Performance Management In Education

by Jenny Reeves, Christine Forde, Jim O'Brien, Pauline Smith, Harry Tomlinson

Reviewed by: Stephen J.M. Bray

 

IT WAS A RATHER DIFFICULT task undertaken by the authors, to describe in a mere 200 pages what truly requires at least 1000.

Topics include performance management, continuing professional development, rewards, work-based learning, assessment, schools policy and practice. Qualifications for headship and mentoring are also discussed. The authors are mainly academics who are attempting not only to deal with behaviours in the classroom but also social-educational policy and research.

That said there is much to commend this book. The diagrams are very clear and ‘lift’ the text so that creative thought, rather than mere comprehension, becomes possible. The differences between the systems of England, Wales and Scotland are explored, and emerging and encouraging findings from the Americans, especially in relation to school based achievement awards, are contrasted. The Scottish system also places a greater emphasis on school self-evaluation.

Effective teachers are solution focused, able to interpret often widely contrasting data, and resolve dichotomies such as the needs of individuals vs. those of society. Importantly they take time to do so, rather than simply reacting. It is thought that this is because they have a highly developed system of goals, principles and values.

It’s clear from the book that teachers and their managers work within a complex system of constraints, which would benefit from simplification. Who was responsible for launching performance management in English schools a year prior to introducing a national continuing professional development strategy? Could they really anticipate that performance would improve, when treating people thus? I would dearly like to appraise them!

Performance Management in Education: Improving Practice, by Jenny Reeves, Christine Forde, Jim O'Brien, Pauline Smith, Harry Tomlinson.
2002 Paul Chapman Publishing. 208 pp, Paper (0-7619- 7172-6)