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The Myth of Measurement
Inspection, audit, targets and the public sector
- Nick Frost - Leeds Beckett University
Series:
SAGE Swifts
SAGE Swifts
August 2021 | 128 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
In the public sector inspection regimes and performance targets provide a powerful and dominant narrative, often placing pressure on professionals and organisations to continuously quantify the quality of services and to achieve targets.
This book explores the background, development, techniques and impact of such regimes across areas of the public sector including schools, universities, police forces, children’s services and health services. Putting inspection and audit regimes under scrutiny, the author questions their role and function across these organisations and builds a persuasive critical argument for the re-thinking of public accountability mechanisms and techniques.
Chapter 1: Measuring everything in the public sector
Chapter 2: Assessing quality in universities: measuring teaching and research
Chapter 3: Targets and transparency in the NHS: promoting patient choice through the audit culture
Chapter 4: Schools and the role of Ofsted: 'you could hear the sound of staple guns in the corridors from dawn to dusk!'
Chapter 5: Children's social care: measuring the immeasurable
Chapter 6: Crime and policing: holding the police accountable
Chapter 7: Rethinking the audit culture: towards an alternative
