Education policy and the ‘ideal learner’: producing recognisable learner-subjects through early years assessment

Abstract

This article examines how education policy, in the form of a statutory assessment system used in the first year of primary schools, defines the ‘ideal learner’. This ideal model is important because it prescribes the characteristics and skills a child needs to display in order to be recognisable as a learner. An analysis of the content of the assessment itself is used alongside ethnographic data from classrooms where the assessment is conducted, to demonstrate how the values inherent in the assessment and its associated practices reflect neoliberal discourses. Rational choice, self-promotion and individual responsibility for learning are all valued within this framework, and children’s transitions into recognisable student-subjects are dependent on their adoption of these values. It is argued in conclusion that this restrictive notion of what a ‘good learner’ looks like can work to systematically exclude some children from positions of success.