Measurements are inscription devices that constitute what they appear to represent: numbers literally make people up.  The newspaper/online reader or television viewer is then allowed to ‘know’ the value of a person, a school, a university in an instant, just by reading a number.  There is no translation or effort involved. The belief in the objectivity of numbers allows educational measures to be circulated throughout Europe and the OECD without fear of contradiction. The net result is that grades, league tables, ranks become naturalised, normalised and validated, through familiarity and ubiquitous citation, particularly through recitation as ‘facts’ in the media.  School audits, test scores, league tables and rankings attain an unwarranted truth status simply by virtue of unscrutinised circulation.  

The power of numbers rests in their unassailability to the mathematically uninitiated: truth in numbers has a higher status, and is seen as less contestable than truth expressed in narrative form. The fear that people have of mathematics feeds into feelings about numbers and this, in turn, grants power the measurement industry. On the surface, the simplicity of numerical ordering appears to remove any sense of arbitrariness from the process of educational measurement.  It creates an impression that what is of merit can be hierarchically ordered and uncontrovertibly judged. Numbers have an aura of mystery and power and are assumed to be without ideological bias. Yet, numbers are derived from a standpoint, a political and intellectual position and are open to interpretation and distortion. Moreover, what gives numbers global currency in ranking people and institutions is what makes them inappropriate as measures of appraisal: they bypass deep moral and ethical issues as to what is or is not of value in education and society.

Auditing and measuring of educational outputs is the cornerstone of new managerial practice at the organisational level.  It is a form of its disciplinary regulation that not only changes the way people relate to the workplace, to authority and to each other but also the way people define themselves.  Drawing on empirical research on primary, secondary and higher education for New Managerialism (Lynch, Grummell and Devine, 2012) and a further on-going study of working, learning and caring in higher education, this paper will analyse how the measure becomes the master/mistress of what matters not only educationally but throughout society.  It will explore in particular the particularities of measurement practices and how they alter the culture of education so that education’s core purpose, educare, to nurture, becomes a minor and trivialised value even though education itself cannot succeed without it. 

Lynch, K. (2010) Carelessness: A hidden doxa of higher education. Arts Humanities in Higher Education, 9:54-67. Lynch, Kathleen, Grummell, Bernie and Devine, Dympna (2012) New Managerialism in Education: Gender, Commercialisation and Carelessness. Basingstoke: Palgrave