Introduction

In this chapter, I explore the impact of a second educational trend which sees an increased emphasis placed on data about children within schools, known as datafication. As with neuroscience, I begin with a discussion of the role of data in education, before considering the relation to concepts of ability and to the reproduction of inequalities. The field of data and education is vast and written about extensively elsewhere (for example, Eynon 2013; Lingard and Sellar 2013; Selwyn et al 2015; Lupton and Williamson 2017) so I provide an overview of the main debates and points of discussion, before focusing specifically on the relationship between data and concepts of ability. I wish to emphasise the ways in which current data-focused practices work to reinforce long-standing ideas about children as positioned on a spectrum of ability, where they can be compared with each other. These positions are solidified through data and as such lead to deterministic predictions of what children can or cannot do, as exemplified through the drift towards measurements of progress over raw attainment.

Through this chapter I discuss the impact of data on values, as well as on practice. A datafied education system is one governed by a specific rationality, whereby numbers become the means through which we understand children and their potential, but also the teacher's worth and impact. Like others, I argue that a datafied education system can exclude other ways of thinking about value in education, while appearing common-sense; Lingard and Sellar, for example, note the ‘naturalisation of data as the most sensible medium for thinking about teaching and learning’ (2013, p. 652); meanwhile Popkewitz comments that ‘it is almost impossible to think about schooling without numbers’ (2012, p. 169). This ‘tyranny of numbers’ (Ball 2015) as a way of understanding what matters in education – like the concept of ability, a regime of truth – shapes priorities, practices and the operation of power.

Before I turn to how data are used and datafication in education, it is worth noting that the increased prominence of data is a phenomenon present in many sectors – what has been called the ‘data deluge’ (Kitchin 2014, p. xv) – and there is much positivity around the potential for Big Data to change society and government (Eynon 2013).