagnostic services so that the costs are 
borne by Medicare, instead of the hospital's budget. This costs the 
Federal Government at least $300 million a year (Ferrari, 1995), while 
making state hospitals 'more efficient' by reducing their costs as 
measured by their own budgets. This practice apparently increases the 
total national health bill (because bulk billing costs more than 
providing the same services through salaried hospital medical staff), 
so that increasing the efficiency of state public hospitals may 
actually decrease the efficiency of the total national health system.

(Meutzelfeldt: 1995:99)

Again, costs can be displaced on to clients in ways which increase 
organisational 'efficiency' while simultaneously making clients 
'responsible' for the diminished quality of services. 

In Victoria, early childhood education services were restructured in 
1993, with kindergarten teachers and committees of management carrying 
more responsibilities and with funding based on enrolments rather than 
salary and associated costs. As a result, costs to government were 
reduced by 20-30 per cent. A survey of teachers found that there were 
reductions in the six major quality indicators of: curriculum; 
staff-child ratios; staff-child relationships; staff-parent 
interactions; physical environment, and administration.
(Meutzelfeldt: 1995:99)

Such procedures are common in the private sector but are becoming 
pervasive in the public sector which raises serious questions about the 
social and cultural effects of such practices and the mechanisms by 
which managerialism appears to relieve government of social and 
cultural responsibility. As Muetzelfeldt (1995:103-4)) puts it

...any increase in narrowly defined efficiency can actually increase 
the displaced and hidden costs by more than the 'on budget' 
savings....That is, increased technical efficiency (as measured by the 
organisation's budget) may go hand in hand with decreased social 
effectiveness. As well, costs are displaced onto less organised and 
less powerful groups (which is why they are singled out to carry the 
extra costs), so the displacement also increases inequality. In the 
private sector technical efficiency ('the bottom line') may be an end 
in itself- for better or for worse But in the public sector the end 
should be social effectiveness, and managerialism does not deliver 
this.


But one of the prime characteristics of managerialism (and one of the 
reasons it is so attractive to governments) is its apparent ability to 
convert social, cultural and political problems into technical 
problems. As Buchanan (1995:55) suggests 
 

One of the hallmarks of contemporary managerialist discourse is its 
tendency to define social, economic or political issues as  management 
problems. In the field of labour management (i.e. managing people at 
work) the 'problem' no longer involves addressing the complexities of 
'personnel' or 'industrial relations' issues. Rather, labour related 
issues are seen as a special case of managing resources to achieve 
particular outcomes, the only difference being that the resources are 
human. Unsurprisingly, this branch of management is commonly referred 
to as 'human resource management'.

Human resource management directs much of its attention to increasing 
the 'flexibility' of human resources as a crucial contribution to the 
strategies required to produce flexible responses to increased global 
competition and rapid change.  Storey (1989 in Buchanan 1995:56) 
summarises the four major  concerns of this doctrine.

叼ersonnel and industrial relations functions that are not integrated 
with the mainstream management of the enterprise

仟pproaches to personnel management that are too centralised within the 
enterprise

叩eglect of workers as individuals arising from 'collectivist' 
approaches to labour management such as industrial relations; and

叱orker estrangement and alienation arising from all these 
'inefficiencies'.

Solutions to these concerns are advocated along the following lines.

去uman resources must be managed 'strategically' alongside other 
(physical, financial, capital) resources  and treated in the same way 
rather than as a different order of resource.

召ine managers are best placed to determine specific labour needs and 
should have hiring and firing authority  largely free of central 
restrictions.

可ndividual contracts with employees are preferable to collective 
contracts with employee organisations so as to allow greater 
flexibility and reward of high performing individuals.

叱orkers must be empowered in ways which encourage initiative and 
commitment within team based forms of work organisation.

The introduction of such mechanisms is claimed to bring considerable 
benefits to both worker and firm as Buchanan (1995:58)  suggests.

The benefits purported to be associated with this new approach to 
labour management are considerable. These include greater flexibility 
and hence competitiveness for firms in the marketplace, and more 
challenging and interesting jobs for employees. The BCA (Business 
Council of Australia) has gone as far as to assert that if changes 
inspired by this agenda are introduced, labour productivity should 
increase by over 25 per cent.



The facts of the matter are, however, somewhat different. Buchanan 
(1995) reports that there is little evidence of key decisions being 
devolved. Indeed the introduction of information technology has allowed 
increased surveillance and central control of essential parameters. ' 
The rhetoric of devolution and decentralisation is yet to make a real 
impact in practice at most workplaces' (1995:60).

There is also failure to match the rhetoric of employee involvement and 
local management flexibility  in workplace practices. Again, central 
control over workforce size and structure and capital investment 
invalidates local management and worker autonomy. Thirdly, it is clear 
that the substitution of individual for collective contracts seldom 
results in increased rewards to significant numbers of workers whatever 
productivity gains are achieved by the shedding of labour. 

The impact of human resource management policies is, in practice, quite 
different from its ideological claims.

Far from contributing to the development of an exciting new world of 
increased opportunities at work, what is actually occurring is the 
restoration and legitimation of managerial prerogatives under the guise 
of an allegedly new approach to labour management (Buchanan, 1995:62). 



Managerialism in Education

If managerialism in the private sector insists that 'human resources' 
be treated strategically - that is in the same manner as other inputs 
into the production process- then the translation of such doctrines 
into the public sector can be expected to have similar rationale and 
utilise similar practices in the pursuit of managerial prerogatives. 

The context for such changes is one of a major shift in economic 
paradigm in Australia as elsewhere. As Karmel (1995:170) suggests:

Until the early 1970's the accepted view of the Australian economy was 
one of a mixed economy in which the public sector played an important 
role in the production of goods and services, and in which government 
intervention was accepted as a norm. This view of the economy has now 
been left behind. The role of the public sector has been de-emphasised; 
much greater weight is being placed on the private sector with an 
insistence on individualism, private enterprise and the 
market...Symptoms of this paradigm shift include emphases on market 
forces, deregulation, privatisation, user pays and best practice 
corporate styles. Lower taxation, and therefore reduced government 
expenditure, has become a goal of economic policy, as has the promotion 
of efficiency in the use of inputs to produce outcomes and 
effectiveness in the production of outcomes to meet goals.

The market is seen as the prime mechanism for the imposition of 
discipline in the pursuit of efficiency. Accountability through 
competition is the slogan now imposed upon public as well as private 
organisations particularly at the behest of the business community. 

The change in the economic paradigm has not only stressed the 
instrumental role of education but has brought with it an emphasis on 
accountability. A characteristic of market forces is that they exercise 
a discipline on the suppliers of goods and services and are seen to do 
so. The freedom of customers to shop around and the search for profit 

promotes the efficient and effective production of goods and 
services...[even though] markets do not always produce optimum results: 
monopoly, imperfect competition and externalities all distort market 
outcomes.
(Karmel, 1995:171)

The problems of market theory and practice are rather more serious than 
this, as I have pointed out elsewhere (Bates 1995).  However, despite 
major difficulties with both the market model and its operations, the 
economic rationalists and business leaders who now dominate most 
governments in the English speaking world continue to insist that 
market 'discipline' be applied to the public sector.

[Market] discipline applies to a much lesser degree to services 
produced in the public sector, of which educational services are a 
prime example. The push for accountability, which has gathered impetus 
over the last decade, reflects a recognition of this. Its development 
has mirrored the shift in the economic paradigm towards market forces. 
It aims to institutionalise processes for keeping pressure on 
educational institutions, their staff and students to enhance 
efficiency and effectivess in the interests of economic performance.
(Karmel, 1995:171)




In education  such market discipline is being artificially created in 
two ways. Along with other government trading and service enterprises 
'benchmark' exercises are being created which provide yardsticks 
against which the relative cost of the provision of goods and services 
can be measured (Scales 1994,1995). Thus states whose cost of 
'producing' a primary school student are higher than the national 
average can justify cutting their financial inputs. Such comparisons, 
among other things, have justified Victoria in reducing its educational 
expenditure by 10.3% since 1992 while Australia as a whole increased 
educational funding by 3.8%.  Retention rates in Victoria have fallen 
by 8% over the same period and class sizes  have increased to become 
the worst in Australia with over 62% of classes bigger than the 
Government's own business plan target of 24.5 students per class 
(against an Australian average of 17.9 students per teacher).  No doubt 
there have been efficiency gains, if those efficiencies are measured 
solely in monetary terms. It seems also that there may well have been 
some educational losses, measured in social or cultural  (let alone 
personal) terms.  

Moreover, these losses are unevenly distributed throughout Victoria. Of 
the 260 schools closed during this period the majority were in rural 
and working class areas. Of the 10,700 students who dropped out of 
school during this period the majority were in working class (western 
metropolitan and rural) areas. Currently students in western suburbs 
are at least 10% more likely to dropout (whether male or female) than 
students in eastern suburbs despite youth unemployment rates in the 
west being four times as high as those in the east. Again, while 
baseline funding may be structured so as to marginally advantage 
working class schools one comparison of special purpose grants shows 
that  Footscray City Secondary College (in a western working class, 
multi cultural suburb)    receives $147,000 for special learning needs 
while Balwyn College (in the Minister for Education's comfortable upper 
class western suburb) receives and additional $306,200  in specific 
program grants, a difference that more than redresses the $10 per 
capita advantage enjoyed by Footscray. Moreover, schools in eastern 
suburbs report receiving up to $522  per pupil per year from non 

compulsory fees and fundraising while schools in the western suburbs 
raise as little as $19 from similar sources (Centre for Democratic 
Education, 1996). 

It seems clear from such information that market discipline is doing 
little to ensure that traditional goals such as equity in access and 
provision (a 'level playing field') are achieved. Theoretically, of 
course,  sensible parents, interested in their children's welfare and 
aware of public information on the relative resources and performance 
of schools will simply remove their children from Footscray City 
College and transfer them across town to enrol in Balwyn College.  The 
fact that they do not seem to be doing so is presumably because they 
are not well informed or that they are not interested in their 
children's welfare, or perhaps, some 'imperfection' in the market. 
Nonetheless such imperfections do seem to be present in most of the 
educational quasi-markets established at the behest of the economic 
rationalists whether in England, Australia or New Zealand (Whitty, 
1996). 

The governmental response to such differences in 'outcomes' has largely 
been to create national criteria against which performance can be 
measured or 'benchmarked' against 'best practice'.  In Australia and 
New Zealand as in England national curricula have been established, 
national assessment regimes established and considerable pressure 
brought to bear for the publication of 'league tables'. In many cases 
auditing and accountability mechanisms are also imposed. Such 
mechanisms are very clearly spelt out for schools, but similar, though 
more ambiguous, 'performance indicators' are applied to other 
educational sectors such as universities. 





As Karmel suggests even here the emphasis on outcomes produces some 
major difficulties.

另he labelling and grading of institutions in rank order has serious 
consequences for those low in the order, threatening their market 
standing and their ability to attract students and resources.

可nability to attract resources and students reduces rather than 
increases the ability of the institution to improve its performance.

叼erformance indicators often omit consideration of extraneous 
variables (for instance the socio-economic context of the institution) 
thus making comparisons between institutions invalid.

叼erformance is often measured according to quantitative indications of 
 single variables which omit non-measurable attributes of performance 
and which cannot be aggregated except by making invalid assumptions.

另he costs of measurement and audit are high both internally and 
externally and may outweigh the benefits.

另he atmosphere of compliance generated by such procedures may well 
distort institutional priorities and reduce diversity.

可nstitutional attempts to present performance as high may well negate 
arguments about the inadequacy of resources even where such a lack and 
its deleterious effects can be clearly demonstrated.

(Karmel, 1995:177)

If such caveats apply to universities, how much more do they apply to 
schools who are located in a much greater diversity of contexts, with 
much greater diversity of composition 
and much greater diversity of resources?

For the truth is that schools and universities operate in a diversity 
of contexts and with a variety of purposes which are always contested. 
Some of these conflicts are historical in character. As Grace (1995) 
has argued in his study of school leadership, current attempts to 
reimpose on schools in England their moral responsibility for social 
integration conflict with the simultaneous demands for entrepreneurial 
leadership in a competitive market.

Many [head teachers] found themselves in difficult and contradictory 
situations. At a national level they were being informed by a Secretary 
of State for Education that the traditional spiritual and moral values 
transmitted in English schooling must be maintained for the good of the 
moral cohesion of society as well as for the good of individual pupils. 
At a local level they were encountering new conditions for schooling 
which seemed to negate those messages with an emphasis on individual 
competitive survival, visible and measurable success, and a market 
culture in which 'winning' was the ultimate value.

(Grace, 1995:139)




The processes by which such changes are constructed also produce 
significant conflicts.

...contemporary school leadership is locked into a network of 
contradictory possibilities and shows both confidence and doubt about 
the future direction of schooling. This network consists of 
contradictions between the democratic potential of some reforms, for 
example: empowered school governors; greater accountability to parents; 
decentralised local management of schools; and, the centralist and 
controlling tendency of other reforms, e.g., national curriculum and 
assessment prescriptions, publication of hierarchical league tables of 
'results', differential funding according to school status approved by 
the government.

(Grace, 1995:195)

Such conflicts affect teachers in quite specific ways as their role is 
restructured through governmental attempts to shift conceptions and 
practices in each of the key message systems of schools: curriculum, 
pedagogy and assessment.  Such shifts also imply a reconstruction of 
the sense of self - or professionalism- enjoyed by teachers.

Shifts towards a highly prescriptive, atomised curriculum have taken 
place in England, Australia and New Zealand. School knowledge has 
variously been structured into eight (Australia) or ten (England) 
curriculum areas which are then arbitrarily assigned hierarchies of 
outcomes (competencies) ordered into units which become the building 
blocks from which teachers construct the work of themselves and their 
pupils. Only subsequently (in Australia) were projects set up to 
provide epistemological and historical justification for both 
curriculum areas and lists of competencies. Collins (1994) has provided 
a trenchant critique of the processes and products of this initiative 

in Australia. However, some of the most interesting empirical research 
into the effects of such curriculum structures has come out of England. 
Recently, for instance, Helsby and McCulloch (1996) have reported an 
empirical study of teachers responses to the imposition of the content 
and form of the National Curriculum. 

Findings...suggest that the fixed content and recording procedures and 
short timescales implied in modular approaches are likely not only to 
create additional work pressures but also to limit teacher flexibility 
to respond to needs which arise during the course of teaching: in other 
words their freedom to make professional judgements within the course 
of their practice is constrained by prior, self imposed curricular 
prescriptions.

(Helsby & McCulloch, 1996:62) 

One of the arguments for the national curriculum was, of course, that 
its prescription would free teachers to concentrate upon their real 
area of professional expertise - helping children to learn. What 
appears to be happening through the prescription of an overloaded 
curriculum full of more 'objectives' and 'competencies' than could 
reasonably be covered in the school timetable, is that the work of both 
teachers and pupils is becoming intensified and  overdetermined.  The 
result is not the release of professional energy into a new pedagogical 
practice, but rather a sense of professional restriction in both 
pedagogy as well as curriculum.

Thus, far from being a site of professional creativity, the evidence 
suggested that many teachers felt disempowered by the developments 
which they were legally, if reluctantly, forced to implement.

(Helsby & McCulloch, 1996:63)

The relationship between teacher professionalism and centralised 
curricular control of the kind being implemented through the various 
National Curricula seems fairly clear and substantially negative. The 
more detailed the centralised prescription the lower the level of 
professionalism experienced by teachers.

...the introduction of a centralised and prescriptive National 
Curriculum appears to have weakened [teachers] professional confidence, 
lowered morale and left them uncertain both of their ability to cope 
and of their right to take major curriculum decisions. These findings 
are consistent with the view of increased state control of curriculum 
undermining teacher professionalism. Indeed, many of these teachers 
appear almost as victims of government policies, adopting a largely 
reactive, rather than proactive, role in their responses.

(Helsby & McCulloch, 1996:68)

Similar responses are reported in New Zealand where

The NZCER surveys show a steady decline in teacher morale; they also 
show what seems to be a quite high turnover rate for principals (42% in 
all the schools in the sample between 1991 and 1993). One is left with 
the troubling though that [such initiatives] in education may produce 
only a small gain for the substantial cost of foregoing attention to 
teaching and learning, within positive, supportive relationships.
(Wylie, 1995:163)

Popkewitz (1996) , in his discussion of changes in the governmentality 
of various national education systems emphasises the commonality of the 

model currently being employed.

General curriculum goals are set by the central government to provide 
local school districts with flexibility and a certain degree of 
autonomy in developing implementation plans. In return, the central 
state bureaucracy monitors outcomes and content through psychometric 
measurements rather than processes.

(Popkewitz, 1996: 30)

Such programs are frequently accompanied by calls for a renewal of 
professionalism on the part of the teacher.

The call for professionalism relates to a re-visioning of occupational 
identity. It gives value to school work that includes greater teacher 
responsibility and flexibility in implementing goal governed approaches 
of the state.
(Popkewitz, 1996:30)

Such approaches emphasise the role of professional associations in 
opening up and altering the perspectives teachers have towards their 
work and their pupils, bringing them significantly into line with the 
purposes of the state.

...current...reforms seek to regulate by opening up the 'minds' of 
teachers through reworking the notions of teacher competence, skills 
and knowledge about school subjects. the central focus is [on] 
teachers' and students' capabilities and dispositions towards 
knowledge.
(Popkewitz, 1996:38)


In this process, teachers are to be persuaded that their own personal 
interests coincide with the benevolent interests of the state.

The significance of the strategies of reform in the problem of 
governing are in their intrusive qualities. The potential of 
constructivist discourses results from their linking people's knowledge 
of the world with institutional 'goals' in a manner which enables them 
to feel satisfied that the process will effectively realise personal as 
well as social ends. Inscribed in the concrete technologies of pedagogy 
are the correct dispositions  and capabilities to be self-regulating 
and policing , so that the individual teacher is...not only 'able' but 
also 'inclined.

(Popkewitz, 1996:43)

The strong emphasis on inservice education which accompanies the 
current moment of reform is indication of the importance placed on 
changing teachers' subjectivities- even to the point of excluding 
traditional concerns of teaching and learning strategies and pupil 
welfare and focussing exclusively upon the content, structure and 
pedagogical strategies implied by the specification of centralised 
curriculum through outcomes and competencies. As Robertson (1996) 
suggests

The teacher is now constituted as the 'manager' of resources which 
might lead to pre-specified learning outcomes and targeted 
performances. And while learners are to be enterprising, self-directed, 
work in multi-level groups, and progress on an individualised basis 
(Schools Council, 1992), their endeavours within school are almost 
exclusively directed towards their 'flexible' participation  in the 

world of work rather than participation within the wider society.

(Robertson, 1996:47)

And here the links back to the position of the economic rationalists of 
the corporate and governmental worlds become clear again. Such 
pedagogical production of personal and cognitive attributes needs 
verification. Yardsticks must be established by which to judge 
competition between schools and individuals within schools so that 
'market discipline' can be imposed. Programs of national testing must 
be constructed through which system, school and individual performance 
can be compared. It is not enough to prescribe a national curriculum 
and reconstruct teachers' work and identity. These initiatives, the 
Business Council of Australia insists

...should be accompanied by a rigorous system of accountability for 
performance targets based upon a clear set of educational objectives 
for the systems themselves and for the nation.

(Loton, 1991 in Watkins, 1995:76)

Despite the hurried introduction of national testing it seems that such 
systems of measurement and accountability are far less easy to 
construct in ways that produce useful information, than the corporate 
leaders suggest. For instance the National Foundation for Educational 
Research in England has had this to say in response to the compilation 
of league tables based upon schools relative examination successes.

Effectiveness indicators such as the total number of examination passes 
or a school's position in a league table are seriously flawed and 
unfair, taking no account of the quality of the intake in terms of 
either ability or special circumstance. Such indicators are unfair to 
pupils and parents as they could be led to choose schools less 
successful than they seem. They also mislead schools with a high 
quality intake as there is little incentive to improve results or know 
whether they need improving and they are of dubious value to 
administrators as little indication is offered about which schools are 
performing successfully.

(NFER, 1991 in Vann, 1995:187)

Testing according to performance on the National Curriculum as well as 
examination results will, however, continue, but dispute over the 
meaning and relevance of such results shows signs of appeal to further 
testing so as to get measures which are more 'comprehensive' and 
'relevant'. As Gray and Wilcox suggest

There is widespread agreement that exam and test results are not 
sufficient to do justice to schools' efforts. With the introduction of 
testing at all four stages of the National Curriculum, however, schools 
will probably be deluged by information pertaining to their pupils' 
cognitive performance. Some effort will be devoted to constructing 
further measures to place alongside these kinds of outcomes, if broader 
views about the nature and purposes of education are to be given 
credence.

(Gray and Wilcox, 1994, in Vann, 1995:189)

The result of such increased measurement is already being reported by 
teachers. There is so much to be measured that there is little time to 
teach it! As Walsh comments

Systems in which everything is measured are also likely to be systems 
in which there is reduction in learning, especially learning through 
mistakes. A system of specified services, defined standards, and 
measured performance is likely to be one in which experimentation and 
risk are likely to be avoided.

(Walsh, 1994 in Vann 1995:188)

Thus while accountability purposes may be addressed by such processes, 
the hyperationalisation (Wise, 1979) introduced by such minute 
specification and overburdening of schools, teachers and pupils, may 
indeed have the effects of closing the system down, of reducing 
performance by reducing the time and effort that teachers can spend 
teaching- especially in ways which are innovative, related to pupil 
needs and capable of relating to the immense array of differences with 
which schools are faced. Moreover, the effects of market forces and 
competition for resources are already increasing not only legitimate 
cultural and social differences but also illegitimate differences where 
need is punished through withdrawal of resources and where lack of need 
is rewarded.  

It would seem that the educational costs of managerialism may be high 
indeed.




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