The Challenge to Professionals from the New Public Management: implications for the teaching profession

Many teachers, like professionals in other state bureaucracies in the UK and elsewhere, realise that they have common interests and challenges through casual conversation, or through coverage in the media. Yet even then, they may fail to realise how similar their dilemmas are. This paper suggests that part of the similarity of the issues which teachers and other professionals face stems from the nature and effects of their management and supervision, which has changed radically over the past 15 years; but part of the similarity also stems from the similar nature of the debate on the role and function of the professional. Using examples and practice from the work of teachers, doctors and police in the UK, this paper will examine both of these issues, and suggest that a successful negotiation of the future by the professional will be by an acknowledgement and debate about them both.