Increased success rates in an FE college: the product of a rational or a performative college culture?

Boocock, Andrew

doi:10.1080/13639080.2012.758356

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of an alternative metric to quantify the impact and effectiveness of the FE sector (Boocock 2014(Boocock , 351-371, 2013Harvey 2005, 263-276), a complex and challenging endeavour. It requires significant research into impact measures and relevant metrics, transferable across sectors, repeatable, consistent and meaningful to those who work within FE and the stakeholders who 'use' FE (Berg, Lune, and Lune 2004;Biesta 2015;Costello 2009, 131-146;Graham 2009, 549-576).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing a mission for further education: changing culture using non-financial and intangible value

Hadawi

Crabbe

2018

Research in Post-Compulsory Education

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing a mission for further education: changing culture using non-financial and intangible value

Hadawi

Crabbe

2018

Research in Post-Compulsory Education

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“…The validity of such success rates as a proxy measure for improved student performance is, however, questionable given the evidence of gaming behaviours including student plagiarism and ghost writing (Ainley and Allen, 2010), lecturers marking student work repetitively until all assessment criteria are achieved (i.e. criteria chasing) (Spours, Coffield and Gregson, 2006;Boocock, 2014) and colleges enrolling students onto unchallenging courses to improve college success rates (Wolf, 2011). In this way, transactional leadership was used to improve success rates through gaming behaviours and grade inflation ('education by numbers') (Ainley, 1999;Ainley and Allen, 2010) as a means of achieving effectiveness for the market and for Inspection rather than a genuine improvement in line with New labour's skills and egalitarian agenda (Smith, 2007).…”

Section: Transactional Leadership In the Further Education Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A review of the FE policy literature on postincorporation FE colleges between 1993 and2017 (under Conservative, New Labour and Coalition governments and the current Conservative administration) leads to the key conclusion that transactional leadership has led to a deprofessionalised and depoliticised work environment and to impression management activity to meet the external needs of funding and inspection regimes, at the expense of the needs of local businesses and communities (Elliott, 1996;Rennie, 2003;Kelly, 2005;Smith and Bailey, 2005;Boocock, 2014;Fletcher et al, 2015;Dennis, 2016;Boocock, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meeting the needs of local communities and businesses: From transactional to eco-leadership in the English further education sector

Boocock¹

2017

Educational Management Administration & Leadership

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Leadership in the post-incorporation English further education system has not been distributed in nature, but transactional, driven by the external demands of funding and inspection regimes. However, in the light of the current rhetoric of localism in further education policy there is a view that distributed leadership would be an appropriate alternative form of leadership within this context. This article reviews the education literature and argues that distributed leadership should be introduced to the sector, but that on its own this will be insufficient for addressing the government’s agenda of meeting the human capital needs of businesses, needs-based equity for disadvantaged adults, or the wider benefits of education. This is because distributed leadership, whilst involving a dispersion of responsibility, may not equate to a dispersion of power. To disperse power to local areas and to facilitate an authentic distributed leadership focused on local stakeholders a policy of localism that encourages self-governance and open systems is needed. More specifically flexible accountability arrangements are required that encourage strategy and leadership at the local level. Such distributed leadership embedded within a local governance that facilitates dispersed power to key local stakeholders is similar to what is described as eco-leadership in the leadership literature.

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“…Success rates (i.e. student achievement as a percentage of those enrolled on the first census date) provided the incentives for colleges to ensure students were enrolled onto the right courses, that students attended and achieved, but there was also the incentive to enrol students onto unsuitable courses, if courses were undersubscribed, and to subsequently lower standards to ensure satisfactory retention, achievement and success rates, compared to national benchmarks (Boocock, 2014). There was the further incentive to not enrol risky students, if there was some doubt about their ability to contribute to success rates, at the expense of needsbased equity (i.e.…”

Section: Questioning the Price Effect -Gaming Behavioursmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knaves, knights or networks: which assumption of lecturer and manager motivation should underlie further education policy?

Boocock

2015

Research in Post-Compulsory Education

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Julian Le Grand, a well-known economist, identifies two types of public sector employee: Knights (with altruistic motives) and Knaves (with self-interested motives). He argues that the quasi-market, predicated on the assumption of knavish behaviour (or agent self-interest), is the most effective way of directing school managers and teachers towards improving education outputs at lower unit cost. In this article a review of the literature on the English post-incorporation FE quasi-market is undertaken [under the Conservative government (1993), New Labour (1997 and the Coalition government (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)] to assess if such a premise is correct. The conclusion from the review is that an over focus on policy, premised on agent self-interest, has limited improvements in the quality of education outputs and needs-based equity for disadvantaged students because such policy marginalises other motivational (Osterloh, Frey, and Frost, 2001). This article reviews the FE literature to assess the extent to which the assumption of agent selfinterest underlying FE policy has been effective in improving the quality of education outputs in FE in line with the human capital requirements of business and needs-based equity for disadvantaged students. The key conclusion is that the governance of post-incorporation FE Colleges, under the Conservative administration, New Labour and the current Coalition government, has over emphasised agent self-interest as a key motivator, at the expense of motivational inputs of productive value such as lecturer intrinsic motivation and professional values. This, a significant body of research on FE suggests (e.g. Hodkinson, 1997;Avis et al., 2001;Gleeson and James, 2007;James and Biesta, 2007) has been to the detriment of the skills agenda, but also needs-based equity for disadvantaged learners. Such a notion of fairness would require education policy to be egalitarian; in particular to direct lecturer and manager effort towards the most disadvantaged in society from lower socio-economic groups or with learning difficulties (Crump, 1994, p. 2, cited in Gerwitz et al., 1995.A significant FE literature also suggests (e.g. Coffield et al., 2008;Hodgson and Spours, 2009) that to more effectively utilise the productive potential of intrinsic motivation and professional values, in line with the skills agenda and needs-based equity, a more trusting form of governance is required; in particular a shift in the nature of governance from hierarchy (involving regulation of processes through government imposed standards) to open systems (devolution to those on the ground) and from rational goals (targets, PIs and the monitoring of outputs) to self-governance (improving agent commitment through capacity building, training and development) (Newman, 2001).

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Increased success rates in an FE college: the product of a rational or a performative college culture?

Cited by 10 publications

References 17 publications

Developing a mission for further education: changing culture using non-financial and intangible value

Developing a mission for further education: changing culture using non-financial and intangible value

Meeting the needs of local communities and businesses: From transactional to eco-leadership in the English further education sector

Knaves, knights or networks: which assumption of lecturer and manager motivation should underlie further education policy?

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