This paper explores inspection, performativity and fabrication within the context of two English schools. Case studies are employed to compare and contrast the inspection experiences of two teachers at different points in their career trajectories. The paper focuses on comments made by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), that schools were 'putting on a show' during inspections. Empirical evidence is presented which suggests that the key informants invested emotional, physical and intellectual capital into the perpetual readiness incumbent in high-stakes inspection process -an investment which was anything other than putting on a show. The paper proposes that, in the cases in point, the changing nature of school inspections led to 'post-fabrication', that is, inspection readiness was omnipresent to such an extent that it was not a fabricated version of events. The findings presented here have implications for teachers, school leadership teams, policy makers and all those interested in inspection.

Based on research conducted in an English secondary school, this paper explores computer mediated moderation as a performative tool. The Module Assessment Meeting (MAM) was the moderation approach under investigation. I mobilise ethnographic data generated by a key informant, and triangulated with that from other actors in the setting, in order to examine some of the meanings underpinning moderation within a performative environment. Drawing on the work of Ball (2003), Lyotard (1979) and Foucault (1977Foucault ( , 1979, I argue that in this particular case performativity has become entrenched in teachers' day-to-day practices, and not only affects those practices but also teachers' sense of self. I suggest that MAM represented performative and fabricated conditions and (re)defined what the key participant experienced as a vital constituent of her educational identities -trust.From examining the case in point, I hope to have illustrated for those interested in teachers' work some of the implications of the interface between technology and performativity.

This paper examines an instance of policy borrowing, specifically, the borrowing of 'mathematics mastery'. In doing so, it considers some of the implications of parachuting policy from one setting into another. The process of borrowing mastery is examined not only as a policy technology, but also as a culturally located artefact embedded in the 'high performing' education systems of Shanghai and Singapore. Drawing on empirical evidence, the paper maps how teachers working in the East Midlands region of England borrowed, and enacted, mastery. Data suggests that the cultural 'baggage' implicit in mastery rendered it, at times, in conflict with structures inherent the English education system. The paper concludes by suggesting that the teachers' attempts to enact mastery reported here, reveal some of the fundamental consequences inherent in policy borrowing. Consequences with, in this case at least, significant implications for the English education system at both the micro and macro levels.

Legitimation, performativity and the tyranny of a "hijacked" word. Outstanding education is a high level policy narrative in England rehearsed by school leaders, politicians, policy makers and inspectors alike. Lyotard's (1979) work on the 'legitimacy' of knowledge and performativity, and Foucauldian discourse-based analysis (1972, 1991), are mobilised to examine outstanding. The paper explores how informants in the English state secondary education sector described and experienced outstanding. From examining policy documents and empirical data, the paper suggests that outstanding has become a performative tool "hijacked" by inspection regimes. It concludes that, despite the informants' best efforts, the neo-liberal and performative policy discourses which surround outstanding appear to increasingly wield a disproportionate, even tyrannical, influence upon the English education system.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), declared a 'new wave' of Local Area Under-performance Inspections (LAUI) of schools 'denying children the standard of education they deserve'. This paper examines how the threat of LAUI played out over three mathematics lessons taught by a teacher in her first year in the profession. A Foucauldian approach is mobilised with regard to disciplinary power and 'docile bodies'. The paper argues that, in the case in point, LAUI was a tool mediating performative conditions and, ultimately, the docile body. The paper will be of concern to policy sociologists, teachers, school leaders, and those interested in school inspection.