British Journal of Educational Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbje20

PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY,

AND ALL FOR SHOW: IRISH PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE
INSIDE ENGLAND’S SCHOOLS

Craig Skerritt

To cite this article: Craig Skerritt (2020): PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY,

AND ALL FOR SHOW: IRISH PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE INSIDE ENGLAND’S SCHOOLS, British
Journal of Educational Studies

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1839014

Published online: 04 Nov 2020.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbje20
British Journal of Educational Studies
2020, pp. 1–21

PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL

FOR SHOW: IRISH PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE INSIDE
ENGLAND’S SCHOOLS
by C RAIG S KERRITT , Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, Dublin City
University, Dublin, Ireland

ABSTRACT: This paper offers a comprehensive account of Irish teachers’

perspectives on life inside schools in England, as reported in empirical
studies. The research literature shows that Irish teachers report experien­
cing intense pressure from the inspectorate, but also internally as
a consequence of the demands placed on English schools. Within these low-
trust environments they experience what they feel to be unsustainable and
time-consuming workloads which compound and perpetuate the pressure
and stress they feel. Of most significance are Irish teachers’ views on the
motives of English schools, which they interpret and perceive to be dictated
by and for the inspectorate as opposed to serving the best interests of
students. Overall, Irish teachers’ experiences in English schools are shaped
by the overarching and inescapable pressures of high-stakes accountability
and are far from positive.
Keywords: accountability, workload, stress, England

I NTRODUCTION
In terms of neoliberal education, England has been at the forefront internation­
ally (Ball, 2016; Sahlberg, 2011; Wilkins et al., 2020); an influential and
experimental hub for reforms along marketised lines. English education stands
out in its readiness to adopt choice and competition policies (Moreton et al.,
2017) and these market principles have become firmly rooted in and governing
principles of the school system (Papanastasiou, 2019). To facilitate choice and
competition, schools in England, albeit some more than others (i.e. academies),
exercise considerable autonomy and, as argued by Olmedo and Wilkins (2017,
p. 580), are ‘increasingly driven to behave like businesses (accountable, effi­
cient, cost-cutting, profit-making institutions)’. As Keddie and Mills (2019,
p. 1) point out,

It has become impossible to talk about English schooling, as it has about schooling
in many other locations, without mentioning the ways in which powerful dis­
courses from the business world have shaped school governance, leadership,
accountability mechanisms, competition and new networks between schools.
Efficiency, entrepreneurship, chief executives, audits, market share, value adding

ISSN 0007-1005 (print)/ISSN 1467-8527 (online)

© 2020 Society for Educational Studies
https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1839014
http://www.tandfonline.com
2 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
and performance indicators are all terms now readily associated with schooling in
England.

Within this autonomous and business-like system lies a pronounced paradox,

with the autonomy afforded to schools being heavily circumscribed by increased
accountability. The English education system has been described as being
‘notoriously driven by accountability measures’ (Francis et al., 2020, p. 171),
as having ‘one of the strongest accountability systems in the English speaking
world’ (Southworth in Jones et al., 2017, p. 810), and the ‘mother ship of high-
stakes, performativity-focussed types of evaluation’ (Mac Ruairc, 2019, p. 8).
Like underperforming businesses, schools deemed to be underperforming can be
closed down while teachers, as employees, can be easily deposed- that is, if they
do not choose to leave themselves.
While many migrant teachers are now working in England, this paper
specifically offers Irish perspectives on life inside England’s schools. Over the
course of the last decade, emigration has become an attractive pathway for
many Irish, and international recruiters are competing for highly sought-after
Irish graduate teachers (O’Doherty and Harford, 2018), many of whom have
been relocating to England. Reflective of the volume of Irish teachers now in
England are newspaper reports that Irish teachers are ‘flocking’ to work in
Britain and radio complaints about the number of Irish registered cars in British
school car parks (Ryan and Kurdi, 2014). Furthermore, one recruitment agency,
confident of continued growth in the numbers seeking work in British schools,
set up an office in Dublin (Ryan, 2015). Indeed, Ireland is now one of the top
supplying countries of teachers to the United Kingdom (Boffey in Miller, 2019).
Despite this, however, very little is known about Irish teachers’ experiences and
perceptions of school life in England and aside from brief references in the
literature macro-level analyses between the two countries have often been
overlooked. It is notable that, with the United Kingdom recently leaving the
European Union, the pressing questions about the interrelations of education
systems when both Ireland and the United Kingdom were entering the then
European Economic Community (Bell and Grant, 1977) persist to a large
degree. This is rather concerning considering the time that has elapsed and the
volume of Irish teachers that have passed and continue to pass through English
schools. To a great extent, it remains the case,1 as put forward several decades
ago, that despite a great deal of published material on the individual systems in
the United Kingdom and Ireland very little comparative work is done (Grant,
1981) on Irish and English education. Recent comparative studies that include
these two countries2 have explored how schools are evaluated and inspected
(Ehren et al., 2013; Gustafsson et al., 2015; Jones et al., 2017; Mac Ruairc,
2019) as well as professional learning among teacher educators (Czerniawski
et al., 2018), career guidance provision (Hearne and Neary, 2020), and dis­
courses on teacher collaboration (Milner et al., 2020) but in terms of data
gathered from Irish teachers based on their experiences in English schools, the
 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 3
literature is currently limited to one report (Ryan and Kurdi, 2014) and three
peer-reviewed journal articles (Skerritt, 2019a, 2019b, 2020).
This paper explores Irish teachers’ experiences and perceptions of life inside
schools in England, as reported in empirical studies. It is a synoptic paper in that
it combines and presents the dominant themes from a recently published
collection of material and provides a broader understanding of the field. As
the author of the existing peer-reviewed literature in this area (Skerritt, 2019a,
2019b, 2020), I am now in a position where I can offer a more comprehensive
view of the topic. Thus, this paper makes a significant contribution to knowl­
edge in that it not only brings together the views of a largely under-researched
group of teachers in England, but a group that has emerged as a more common
feature of English schools in recent years. Before doing so, it first sets some
context by drawing on the scholarship that outlines the pressures, internal and
external, schools and teachers face in England. A framework on international
adjustment is then put in place before Irish perspectives are offered by looking
at how Irish teachers have reported experiencing English schools in the litera­
ture. Looking ahead, this paper can be of use to academics researching educa­
tion policy, migrant teachers, and comparative education, as well as serving as
a reference point for both practising and pre-service teachers in Ireland con­
sidering moving to England, giving them a strong indication of what type of
professional culture they should expect to experience, while it can also be of
value to school leaders, recruitment agencies, and policymakers in England
during the teacher recruitment process- as Bense (2016) points out, the growing
trend of international teacher mobility and migration will eventually require the
transnational collaboration of researchers and policymakers.

T EACHERS ’ W ORKING C ONDITIONS IN E NGLAND

The English education system operates a competitive market in that schools are
policed by an external inspectorate, have their examination results compiled in
football-style league tables, and ultimately compete for students (Tomlinson,
2016). Parents are positioned as consumers in that the information that they are
provided with helps them to make ‘choices’ (in reality preferences) of schools
for their children. (West et al., 2011). In a system driven by per capita funding
the more customers schools secure the better, but schools considered to be
underperforming often see headteachers removed and replaced, while in more
extreme cases schools are closed down. Thus, performances in league tables and
in inspections are immensely high stakes, and for headteachers first and fore­
most (Maguire and Braun, 2019). Headteachers strive to have their schools
continuously producing positive data and constantly ready for external inspec­
tions carried out by Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education). For some time,
the consequences of a bad inspection on school popularity have been creating
atmospheres of fear and stress among teachers (Booth et al., 1997). Ofsted’s
4 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
presence is somewhat of a constant in schools (Jeffrey and Woods, 1998), as
teachers are consistently monitored internally by school leaders who take on the
role of the ever-present inspectors (Troman, 1997). Thus, teachers face pres­
sures to constantly work on improving their practice (Hoskins, 2012) and
learning the accepted modes of successful practice (Perryman et al., 2018).
The publication of league tables and the competition in the education market
have placed all parties involved in teaching and learning under the pressure of
setting and chasing performance targets, and continually needing to demonstrate
improvement (Neumann, 2019). The daily lives of teachers (and students) are
now driven more and more by the extrinsic demands of performance, competi­
tion and comparison (Ball, 2013) and controlled through monitoring, super­
vision and the constant gathering of knowledge and data about effectiveness
(Perryman et al., 2018). Teaching has become increasingly regulated, leading to
a low-trust regime of increased accountability (Perryman et al., 2011)- or what
Barker (2010) refers to as a ‘ferocious accountability regime’. Teachers simply
cannot evade judgement as the English education system has facilitated a flow
of demands, expectations, and indicators that constantly record them, and make
them accountable (Ball, 2003). For example, through the use of Management
Information Systems, teachers are required to continually enter data on their
students’ academic performance and behaviour, documenting their current pro­
gress and predicting their future outcomes for management to analyse and
identify underperforming students, and consequently, underperforming teachers
(Page, 2018) who can expect action to be taken against them (Courtney and
Gunter, 2015). As Gewirtz et al. (2019) contend, the technology of ‘deliverol­
ogy’ is now deeply engrained in school life.
Understandably, the pressures teachers in England face have led to the
intensification of teacher workload, as well as issues relating to teacher welfare.
Ball (2013, p. 25), for example refers to 2012 work by the Health and Safety
Executive that revealed ‘teaching as one of the three occupations in Britain
reporting the highest incidence of stress and depression, at a rate of 1,780 cases
per 100,000 employees’. This is perhaps unsurprising when England’s then
Chief Inspector was quoted in the media as stating, before officially starting
at Ofsted, that,

If anyone says to you that ‘staff morale is at an all-time low’ you know you are
doing something right.3

Recent research by Skinner et al. (2019) and Brady and Wilson (2020) con­
tinues to highlight and raise concerns about the impact of managerialist
approaches and accountability-motivated workloads on teachers. Gewirtz
et al.’s (2019) research proposes that a combination of workload intensification
and a compliance-based performance culture has resulted in many teachers,
anxious about restricted professional autonomy, considering or actually leaving
the profession. A recent study by Perryman and Calvert (2020) on why recently
 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 5
qualified teachers in England leave or consider leaving teaching discovered that
despite claiming to be aware of the challenges of workload before entering the
profession, workload is the primary issue. Participants described their work­
loads as being ‘incredible’, ‘insane’, ‘unmanageable and unsustainable’, ‘unrea­
listic’ and ‘extreme’, and claimed to work 11-h days, 60–70 hour weeks and
additional hours on weekends (Perryman and Calvert, 2020, p. 15). However, it
is not just the volume of work and the stressful environments that exasperate
teachers but the nature of their work. In the words of one teacher intending on
leaving the profession,

Lots of paperwork/data/etc is done purely for the sake of it, feels like box ticking/
jumping through hoops- not actually for the benefit of teachers or students or
teaching or learning (Perryman and Calvert, 2020, p. 16).

Workload issues, however, are compounded by England’s current culture of

teaching comprising ‘constant scrutiny, the need to perform and hyper-critical
management’ (Perryman and Calvert, 2020, p. 19). One teacher no longer
working in England said:

Teaching is wonderful when you are trusted and you can pour all of your time into
your classes and making them interesting and meaningful for your students. The
current climate in England with targets and monitoring impede teachers´ ability to
do this. Teachers teach precisely because they want to work with and help
children. They leave because their professional judgement is questioned and
they sometimes are asked to do things which go against their integrity
(Perryman and Calvert, 2020, p. 18).

All things considered, it is most difficult to disagree with Ball’s (2013, p. 25)
contention that ‘happiness is very much not what schools in England are about’.

F ROM ‘ LEGENDARY A UTONOMY ’ TO ‘ FEROCIOUS A CCOUNTABILITY ’

This paper subscribes to the view that migrating to a new country is not easy,
and often leads to a form of ‘culture shock’. This is no different for migrant
teachers, and an Irish teacher moving to England is also likely to experience
a form of this shock. Culture shock, as highlighted by Roskell (2013, p. 156),
can be understood through multiple different aspects including

● confusion about role, role expectations, values, feelings and self-identity

● surprise, anxiety, even disgust and indignation after noting differences
● feelings of impotence engendered by inability to cope with the new
culture

According to Black et al. (1991, p. 292), there are substantial differences

between domestic and international or cross-cultural adjustment. Of their three
facets of international adjustment (i.e. adjustment to work, adjustment to
6 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
interacting with host nationals, and adjustment to the general environment), of
most relevance here is work adjustment, and teachers adapting to new working
conditions. According to Bense (2016), numerous studies report challenges for
migrant teachers once they start working in a host country. Common themes that
appear across migrant teachers’ stories of enculturation into a new school
culture include issues related to, inter alia, administrative regulations and
differences in values and expectations (Bense, 2016). For a teacher migrating
to England, adjusting to these conditions can be quite challenging. To draw on
the words of Bense (2016, p. 44), some frameworks argue that

teachers are “accustomed to the teaching and learning cultures of their home
country” (Caravatti et al., 2014, p.114), and when moving to another country,
they take with them this form of “cultural baggage of attitudes, beliefs, and
values” (Seah & Bishop, 2001, p. 1).

Studies on migrant teachers in England often show that many struggle with the
working conditions. In Miller’s (2018) recent qualitative study with teachers
from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, coincidentally all from
Jamaica, terms such as ‘hectic’, ‘fast paced’, ‘tiring’, ‘challenging’ and ‘over­
whelming’ were used to describe a typical school day in England. A typical day
in an English school was considered to be more intense than in schools ‘back
home’, and the pressures teachers faced greater. For example, one participant
explained:

I am more accountable for my work here … However, my work–life balance is

better at home than in England (Miller, 2018, p. 163).

Indeed, issues relating to the demands and pressure placed on teachers, work­
load and paperwork are often reported by migrant teachers in England (see, for
example, Miller, 2018; Warner, 2010; Whitehead and Taylor, 2000). This is not
to say that all teachers do not also find these pressures difficult, but simply that
many migrant teachers would be more inclined to struggle if their previous
experiences of school as students, pre-service teachers, and as qualified teachers
in their home countries were not as intense or pressurised.
The national education policies and discourses vary significantly between
England and Ireland, and Irish teachers are therefore likely to be unprepared for
the hegemonic discourses that dominate the teaching profession in England. In
contrast to England, the Irish education system is one that is highly centralised,
and the evaluation system is not as severe (Mac Ruairc, 2019). School self-
evaluation is the dominant mode of evaluation and is seen more as an improve­
ment rather than as an accountability mechanism (Brown et al., 2020). The Irish
education system operates as a low-stakes accountability environment (O’Brien
et al., 2019) with no rewards or consequences related to school or teacher
performance (Jones et al., 2017), and school league tables, for example, are
prohibited by law (McCormack et al., 2015). While different cultures of
 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 7
education exist between these two countries (Gibbs and Gardiner, 2008; Moos,
2005; Quinn, 2014; Smith, 2007), a key difference for teachers in Ireland is that
they have been known to exercise ‘legendary autonomy’.4 It is unsurprising,
therefore, that teachers from Ireland can find England’s education system
daunting.5 If we consider Irish teachers’ experiences of school in Ireland,
from their time as students, pre-service teachers and qualified teachers, they
are likely to struggle in more neoliberal business-like and accountability-driven
systems such as the one England operates (O’Keeffe and Skerritt, 2020; Skerritt,
2019c, 2019d).
Many concerns have been raised in Irish education since England went
down its current route in the late 1980s. In a comparison of policies in Ireland
and the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, Dallat and Sweeney (1994, p. 29)
concluded that

Warning bells have been rung, and are ringing. Policy-makers in education in the
Republic of Ireland would do well to listen attentively to them.

It was also contended by some in the Educational Studies Association of Ireland

that ‘to copy the major directions of recent English educational policy would be
disastrous’ (Irish Educational Studies, 1994, p. 247). After evaluation being
a notable absentee from Irish education, Whole-School Evaluation was piloted
in Ireland in the late 1990s, and at this time strong concerns were relayed by the
General Secretary of Ireland’s largest second-level teacher union6:

The model of inspection in the UK whereby … individual teachers are appraised

in a non-supportive manner and the performance of schools is publicised in
simplistic league tables as part of a crude system of school funding based on
a ‘payment by results’ philosophy, is anathema to Irish teachers who are legiti­
mately concerned that aspects of British Ofsted practice may intentionally or
unintentionally be introduced into the Irish system (Lennon, 1999, p. 51).

In the preamble to the report on the piloting distance was created from the
workings of Ofsted, suggesting that under no circumstances would such an
evaluation system be replicated in the Irish context (Sugrue, 2006). By the
early 2000s, the lack of experience most teachers in Ireland had of inspection
and evaluation was compounded by other factors that tended to increase unease
and resistance, including both the substantial power exercised by the teacher
unions and the negative reports of school evaluation in other systems, and
particularly the system in England (McNamara and O’Hara, 2006) which Irish
teachers regarded as a very intrusive and stressful form of inspection
(McNamara and O’Hara, 2005). While the system of evaluation developed in
Ireland is certainly softer than England’s, it has significantly altered the nature
of teachers’ work, bringing with it, inter alia, more meetings, administrative
work, and observations of teaching, and anecdotal evidence suggests that
teachers in Ireland have become concerned over the last decade that Ireland is
8 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
‘going like England’. More recently, with school autonomy becoming increas­
ingly topical in Ireland, my own work has expressed concerns about the possible
‘Anglo neoliberalisation’ or Anglicisation of Irish education (Skerritt, 2019c),
potentially making it more business-like (Skerritt, 2019d) and English-like. As
will be outlined later, advancing school autonomy is not an initiative that would
appear to be welcomed by teachers in Ireland, with many associating such
a move with England’s model of autonomous schools.
For Irish teachers, they can expect to experience similar challenges to
teachers from other migrant backgrounds in England- or given the substantial
differences between Irish and English education, these adjustments could be
experienced more severely. In any case, as Irish teachers have become a more
common feature of English schools in recent years more attention needs to be
paid to their experiences and perceptions.

A NALYSING I RISH T EACHERS ’ P ERSPECTIVES

This paper set out to answer one key question: how have Irish teachers experi­
enced life inside English schools? To do this, the qualitative findings from
published research studies were synthesised to determine the current the state
of the body of literature on Irish teachers’ experiences and perceptions of life
inside English schools. While there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence in
Ireland as well as contentions in the scholarship that schools in England offer an
unpleasant experience, it is only in recent years that data have been gathered
from Irish teachers on their experiences in English schools. The one report
(Ryan and Kurdi, 2014) and three peer-reviewed journal articles (Skerritt,
2019a, 2019b, 2020) published since 2014 were analysed. During the analysis,
a fourth journal article was published and while there were some very interest­
ing data reported in this paper, it was not included in the analysis due to
concerns about the outlet it was published in- the journal that published the
article was not a reputable one.

Strengths and Limitations

An immediate strength of this research is that of the four publications being analysed,
I, the current researcher, have solely authored three of them. Thus, after collecting,
analysing, and presenting and publishing the data in peer-reviewed journals, I have
a deep and thorough understanding of the data and am now in a strong a position to
present a rounded exposition of this collection. My own position as an Irish
researcher and as a former teacher in England, however, must be noted and it is
worth stressing that measures have always been taken to be as reflexive as possible.
In relation to my published research:
 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 9
● My theories and viewpoints were always kept private during both the
recruitment and the interview process so that participants did not on some
level tell me what they thought was what I wanted to hear.
● Notes were recorded on how each interview went so that I could be aware
of my own subjectivities and so that I could reflect and be extra conscious
of this in the subsequent interviews.
● Interviews were intentionally conducted at separate intervals over
a spread of time to allow for sufficient reflection time between each
interview.
● Participants’ views that did not match with my own views were included
in the data presentations.
● Substantial and detailed data extracts were provided to allow readers to
make their own evaluations and interpretations of the data.

A glaring limitation of this analysis is that only four documents could be

analysed, and two of them are based on the same dataset with the same
participants. Furthermore, the qualitative data are not generalisable. It is, how­
ever, worth pointing out that there are some remarkable consistencies in the
participants’ accounts. Nonetheless, the data do offer strong insights and pro­
vide a direct pathway towards bridging a deep lacuna in the literature that has
been left untouched for too long. It is hoped that this paper in particular, by
bringing the small research base together, will ‘serve as a basis for further work’
(Ball et al., 2012, p. 18) and encourage and help other scholars to undertake
additional research in this area.

P RESSURE , B UREAUCRACY, A CCOUNTABILITY, AND A LL FOR S HOW

External Pressure
A primary concern for Irish teachers in England relates to Ofsted and the
pressures associated with external inspections. Of the four studies analysed,
two offered in-depth data on Irish teachers’ perceptions of Ofsted inspections,
and the way many teachers speak about these inspections suggests that there is
a genuine fear of having to experience one of Ofsted’s visits:

With the thought of Ofsted coming, we are due Ofsted in this school at the
moment, so any single day, any single day it could be. We’re all just stressed
(Ryan and Kurdi, 2014).

Ofsted is completely mad … The amount of stress that’s on a teacher knowing that
this big inspection is coming- they don’t sleep the night before, trying to get
everything done. They’re exhausted and tired, then they have to put on this big
song and dance which is not realistic at all compared to what classrooms are
normally like (Skerritt, 2019a).
10 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
In both of these studies, participants were extra critical of the inspectorate. In
one, all participants ‘recognised Ofsted as being the source of all of their
problems’ (Skerritt, 2019a), while in the other, all participants complained
about national policies and the amount of time they spent writing reports and
preparing for Ofsted inspections (Ryan and Kurdi, 2014). Some comments
about Ofsted from Ryan and Kurdi’s (2014) study, for example, include:

It really doesn’t create a nice environment for people to work in at all. Constantly
being held up to scrutiny and not, not even realistic expectations.
Ofsted is the worst thing about education in Britain. It does far more to undermine
standards in education in Britain than it does to support them.

Internal Pressure
All of the studies provided insight into the internal pressures teachers face in
English schools. As one participant told Ryan and Kurdi (2014), English schools
can be very stressful environments:

There is stress, like a lot of stress comes with it as well, you know, sometimes
school puts things in place for you, you have to jump through so many different
hoops where it should just be easy, an easy way and that drives me mad.

The external pressure means that teachers come under increased top-down
control from their management teams. One common way of monitoring teachers
and holding them accountable is through student performance data:

When results day comes and the child doesn’t get the grade, they look at me, not
the kid … I’ve been held accountable for kids that have failed … Nobody
considered that this child didn’t want to learn (Skerritt, 2019a).
It’s all about (measurable and quantifiable academic) progression, progression,
progression and if you don’t get it it’s your fault for the kids not getting it, not
what actually was going on there, in their lives, that would actually have caused
that (Skerritt, 2019b).

Another key way that Irish teachers feel internal pressure is through having their
teaching informally observed through what are known as ‘learning walks’.
A learning walk, as described by a participant in one study, involves
a manager walking into classrooms unannounced and staying for about
5–15 minutes looking at books, talking to children, and observing teaching
and behaviour, and they happen ‘all the time’ according to another (Skerritt,
2019a). Frequent learning walks were reported in other studies too:

There just seemed to be random learning walks going on all of the time so you just
felt like you were scrutinised the whole time … they’d take notes on what you
were doing and the way you were doing it (Skerritt, 2020).
PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 11
While the ‘marking’ of students’ work was only specifically mentioned in one
study (Skerritt, 2019a), participants placed a major emphasis on marking as
a technique and tool used to monitor their performances. One participant
explained:

We get book checks, so you get picked at random from one of the senior team so
they can just call you at random and say they want to see a certain class’s books so
you bring them up and they only give you a days’ notice so you can’t bring them
home and fix them the night before … you’ll bring them in and they’ll check their
spelling and my spelling, how neat they are, what work has been done, what did
I mark it, their homework and things like that.

The internal cultures of English schools mean that many Irish teachers report
feeling like they are stripped of their professional autonomy and subjected to
intense top-down control:

You’re constantly being watched and told what to do, and being checked up on.
I don’t think there’s any autonomy (Skerritt, 2019a).
I just felt like you were constantly being monitored, constantly under pressure
(Skerritt, 2020).

Moreover, there was a widely held perception in two studies that the senior
leadership teams in English schools are authoritarian and critical as opposed to
supportive, leading to cultures of fear:

Oh it makes me sick. It terrifies me knowing that I’m going to get observed

because it’s like, you know something bad is going to come from it. You never get
an observation where you go ‘Oh that went great and I’m going to get told I’m
fantastic’(Skerritt, 2019a)
You’re kind of subtly reminded that if you’re not pulling your weight here you’re
gone kind of atmosphere (Skerritt, 2020).

Unsustainable Workload
A frequently cited issue for Irish teachers in England is the amount of admin­
istrative work required of them. In the words of one teacher:

The thing about England you probably hear a lot is the amount of admin. That was
the killer for me, the admin. There was a computer, a desktop in my room and it
was just constant emails and it kind of sucked the life out of it a bit. Teaching, for
me, kind of got lost in it … it’s a lot more administrative, it’s a lot more strict,
everything has to be communicated on paper (Skerritt, 2020).

In Ryan and Kurdi’s (2014) research there was a shared view that teaching in
Britain is generally a more demanding job than teaching in Ireland, with stress,
long working hours, and large volumes of administrative work and paperwork
being commonly referenced. Elsewhere, participants contended that there is as
12 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
‘much admin in the job in the United Kingdom as there is actual teaching’ and
that ‘there’s very little teaching involved in actual teaching’ in England
(Skerritt, 2019a). The amount of administrative work and paperwork required
of teachers in England means that a typical school day involves teachers
arriving to school early in the morning and often staying much later after
lessons finish:

You could still be stuck in school for another, sometimes up to four hours
depending on what you had to do (Skerritt, 2019a).
I spend an awful lot of time at school I’m there early in the morning I’m there late
in the evening (Ryan and Kurdi, 2014).

More aggravating for some, was how the long and exhaustive school week often
continued through the weekend. While this specific issue was only flagged by
participants in one study (Skerritt, 2019a), it was commonly mentioned:

Weekends aren’t your own. You have to have your planning and marking done.
So, you don’t have time for a social life.
My weekends were 100%, I knew regardless I would need to spend 4–5 hours
every weekend to work.

Questionable Motives
Across all studies, the pressure and accountability schools and subsequently
teachers face in England gave rise to a feeling that the work being done in and
by schools was being done not because it served students well, but because it
was being checked for auditing purposes:

In England you do your paperwork because it’s getting checked, or there’s a threat
of it being checked or you’ll be in trouble if you don’t get it checked (Skerritt,
2020).
And your job in school is great and then you have your second job- this admin
ticking boxes for Ofsted (Ryan and Kurdi, 2014).

Internally, teachers have to satisfy the expectations of senior leaders but exter­
nally, management must impress Ofsted. Thus, a very strong grievance Irish
teachers report is how schools’ motives are, in their view, dictated by and for
Ofsted:

Our school was marked ‘Good’ but they were very eager to be ‘Outstanding’. So
all of the checks were all for Ofsted. Just in case Ofsted came in, it was all for
them (Skerritt, 2019a).
We’re basically not teaching for our kids, we’re teaching for our school to get
a grade off Ofsted (Skerritt, 2019a).
PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 13
I think attainment and attendance is only important for Ofsted, and that in general
schools don’t care who turns up, or how they do, other than facts and figures
(Skerritt, 2019b).
It had been ‘failing’ previously but in the November they had become ‘satisfac­
tory’ and then I started in the February, so you know, it was very much figures,
statistics we have to do this, we have to do that … they keep sort of changing the
Ofsted goalpost, so we’re trying to keep one step ahead of them and if we keep
one step ahead of them, you know (Ryan and Kurdi, 2014).

While Irish teachers perceive schools in England as prioritising how the school
itself performs on external measures as opposed to focusing on students’ needs,
it would appear that this is perhaps a far greater perception among teachers with
experience in academy schools. For example, in research specifically with Irish
teachers who had previously worked in England’s uber-autonomous academies,
these teachers saw academies as being largely immoral institutions that were
more concerned with acting like businesses than caring for students. As one
participant said,

Academies are more like businesses so a lot of them think of, kind of money. And
my school thought a lot of it was to do with money so they targeted the A Levels
more because they’d get more money per student for the A Levels and things
like … Schools should be about the education and not ‘Oh, how many students
can I get in at A Level?’ (Skerritt, 2019b).

While similar viewpoints were evident elsewhere, regardless of school type, this
feeling seems more pronounced among those with experience in academies. For
example, arguably the most passionate and memorable of comments made by an
Irish teacher across the four studies comes from a participant with experience in
one of these schools explaining why she felt there is so much accountability in
English schools:

The school’s reputation. 100%. I’ve said that from day one. I feel they cared more
about the reputation of the school than the lives of the children in that school, and
that’s probably a strong statement but I stick by it because I feel that Irish teachers
care more about their students, and care more about the personal lives of the
students, and building a relationship with them rather than having this Ofsted
hanging over them and having everything to be by the book, and ticking boxes all
for the sake of what? Who’s benefitting from it? It’s definitely not the students and
it’s definitely not the teachers who are doing things just for the sake of doing
things (Skerritt, 2019a).

D ISCUSSION
The small research base on how Irish teachers have experienced schools in
England is far from positive. While there are fragments of positivity in each
piece of literature, overall, Irish teachers tend to report overwhelmingly negative
experiences in and perceptions of English schools. Irish teachers commonly
14 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
report experiencing intense pressure from external sources, but also internally as
a consequence of the pressures placed on schools. Within this pressurised
system, they experience what they feel to be an unsustainable and time-
consuming workload, which compounds and perpetuates the pressure and stress
they feel. Of most significance, perhaps, are their views on the motives of
schools, which they interpret and perceive to be aimed more at ticking boxes
than at serving the best interests of students. Schools’ motives are, in their view,
dictated by and for Ofsted, with the work being done in and by schools being
primarily for auditing purposes. Irish teachers’ experiences in English schools
are largely shaped by the overarching and inescapable pressures of high-stakes
accountability. The internal and external pressure, the unsustainable workloads,
and the questionable motives of schools, are part of the accountability regime
that dominates English schooling and the Irish teachers’ accounts are imbued
with the sense of being constantly accountable.
To further add to the experiences and perceptions of Irish teachers in the
research literature, stakeholders’ submissions to a recent consultation by
Ireland’s Department of Education and Skills on the issue of school autonomy
portrays English schools in a similar fashion: stressful, metricised, and ego­
centric institutions held together by a regime of accountability. While it must be
assumed that many of these stakeholders do not actually have first-hand experi­
ence in English schools and are instead drawing on common anecdotes, others
do state that they have previously worked in England. In any case, their views
align with how England’s schools are presented in the literature and how Irish
teachers speak about their experiences of the English system in research studies.
Some comments submitted7 to the Department of Education and Skills include
the following:

Having worked in England in a State School in Inner City London for two years,
I can see that the model being proposed is similar to that … Five teachers in the
school I worked in left after two years from burn out. Stress levels were incredibly
high. There were endless forms to be filled in, endless meetings (for the sake of
meetings), and it took the joy out of teaching as the administration was over­
whelming (a7).
We have all seen how the system in England is so bad- no focus on the children’s’
needs, no holistic education, no broad curriculum. They are led by tests, levels and
scores. That is not what teaching and learning is about (a8).
I have just returned from teaching in the U.K where schools have complete
autonomy. I have first-hand experience that this system does not work. It leads
to corruption, nepotism, and increased pressure on management, staff and stu­
dents (a14).
Having worked in the UK, I have seen the risks and disadvantages of increasing
school autonomy … Increasing autonomy will only increase pressure and work­
load … Morale plummets and focus switches from providing an all round educa­
tion to targets (a19).
PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 15
Schools in England are autonomous, but they are also places of extreme
accountability. As the literature demonstrates, many teachers in English schools
struggle with the hyper-accountability they experience and ultimately endure. It
is plausible, however, that this accountability is experienced and thought of
more negatively by Irish teachers as it is unrelatable to their typical experiences
of education. Although it is no secret that schools in England are difficult
environments, by looking at English schools through an Irish lens, new per­
spectives can be gained. While more than three decades of hyper-accountability
in England have positioned it as an often accepted and even unquestionable
component of school life, the experiences and perceptions of Irish teachers show
that some teachers, and particularly those from elsewhere, know that it does not
have to be this way.

C ONCLUSION
Irish teachers’ experiences in and perceptions of English schools, as presented
in the current literature base, are characterised by accountability. This account­
ability produces acute stress, unsustainable workloads, and questionable
(school) motives.8 By bringing this narrative to the fore, this paper makes an
important contribution to the literature which will be of interest and of use to
academics researching education policy, migrant teachers, and comparative
education. Similarly, this paper can be of value to both practising and pre-
service teachers in Ireland contemplating moving to England, as well as English
policymakers, schools, and recruitment agencies during the teacher recruitment
process. However, while this paper does serve an important purpose it is not
definitive and calls for further research in this area. Both qualitative and
quantitative research consisting of larger sample sizes, as well as research
conducted by a wider range of researchers is needed. Moreover, it might be
particularly useful to compare the Irish experience in academy schools with the
Irish experience in other schools in England too, between primary and post-
primary schools, and between Irish teachers and teachers of other nationalities.
All things considered, this paper, and the further research it calls on, relates to
an even wider field in need of more research. Future research, more generally,
should, instead of documenting the professional transitions of multiple and
different groups, focus more on the experiences of migrant teachers in relation
to their specific circumstances, such as their country of origin (Bense, 2016). It
is important that researchers do not fall into the trap of treating teachers from
diverse backgrounds as one homogenous group of migrant teachers. While this
paper has enabled the voices of teachers from Ireland to be heard from a single
platform, completely absent are the voices of school leaders and other teachers
in English schools. To fully understand how Irish teachers experience and
perceive English schools we also need to hear from those who oversee their
16 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
work and work alongside them at the coalface. For now, however, it would
appear that Irish teachers’ experiences in English schools are far from positive.

N OTES
1
An exception to this has been the research exploring special educational needs in
Ireland and England (see Day et al., 2012; Rose and O’Neill, 2009; Shevlin and Rose,
2008).
2
Additional countries are also often included in these studies with very few focusing
solely on Ireland and England.
3
Sir Michael Wilshaw, a former headteacher, developed somewhat of a reputation for
his controversial views during his time as England’s Chief Inspector of Schools
(2012–2016). Wilshaw’s words used in this paper come from a speech he made
‘before officially taking up his Ofsted post’ and which were publicised by the
Guardian when he began his reign in January 2012: https://www.theguardian.com/
education/2012/jan/23/chief-inspector-schools-michael-wilshaw
4
This is a term often used by scholars in Ireland to convey the sense of professional
autonomy exercised, or at least previously exercised, by the country’s teachers. It emanates
from an oft-cited 1991 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) report which according to O’Grady et al. (2018) positioned the national teaching
culture as being removed from any professional accountability and concluded that tea­
chers’ ‘autonomy in the classroom is legendary’. While, almost three decades later, Irish
teachers’ autonomy is no longer ‘legendary’ it is perhaps fair to maintain that Irish teachers
continue to enjoy a more favourable autonomy/accountability balance than their counter­
parts in many other countries, and particularly their English neighbours.
5
One imagines that teachers from England would also find aspects of Irish education
daunting too, and especially the status of Ireland’s equivalent to the A Levels. The
‘iconic status accorded to Leaving Certificate results for individual students and their
schools year after year’ (Conway and Murphy, 2013) has seen it become ‘somewhat
of a cultural phenomenon in Ireland’ (Skerritt, 2017). According to Baird et al.
(2015), the media interest in the Leaving Certificate examination in Ireland differs
from other countries in the volume of coverage it receives and in the detail of the
analysis of the examination questions e.g. the topics covered, wording and structure.
As recently reported by McCormack et al. (2020), the coverage is often instrumen­
talist and technical in nature, and a consensualist view of Irish students is reflected in
the assumption that all wish to progress to higher education.
6
It is worth referring to the power of the teacher unions in Ireland, and particularly when
compared with the unions in England in the late twentieth century. As Drudy and Lynch
(1993, p. 115) asserted at the time, relative to unions in Britain ‘Irish teachers are
extremely well organised and influential’. More recently, Gleeson (2010, p. 250) has
referred to the view of Prof Malcolm Skilbeck, one of the authors of the 1991 OECD
report, that ‘the strength of the teacher unions in Ireland was well above the international
average, in sharp contrast with England where anti-union ideology prevailed’.
7
All submitted responses can be viewed on the Department of Education and Skills’
website here: https://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Advancing-
School-Autonomy-in-Ireland/submissions/
8
It must be pointed out that while the dominant trend was for Irish teachers to perceive
schools in England as having questionable motives, it was not uncommon for them to also
perceive some of their colleagues in England as being more focused on their own
individual needs as opposed to the needs of their students (see Skerritt, 2019a, 2019b,
2020).
PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 17
D ISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Craig Skerritt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3695-758X

R EFERENCES
Baird, J. A., Hopfenbeck, T. N., Elwood, J., Caro, D. and Ahmed, A. (2015)
Predictability in the Irish Leaving Certificate (Oxford, Oxford University Centre
for Educational Assessment).
Ball, S. J. (2003) The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity, Journal of
Education Policy, 18 (2), 215–228.
Ball, S. J. (2013) Education, Justice and Democracy: The Struggle over Ignorance and
Opportunity (London, Centre for Labour and Social Studies).
Ball, S. J. (2016) Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast, Policy Futures
in Education, 14 (8), 1046–1059.
Ball, S. J., Maguire, M. and Braun, A. (2012) How Schools Do Policy: Policy
Enactments in Secondary Schools (Oxon, Routledge).
Barker, B. (2010) The Pendulum Swings: Transforming School Reform (London,
Trentham Books).
Bell, R. and Grant, N. (1977) Patterns of Education in the British Isles (Surrey, Unwin
Education Books).
Bense, K. (2016) International teacher mobility and migration: A review and synthesis of
the current empirical research and literature, Educational Research Review, 17,
37–49.
Black, J. S., Mendenhall, M. and Oddou, G. (1991) Toward a comprehensive model of
international adjustment: an integration of multiple theoretical perspectives,
Academy of Management Review, 16 (2), 291–317.
Booth, T., Ainscow, M. and Dyson, A. (1997) Understanding inclusion and exclusion in
the English competitive education system, International Journal of Inclusive
Education, 1 (4), 337–355.
Brady, J. and Wilson, E. (2020) Teacher wellbeing in England: teacher responses to
school-level initiatives, Cambridge Journal of Education, doi:10.1080/
0305764X.2020.1775789
Brown, M., McNamara, G., O’Brien, S., Skerritt, C., O’Hara, J., Faddar, J. … Kurum, G.
(2020) Parent and student voice in evaluation and planning in schools, Improving
Schools, 23 (1), 85–102.
Conway, P. F. and Murphy, R. (2013) A rising tide meets a perfect storm: new account­
abilities in teaching and teacher education in Ireland, Irish Educational Studies, 32
(1), 11–36.
Courtney, S. J. and Gunter, H. M. (2015) Get off my bus! School leaders, vision work
and the elimination of teachers, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 18
(4), 395–417.
Czerniawski, G., Gray, D., MacPhail, A., Bain, Y., Conway, P. and Guberman, A. (2018)
The professional learning needs and priorities of higher-education-based teacher
educators in England, Ireland and Scotland, Journal of Education for Teaching, 44
(2), 133–148.
18 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
Dallat, J. and Sweeney, J. (1994) The reform of education in the United Kingdom and the
republic of Ireland a comparison of recent policies 1992–1993, Irish Educational
Studies, 13 (1), 14–31.
Day, T., Prunty, A. and Dupont, M. (2012) Responding to students’ needs in special
schools in Ireland and England: findings from two schools, Journal of Research in
Special Educational Needs, 12 (3), 141–150.
Drudy, S. and Lynch, K. M. (1993) Schools and Society in Ireland (Dublin, Gill &
Macmillan).
Ehren, M. C., Altrichter, H., McNamara, G. and O’Hara, J. (2013) Impact of school
inspections on improvement of schools—describing assumptions on causal mechan­
isms in six European countries, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and
Accountability, 25 (1), 3–43.
Francis, B., Taylor, B. and Tereshchenko, A. (2020) Reassessing ‘Ability’ Grouping:
Improving Practice for Equity and Attainment (Oxon, Routledge).
Gewirtz, S., Maguire, M., Neumann, E. and Towers, E. (2019) What’s wrong with
‘deliverology’? Performance measurement, accountability and quality improvement
in English secondary education, Journal of Education Policy, doi:10.1080/
02680939.2019.1706103
Gibbs, S. and Gardiner, M. (2008) The structure of primary and secondary teachers’
attributions for pupils’ misbehaviour: a preliminary cross-phase and cross-cultural
investigation, Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 8 (2), 68–77.
Gleeson, J. (2010) Curriculum in Context: Partnership, Power and Praxis in Ireland
(Bern, Peter Lang).
Grant, N. (1981) The British Isles as an area of study in comparative education,
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 11 (2), 135–146.
Gustafsson, J. E., Ehren, M. C. M., Conyngham, G., McNamara, G., Altrichter, H. and
O’Hara, J. (2015) From inspection to quality: ways in which school inspection
influences change in schools, Studies in Educational Evaluation, 47, 47–57.
Hearne, L. and Neary, S. (2020) Let’s talk about career guidance in secondary schools!
A consideration of the professional capital of school staff in Ireland and England,
International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, doi:10.1007/
s10775-020-09424-5
Hoskins, K. (2012) Raising Standards 1988 to the present: a new performance policy
era? Journal of Educational Administration and History, 44 (1), 5–19.
Jeffrey, B. and Woods, P. (1998) Testing Teachers: The Effect of School Inspection on
Primary Teachers (London, Falmer Press).
Jones, K. L., Tymms, P., Kemethofer, D., O’Hara, J., McNamara, G., Huber, S. …
Greger, D. (2017) The unintended consequences of school inspection: the prevalence
of inspection side-effects in Austria, the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, Oxford Review of Education, 43 (6),
805–822.
Keddie, A. and Mills, M. (2019) Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice: Stories of
English Schooling (Oxon, Routledge).
Lennon, C. (1999) Teacher Professionalism in an Era of Change. In N. Ward and
T. Dooney (Eds) Irish Education for the 21st Century (Dublin, Oak Tree Press),
43–52.
Mac Ruairc, G. (2019) School evaluation: trends and directions. In E. Ottesen and
F. Stephens (Eds) School Evaluation with a Purpose (Oxon, Routledge), 8–27.
Maguire, M. and Braun, A. (2019) Headship as policy narration: generating metaphors of
leading in the English primary school, Journal of Educational Administration and
History, 51 (2), 103–116.
PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 19
McCormack, O., Gleeson, J. and O’Donoghue, T. (2020) An analysis of national news­
paper coverage relating to the Leaving Certificate programme in two newspapers in
the Republic of Ireland, Irish Educational Studies, 39 (1), 1–18.
McCormack, O., Lynch, R. and Hennessy, J. (2015) Plastic people in pinstripe suits: an
exploration of the views of Irish parents on the publication of school league tables,
Educational Studies, 41 (5), 513–533.
McNamara, G. and O’Hara, J. (2005) Internal review and self-evaluation—the chosen
route to school improvement in Ireland? Studies in Educational Evaluation, 31 (4),
267–282.
McNamara, G. and O’Hara, J. (2006) Workable compromise or pointless exercise?
School-based evaluation in the Irish context, Educational Management
Administration & Leadership, 34 (4), 564–582.
Miller, P. (2019) Aspiration, career progression and overseas trained teachers in England,
International Journal of Leadership in Education, 22 (1), 55–68.
Miller, P. W. (2018) Overseas trained teachers (OTTs) in England: surviving or thriving?
Management in Education, 32 (4), 160–166.
Milner, A. L., Browes, N. and Murphy, T. R. (2020) All in this together? The reconstitu­
tion of policy discourses on teacher collaboration as governance in post-crisis
Europe, European Educational Research Journal, 19 (3), 225–246.
Moos, L. (2005) Regulation and trust: negotiating relationship. In C. Sugrue (Ed.)
Passionate Principalship: Learning from the Life Histories of School Leaders
(Oxon, RoutledgeFalmer), 105–122.
Moreton, H. J., Boylan, M. and Simkins, T. (2017) Headteachers Who also Inspect:
practitioner Inspectors in England. In J. Baxter (Ed.) School Inspectors: Policy
Implementers, Policy Shapers in National Policy Contexts (Switzerland, Springer),
137–158.
Neumann, E. (2019) Setting by numbers: datafication processes and ability grouping in
an English secondary school, Journal of Education Policy, doi:10.1080/
02680939.2019.1646322
O’Brien, S., McNamara, G., O’Hara, J. and Brown, M. (2019) Irish teachers, starting on
a journey of data use for school self-evaluation, Studies in Educational Evaluation,
60, 1–13.
O’Doherty, T. and Harford, J. (2018) Teacher recruitment: reflections from Ireland on the
current crisis in teacher supply, European Journal of Teacher Education, 41 (5),
654–669.
O’Grady, E., Guilfoyle, L. and McGarr, O. (2018) “Biting one’s lip” and “distancing”:
exploring pre-service teachers’ strategies in dysfunctional professional relationships,
Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 46 (4), 369–383.
O’Keeffe, S. and Skerritt, C. (2020) Exploring teacher identity using poststructural tools,
International Journal of Research & Method in Education. Advance online publica­
tion. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2020.1753691
Olmedo, A. and Wilkins, A. (2017) Governing through parents: a genealogical enquiry of
education policy and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in England,
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 38 (4), 573–589.
Page, D. (2018) Conspicuous practice: self-surveillance and commodification in English
education, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 27 (4), 375–390.
Papanastasiou, N. (2019) Revealing Market Hegemony through a Critical Logics
Approach: The Case of England’s Academy Schools Policy. In A. Wilkins and
A. Olmedo (Eds) Education Governance and Social Theory: interdisciplinary
Approaches to Research (Bloomsbury, London), 123–138.
Perryman, J., Ball, S., Maguire, M. and Braun, A. (2011) Life in the pressure cooker–
School league tables and English and mathematics teachers’ responses to
20 PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW
accountability in a results-driven era, British Journal of Educational Studies, 59 (2),
179–195.
Perryman, J. and Calvert, G. (2020) What motivates people to teach, and why do they
leave? Accountability, performativity and teacher retention, British Journal of
Educational Studies, 68 (1), 3–23.
Perryman, J., Maguire, M., Braun, A. and Ball, S. (2018) Surveillance, Governmentality
and moving the goalposts: the influence of Ofsted on the work of schools in a
post-panoptic era, British Journal of Educational Studies, 66 (2), 145–163.
Quinn, R. (2014) The Education of Ireland: Royal Irish Academy Leaders in Higher
Education Address (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy).
Rose, R. and O’Neill, Á. (2009) Classroom support for inclusion in England and Ireland:
an evaluation of contrasting models, Research in Comparative and International
Education, 4 (3), 250–261.
Roskell, D. (2013) Cross-cultural transition: international teachers’ experience of ‘culture
shock’, Journal of Research in International Education, 12 (2), 155–172.
Ryan, L. (2015) ‘It’s different now’: A narrative analysis of recent irish migrants making
sense of migration and comparing themselves with previous waves of migrants, Irish
Journal of Sociology, 23 (2), 114–132.
Ryan, L. and Kurdi, E. (2014) Young, Highly Qualified Migrants: The Experiences and
Expectations of Recently Arrived Irish Teachers in Britain (London, Social Policy
Research Centre, Middlesex University).
Sahlberg, P. (2011) The fourth way of Finland, Journal of Educational Change, 12,
173–185.
Shevlin, M. and Rose, R. (2008) Pupils as partners in education decision-making:
responding to the legislation in England and Ireland, European Journal of Special
Needs Education, 23 (4), 423–430.
Skerritt, C. (2017) The code for success? Using a Bernsteinian perspective on socio­
linguistics to accentuate working-class students’ underachievement in the Republic
of Ireland, Irish Journal of Sociology, 25 (3), 274–296.
Skerritt, C. (2019a) Irish migrant teachers’ experiences and perceptions of autonomy and
accountability in the English education system, Research Papers in Education, 34
(5), 569–596.
Skerritt, C. (2019b) ‘I think Irish schools need to keep doing what they’re doing’: irish
teachers’ views on school autonomy after working in English academies, Improving
Schools, 22 (3), 267–287.
Skerritt, C. (2019c) Privatization and ‘destatization’: school autonomy as the ‘Anglo
neoliberalization’ of Irish education policy, Irish Educational Studies, 38 (2),
263–279.
Skerritt, C. (2019d) Discourse and teacher identity in business-like education, Policy
Futures in Education, 17 (2), 153–171.
Skerritt, C. (2020) School autonomy and the surveillance of teachers, International
Journal of Leadership in Education, doi:10.1080/13603124.2020.1823486
Skinner, B., Leavey, G. and Rothi, D. (2019) Managerialism and teacher professional
identity: impact on well-being among teachers in the UK, Educational Review,
doi:10.1080/00131911.2018.1556205
Smith, J. (2007). Earning or Learning? Class, culture and identity in contemporary
schooling: an ethnography from Northern England and Southern Ireland. Doctoral
thesis, Hull: University of Hull.
Studies, I. E. (1994) Educational research and the conduct of change in Irish education,
Irish Educational Studies, 13 (1), 207–248.
PRESSURE, BUREAUCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ALL FOR SHOW 21
Sugrue, C. (2006) A critical appraisal of the impact of international agencies on educa­
tional reforms and teachers’ lives and work: the case of Ireland? European
Educational Research Journal, 5 (3–4), 181–195.
Tomlinson, S. (2016) Special education and minority ethnic young people in England:
continuing issues, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37 (4),
513–528.
Troman, G. (1997) Self-management and school inspection: complementary forms of
surveillance and control in the primary school, Oxford Review of Education, 23 (3),
345–364.
Warner, L. (2010) Overseas trained teachers: part of a problem or part of a solution?
Teacher Education Advancement Network Journal, 1 (2), 1–19.
West, A., Mattei, P. and Roberts, J. (2011) Accountability and sanctions in English
schools, British Journal of Educational Studies, 59 (1), 41–62.
Whitehead, J. and Taylor, A. (2000) The development of foreign native speakers training
to be modern foreign languages teachers in England: are there wider lessons for the
profession?, Teacher Development, 4 (3), 371–382.
Wilkins, C., Gobby, B. and Keddie, A. (2020) The neo-performative teacher: school
reform, entrepreneurialism and the pursuit of educational equity, British Journal of
Educational Studies, doi:10.1080/00071005.2020.1739621

Correspondence Craig Skerritt Centre for Evaluation,

Quality and Inspection, Dublin City University
Dublin
Ireland
E-mail: craig.skerritt2@mail.dcu.ie