Assessment frameworks and teacher accountability in a primary school in Cape Town.  Issues of professional regulation and social justice

Murphy, Henrico

Assessment frameworks and teacher accountability in a primary school in Cape Town. Issues of professional regulation and social justice

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Assessment frameworks and teacher accountability at one primary school in Cape Town The study explores how the South African primary school assessment framework serves as a form of surveillance technology to hold teachers accountable for their classroom teaching in grades 4 to grade 6 at one Western Cape primary school. The critical focus is on assessment as a mechanism of surveillance, as well as accountability, and how this influences teacher practices and viewpoints. The study employs key concepts from the work of Jeremy Bentham and Michel Foucault to explore how surveillance is internalised, normalised, and operationalised in classrooms. Bentham's conceptualisation of the panopticon as an architectural surveillance mechanism foregrounds the study. It is used to show how the modern state has come to develop assessment frameworks as both acts of surveillance and that of utilitarianism (actions that apparently lead to ‘the greatest good for the greatest number'). It is argued that when placed alongside Foucault's (1995) work on discipline, monitoring, and punishment- namely ‘surveillance of the many by the few'- these concepts operate in ways that ensure the compliance of teachers in a strictly regulated profession. This study employed two complementary data collection methods: (1) a detailed questionnaire and (2) focus group interviews. The focus group interviews were used to triangulate and deepen the findings generated from the questionnaire data, while also providing rich, qualitative insights into how teachers interpret and make sense of assessment frameworks and assessment practices. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse, surveillance, and disciplinary power, this study examines how assessment and accountability function to normalise teacher compliance within schools and embed regulatory control in teachers' everyday practices. By examining the intersecting discourses of assessment, surveillance, and accountability, this study sought to demonstrate how teacher compliance becomes normalised within school contexts and embedded in teachers' everyday practices. This normalisation operates in ways that constrain teacher agency and limit the substantive pedagogical contributions teachers are able to make towards meaningful teaching and learning. Assessment and accountability are shown to function as disciplinary technologies, operating through multiple ii forms of surveillance that emanate vertically from regulatory authorities and horizontally through collegial and community-based processes. Together, these mechanisms contribute to the production of what have been described as ‘somewhat docile teacher bodies' (Bourke, Lidstone & Ryan, 2015:85). The findings suggest that contemporary assessment frameworks in South African schools, particularly in the Western Cape, operate not merely as instruments of performance measurement but as technologies of datafication and dataveillance aligned with marketdriven logics of efficiency and control. As these regimes intensify, the object of governance increasingly becomes the digital representation of teachers and learners, rather than the lived pedagogical and learning experience. The study's main finding is that under threat of punishment and constant surveillance and as teachers internalise and embody assessment as a disciplinary accountability mechanism, levels of professional docility have risen to levels that hold serious implications for teacher agencies and their professional standing.