Abstract
This article takes a sociological approach to knowledge and discourse to trace how the terms ‘achievement’ and ‘achievement differences’ emerge in educational policy, the meanings they acquire, and the patterns of interpretation and narrative structures that develop around them. The data corpus comprises all policy-relevant documents relating to primary school from 2002 to 2020 at the federal level, as well as examples from the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. Our analysis reveals that the discourse constructs the concept of the high-achieving child as an entity that has internalised libertarian social norms, such as self-discipline and a focus on performance. This child learns with quasi-natural joy and presents themselves as unique and high-achieving. Furthermore, we critically examine how students are categorised as ‘high-achieving’ or ‘low-achieving’ based on various performative markers, and how concepts such as creativity, ability, joy and discipline are employed to individualise students. Singularisation and joy emerge in discourse as concise narratives that, when coupled with achievement, legitimise and normalise inequalities.