Inside the English education lab: Critical qualitative and ethnographic perspectives on the academies experiment 9781526145390

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Inside the English education lab

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Inside the English education lab Critical qualitative and ethnographic perspectives on the academies experiment Edited by

Christy Kulz, Kirsty Morrin and Ruth McGinity

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2022

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While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 4538 3 hardback First published 2022 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of figures List of contributors List of abbreviations Foreword –​Diane Reay Introduction – A time and a place: doing critical qualitative and ethnographic work across an academised educational landscape – Christy Kulz, Ruth McGinity and Kirsty Morrin

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Part I – ‘Privatisation’: Positioning policies and publics: academies, governance and agency 1 Academisation and the law of ‘attraction’: an ethnographic study of relays, connective strategies and regulated participation – Andrew Wilkins 2 When the MAT moves in: implications for legitimacy in terms of governance and local agency – Helen Ryan-​Atkin and Harriet Rowley

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Part II – ‘Practice’: Schooling the body and bodies in schooling: practice, strategy and the everyday 3 Free schools, inclusion and social capital of children with special educational needs and disabilities – Clara R. Jørgensen and Julie Allan 4 The great education ‘permanent revolution’? Shape-​shifting academies and degrees of change (and ‘success’) – Katie Blood 5 What ‘these kids’ need: discipline, misrecognition and resistance in an English academy school – Sarah Leaney

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Part III –  ‘Reflexivity’: In the contours and on the margins: re-​imagining the academy

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6 Producing the academy school: ethnography, Foucault and the study of policy production – Jodie Pennacchia 7 The ‘contradictory space’ of the entrepreneurial academy: critical ethnography, entrepreneurship education and inequalities – Kirsty Morrin

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Conclusion – Embedding an educational settlement: coercion, contestation and localised struggles – Christy Kulz, Kirsty Morrin and Ruth McGinity

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Afterword – Polyvalent and incoherent: the academies programme and the English educational apparatus – Stephen J. Ball

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Index

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List of figures

2.1 Chalkdown MAT. Source: author. 6.1 Performative noticeboards. Source: author.

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Contributors

Julie Allan is Professor of Equity and Inclusion and former Head of the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research focuses on inclusive education, disability studies and children’s rights and she has been advisor to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Dutch and Queensland governments and Council of Europe. Her recent books include Psychopathology at School: Theorising Mental Disorder in Education (with Valerie Harwood) (Routledge, 2014) and the 2020 Routledge World Yearbook in Education –​Schooling, Governance and Inequalities (with Valerie Harwood and Clara Rübner Jørgensen). Katie Blood is an independent class-​based Bourdieusian social researcher. Her postgraduate research conducted at Nottingham Trent University, under the umbrella of the sociology of education, was an ethnographic study exploring newly established academies in marginalised settings. Her research interests and theoretical framing lies in social justice. Clara Rübner Jørgensen is a Lecturer in Childhood, Youth and Education Studies at Coventry University. She is a social anthropologist and has c­ arried out fieldwork in educational settings in the UK, Spain and Central America. Her research focuses on social inclusion, educational inequalities, children and young people’s experiences of schooling and the social and cultural contexts of childhood and youth. She has published in international journals including Childhood, British Journal of Sociology of Education, European Journal of Special Needs Education and British Educational Research Journal. Her recent books include Kid Power, Inequalities and Intergenerational Relations (with Michael Wyness) (Anthem Press, 2021) and the 2020 Routledge World Yearbook in Education –​Schooling, Governance and Inequalities (with Julie Allan and Valerie Harwood). Christy Kulz is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Technical University Berlin’s Institute of Sociology where she is researching British migrants in

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Germany in the wake of Brexit. Prior to this Christy was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, working on a research project exploring how schools and their subjects are governed through the education market. While her research interests are diverse, they coalesce around intersectional formations of inequality in urban contexts, race, whiteness and nationalism in Europe and how neoliberalism shapes institutional practices. Christy’s research monograph, Factories for Learning: Producing Raced and Classed Inequality in the Neoliberal Academy School (Manchester University Press, 2017), won the Society for Educational Studies’ first place book prize and was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrahams Award. Sarah Leaney is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton. Her research focuses on the formations of classed identities, and the role of ‘affect’ in understanding the formation and reformation of classed selves. She also explores the everyday, material and social experiences of people who live on council estates and has published on this in journals such as Housing, Theory and Society, and Ethnography and Education. Ruth McGinity is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the Institute of Education, UCL, UK. Ruth’s research is organised around three main themes and seeks to critically investigate new models and structures of schooling, theorise professional identities and practices and explore knowledge production within and for the field of educational leadership. Ruth is an elected Council member of the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society and an Associate Editor of its flagship journal, Educational Management, Administration & Leadership. Kirsty Morrin is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. Her research is based in sociologies of ‘class’, and education. In particular, she explores ‘class’ formations and processes, theories of social mobility, and the increased preference for ‘entrepreneurship’ or ‘entrepreneurial agendas’ in education. Empirically her work has recently been focused on the academies programme in England, specifically state intervention and sponsorship in the programme, and localised resistance to this initiative. Harriet Rowley is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Community at Manchester Metropolitan University. She teaches students on undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in the Department of Children, Youth and Education Studies. As a researcher, Harriet uses ethnographic approaches with arts-​based methods and relational practices in educational and community settings to support individuals to voice their experiences

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in creative ways. Harriet is particularly interested in youth participation, forms of social engagement through the arts and forms of democratic practice to promote the representation and recognition of marginalised groups. She has led and contributed to EU-​funded projects in these areas including PARTISPACE (H2020), Partibridges (Erasmus+​) and OUYE (Erasmus+). During her sabbatical in 2018, Harriet was a visiting scholar at Flinders University, Adelaide (Erasmus+​Higher Education Mobility Programme). Her forthcoming books include Reshaping Youth Participation: Manchester in a European Gaze (with Janet Batsleer and Gráinne McMahon) (Emerald, 2022) and Young People, Radical Democracy and Community Development (with Janet Batsleer and Demet Lüküslü) (Policy Press, 2022). Harriet was awarded her PhD entitled ‘Schools and deprived communities: A case study of a community-​oriented school’ in 2013 from the University of Manchester. She used critical policy sociological perspectives to carry out a longitudinal, ethnographic study of a sponsored academy by a social housing trust. Helen Ryan-​Atkin is a Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education at Manchester Metropolitan University. She teaches on both the BA and PGCE programmes in the School of Teacher Education and Professional Development, and is a Partnership Coordinator with the university’s network of over 500 school partners in the region. Helen’s research interests include governance, accountability and trust within Multi-​Academy Trusts, using critical social policy theories to give a voice to the various stakeholders within these organisations, including those less heard. Her current doctoral study addresses these themes, particularly in the context of MAT expansion, and the implications for democratic representation and legitimacy within trust governance. The research involves a longitudinal study using ethnography and life-​history approaches. She is co-​author of the chapter ‘Developing through reflection and collaborative enquiry’ in the book by Moira Hulme, Rebecca Smith and Rachel O’Sullivan, Mastering Teaching: Thriving as an Early Career Teacher (OUP, 2021). Andrew Wilkins is Reader in Education Policy and Co-​director of Research in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Andrew is Associate Regional Editor (Europe) for the Journal of Education Policy and serves on the editorial board for the British Journal of Sociology of Education, The Australian Educational Researcher and Journal of Applied Social Theory. His recent books include Modernising School Governance (Routledge, 2016) and Education Governance and Social Theory (Bloomsbury, 2018).

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Abbreviations

CTC DCSF DfE DfES ERA FSM GMS LA MAT NPM NQT Ofsted

City Technology Colleges Department for Children, Schools and Families Department for Education Department for Education and Skills Education Reform Act (1988) Free School Meals Grant Maintained Status Local Authority Multi-​Academy Trusts New Public Management Newly Qualified Teacher Office for Standards in Education

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Foreword

This is a book that reveals just how much the English educational landscape has been transformed over the twenty-​first century. We now have the wholesale academisation of English state schooling with 91% of all secondary schools operating as academies in 2020, and a Conservative government putting money and political clout into creating more. As the editors assert, total academisation is the single future model for English schooling. Given this situation, Inside the English education lab: critical qualitative and ethnographic perspectives on the academies experiment, could not be more timely. Most English people have little idea of the extent to which English education has been privatised, and even less of the strong trends towards authoritarianism that permeate many academies, particularly those ‘serving’ disadvantaged communities. The editors, Christy Kulz, Kirsty Morrin and Ruth McGinity, have an impressive track record of researching and developing academic understandings of, the ‘academies project’. That expertise is evident in powerful, yet nuanced and well-​crafted, analyses that dive deep under the surface of the aspirational rhetoric that has become the hallmark of the academies project. This book discloses a wealth of different ways in which the policy of academisation is being used to create a new marketised educational system that is simultaneously highly centralised and locally autonomous. The policy also valorises competition. As the editors point out in their introduction, hyper-​competitive processes are encouraged at all levels: between academies and state-​maintained schools, between and within Multi-​Academy Trusts, as well as within schools between students and teachers through continual processes of ranking, comparison and observation. It also shows the ways in which class, race and disability are at the heart of such practices and performances within academies. Across the chapters we see how inequalities both govern and are governed by the academisation of schooling. The chapters work to illustrate how power and inequality are central to the academies project. It is immediately evident from many of the chapters that understanding the academies experiment requires

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a recognition of how corporate and private interests are moving into the English educational system. Throughout the book we see the everyday ways in which private interests sustain themselves in academy institutions. The book makes very clear the methods by which such private interests work against rather than support the public interest. In Chapter 2, Helen Ryan-​ Atkin and Harriet Rowley write of the shift in governance from a local democratic process to a centralised appointed body, highly dependent on the CEO of the academy chain. They catalogue the resulting marginalisation of the local community and the negative implications for localised democratic oversight. Relatedly, in Chapter 1, Andrew Wilkins presents a vivid example of how governance is practised in academies. The drive to ensure business interests are at the heart of governance works to constitute members of the local community and parents as unprofessional, and consequently unsuitable to be part of the governing body. In their place are representatives of the business world who prioritise audit and performativity over teaching and learning. Such shared priorities and commitments position them as technicians of compliance and evaluation, rather than having any deep concern with the learning experiences of students in classrooms. There are also interruptions and ruptures, and attempts at contestation at grassroots levels as parents and teachers come together in groups like the Anti-​Academies Alliance. There is a recognition of struggle and resistance alongside power and hierarchy. In Kirsty Morrin’s chapter on Milltown Academy (Chapter 7) we glimpse everyday acts of subversion amongst pupils and staff, while in Chapter 5 Sarah Leaney’s primary-​aged girls attempt to employ docility as a form of resistance, and in Chapter 6 on Eastbank Academy Jodie Pennacchia shows how the students resist being subject to processes of academic acceleration. But everyday acts of non-​compliance on the part of the relatively powerless rarely change existing power dynamics, and overall the project of academisation is seen to entrench inequalities despite the many grassroots challenges it faces. The chapters demonstrate the numerous ways in which education, governance and pedagogic approaches enter powerfully into how both pupils and teachers construct and negotiate their identities within the academy experiment. There is a potent affective current that surges through what Kulz and her co-​writers have called ‘the English education lab’. Despite waves of resistance and subversion, more often we see fear, anxiety and compliance –​as the conclusion describes when it talks of ‘a palpable climate of fear being created amongst teachers and school management staff in the wake of austerity politics and chronic underfunding’. The chapters in the book reveal the myriad ways in which the powerful aspirational discourse that saturates academy schooling remains primarily

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at the level of rhetoric rather than reality. Rather, as Katie Blood in her chapter on a Midlands academy (Chapter 4) concludes, meritocratic ideology merely entrenches and encodes distinctions in a harsher form. There are a multiplicity of rationing practices that work to separate the few winners from the many losers. The authors, contrary to the pervasive positive messaging around social mobility and meritocracy, raise important and timely questions about what happens when students are not successful. We see the same forms of social control of the poor and disadvantaged that Ashurst and Venn (2014) write so eloquently about in their historical genealogy of school exclusion. Kulz et al. perform a similar forensic excavation to reveal the tendency of academies to ‘responsibilise’ children, their families and working-​class communities (Muncie, 2006). The collection details the expanding control apparatus, including behaviour hubs, isolation booths and a range of behaviour and performance incentive schemes, to manage poverty and deprivation rather than addressing it. We are provided with vivid illustrative examples to show how those who fail to be docile and disciplined are increasingly subject to interventions designed to punish rather than alleviate distress and disadvantage. This book is particularly prescient at a point in time when there is increasing concern about the erosion of the public sector, the impact of hyper-​ competition, and a preoccupation with individual excellence rather than on the well-​being of children and young people in schools. It also shines a light on the entangled relationship between neoliberal policy interventions and the worrying development of populist authoritarianism across English society. There is a disquieting relationship between that growth of populist authoritarianism and the movement of society more generally towards privilege and exclusion. Superficially, they appear to operate in opposition rather than tandem, yet the ways in which their damaging co-​existence works to stifle democratic inclusion and participation forms a powerful undercurrent throughout the book. We see in the academies experiment a microcosm of the social ills and symbolic violence troubling twenty-​first-​century England. Hyper-​competition, low trust of ‘others’, resulting in increasing surveillance and disciplining of those deemed not to measure up, is combined with a valorising of the private over the public sector, and an emphasis on individual responsibility over collective endeavour. The academies project, at its inception, promised a transformation of the educational system for the good. We are desperately in need of educational transformation, but academies are not the answer –​they are a central part of the problem. This book reveals just how concerned we all need to be. Diane Reay, University of Cambridge

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References

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Ashurst, F. and Venn, C. (2014). Inequality, Poverty, Education: A Political Economy of School Exclusion. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Muncie, J. (2006). Governing young people: coherence and contradiction in contemporary youth justice. Critical Social Policy. 26(4), pp. 770–​793.

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Introduction A time and a place: doing critical qualitative and ethnographic work across an academised educational landscape Christy Kulz, Ruth McGinity and Kirsty Morrin The last two decades in England’s educational policy history have attracted both criticism and admiration across the world, with both detractors and supporters identifying the rapidity and experimental nature of the suite of reforms as either a cause célèbre or a cause for concern. Stephen Ball invoked the metaphor of a laboratory in his book The Education Debate, indicating the position of England as both a creator and exporter of global educational reforms (2008). One of the most enduring reforms that has radically altered the structure of schooling in England is the academies programme, initiated by the New Labour government under Tony Blair. In 2000, the initial concept was that independently run state schools sponsored by wealthy businesses and philanthropists in urban areas of entrenched disadvantage and underachievement would provide an innovative approach to tackling ‘failing’ schools and communities. Yet the idea of enabling schools to run independently from the state was not born out of this initiative; in fact, the first such schools operating like this were the City Technology Colleges (CTCs) introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government through the Education Reform Act in 1988. Walford (1991) describes how the appeal of CTCs was connected to breaking the influence of perceived leftist Local Authorities (LAs) by attracting selected pupils into a private-​sector provision while also claiming to provide opportunities for inner-​city youth. New Labour’s academies were a reincarnation of CTCs using public–​private finance; a private sponsor would contribute £2 million in exchange for shaping the school’s ethos and providing inspirational leadership, while the government footed the vast majority of the bill. While only 206 new academies were opened over the period of New Labour’s term of office, the seeds of change had been planted. After the general election of 2010 delivered a hung parliament, the Conservative-​led coalition rapidly expanded the academies experiment and in the decade that followed England’s school system changed beyond recognition. This cemented England’s reputation globally as a hot house of educational reforms inspired by autonomy and high-​stakes accountability,

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committed to the disintermediation of middle-​tier governance arrangements. The exponential growth of academies in England, from May 2010 when there were 206 to April 2021 where there were 9,588 (in total, roughly 75% of secondary and 32% of primary schools in England),1 demonstrates a rapid and intensified process of de-​regulation of the school system. These limited companies with charitable status (exempting members and trustees from personal liabilities) occupy a central space in the patchwork of provision in England, which is further complicated by the introduction of and growth in the mid-​tier organisational structures known as Multi-​ Academy Trusts (MATs). There has been a growth in the establishment of MATs as the preferred governance structure in England (Collins et al., 2021); in many ways these bodies replace the LA. A MAT has a single board responsible for all aspects of operation and performance. MATs are constructed in various ways, attesting to the loose, heterarchical principles of autonomy and diversity which underpin the academies reform movement in England (Ball, 2009). When an academy joins a MAT, the school ceases to exist as a legal entity, and all assets are transferred to the central MAT. As of January 2020, there were 1,200 such organisations operating around 7,600 academy schools in England.2 Schools can become academies and join MATs in two ways. Schools deemed successful by the national inspectorate (Ofsted) can voluntarily convert to become an academy, and either choose to join an existing MAT or establish their own MAT. The other route results from being rated as ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted, and subsequently being forced to become a sponsored academy within an existing MAT. Schools that are deemed failing (‘inadequate’) are more likely to be located in areas of greater deprivation (Harford, 2019) and thus, by dint of socio-​economic status, children from poorer homes are less likely to be in schools that are judged good or outstanding, compared to their richer peers. As a result, children from poorer homes are more likely to see their school forced to convert as part of a takeover.

Centralisation, standardisation and the erosion of Local Authorities This post-​2010 education settlement privileging market and data-​driven structures and mechanisms over local accountability is not a sudden shift, but builds on decades of the disintermediation of LAs through increasing centralisation coupled with the steady decline of comprehensive education and greater equality as desirable goals (Courtney and McGinity, 2020). The spirit of the Swann Report (1985) and its aim of ‘education for all’ where schooling should addresses racism and promote an understanding of multiculture have become past-​tense concerns at the national level. In fact,

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these concerns are frequently associated with educational failure. Despite Labour’s attempts to promote equality in education by abolishing the tripartite school system in 1965, full comprehensivation was never realised as many Conservative LAs retained their grammar schools. Progressive educational methods were denounced by the New Right as early as the late sixties through appealing to a ‘silent majority’ that feared their children would be damaged by anti-​racist or feminist education allegedly infiltrating leftist comprehensive schools. New Right pamphlets like the Black Papers framed comprehensives as harmful to intelligent working-​class children, while eugenicists were referenced to conclude that intelligence was hereditary and made class differences inevitable (Cox and Dyson, 1969: 20). Much as we see in the wake of the banking crisis through austerity politics, the 1970s Right drew on justifiable insecurities in the face of an economic downturn to place marginalised groups in competition with one another while appealing to the individual’s perceived powers to exercise choice, which was eventually legislated for in the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA). Progressive methods were posited as the cause of falling educational standards, while LAs attempting to address inequalities were branded as bastions of the ‘loony left’. The New Right used numerous fictitious tales targeting white anxiety to attack anti-​racist education, presenting it as the cause of British cultural decline (see Gordon, 1990). Concerns over local progressive movements were crafted ‘into popular “chains of meaning” ’, which provided an ‘ideological smokescreen and hence popular support for the Thatcherite onslaught on town hall democracy’ (Butcher et al., 1990: 116). Outlandish tales of political correctness gone wrong blurred the lines of causality, with New Right organisations tying left-​wing extremists and slumping educational standards to the development of anti-​racist education (Tomlinson, 1993: 25–​6). Tomlinson (2008) describes how there was far more commentary on anti-​ racist, multicultural education than action within schools. Yet the political climate of the late 1980s veered towards framing anti-​racists, rather than racist attitudes, as the problem (Ball and Solomos, 1990: 12). This dynamic persists today, as movements like Black Lives Matter or critical race theory are positioned as problematic rather than the inequalities that they are attempting to address (see Conclusion). Moral panics centred around national decline not only hewed raced and classed divisions, they set the stage for more aggressive, market-​ oriented reforms. Ball describes how a focus on competition as a means to raise standards relinquished any idea of equitable provision for all to the dustbin, as ‘market rights’ replaced ‘welfare rights’ (Ball, 1990: 6–​8). The promotion of individualistic policies like parental choice did not promote equality, but rather rewarded parental positioning (Gewirtz, 2002: 71), as

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white, middle-​class cultural capital was privileged and outcomes reflected the power held by those entering the educational marketplace (Reay, 1998). Labour’s Lord Adonis (2012: 7) proclaimed that the initial New Labour academies reinvented the inner-​ city comprehensive; however, academies work from a fundamentally different premise. Funding was progressively shifted towards some disadvantaged areas of England to give New Labour’s programme a social justice angle, yet the discursive shift from welfarism to a new managerialism remained intact (Gerwirtz, 2002: 46). There were legitimate problems in education including a chronic lack of funding, buildings in disrepair and social inequality; however, many of these issues had been caused or exacerbated by Thatcherite policies. Mirza describes how a failure–​success binary became the bedrock of debates, without recognition of how the 1988 ERA’s market-​led reform structured this binary by plunging many urban schools into daily crises through a lack of funding that left little time for strategic management and subsequently fostered low standards and poor teaching quality (Mirza, 2009: 26). Yet instead of the negative perceptions and unfortunate condition of some English schools from the late 1980s throughout the 1990s being directly related to the ERA’s market-​led reforms and chronic underfunding, they came to be associated with anti-​racist education or the goal of a comprehensive system. Academies and New Labour’s third way politics more generally became a way of sidestepping and allegedly transcending these tensions by presenting a technocratic solution that would promote social justice in urban areas. However, Ball (2007: 160) describes how these first academies embodied the contradictions of these public–​private finance initiatives that championed entrepreneurism and featured ‘heroes of enterprise’ as social saviours. Academies were ‘a “break” from roles and structures and relationships of accountability of a state education system. They replaced democratic processes of local authority control over schools with technical or market solutions’ (Ball, 2007: 177). Although some individuals may have gained access to better resources and futures, this shift to marketisation fundamentally altered how the education system worked –​and opened up new possibilities for how it could work in the future.

Austerity politics and the acceleration of academisation The acceleration of academisation has taken place within a social and economic context shaped by the Conservative-​led Coalition government’s imposition of austerity policies in the wake of the publicly funded bank bailouts of the late 2000s. The framing of the policy has developed in a number of ways since 2010, with austerity mobilised as a tactic of governance which

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urges centralisation as a financial cost-​saving measure. Initially it was promoted as a way to get more funding, freedom and autonomy; a 2011 poll of headteachers conducted by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) found that three quarters of converting heads were driven by financial concerns (Sellgren, 2011). Education spending in England was cut by seven billion pounds between 2011 and 2019 (Buchan, 2019), and more recently many schools have appealed to parents for donations, with some schools closing early on Fridays or scrapping the arts due to funding cuts (Coughlan, 2017). A NASUWT teachers’ union survey recently found that 20% of teachers personally paid for items like paper or books once per week (Adams, 2019). The crisis has become so severe that in 2018 over two thousand headteachers marched on Downing Street to protest the debilitating effect of continual cuts on their schools (Adams, 2018; McGinity and Fuller, 2021). Despite funding cuts to education, between 2013 and 2020 over 34.7 million pounds was spent by the Department for Education (DfE) on transferring schools from failing MATs to new sponsors (Whittaker, 2020), while between April 2010 and March 2012 8.3 billion pounds was spent on academies with one billion of this being diverted from other departmental budgets (Richardson, 2013). It is against this backdrop of increasing financial insecurity that more schools have converted to academy status –​ although the extra funding attached to academisation dwindled after 2012 (Abrams, 2012). Joining a MAT has increasingly been encouraged by the DfE as a way to weather pressures and ensure efficiency. As Rayner et al. (2018) have highlighted, the declining capacity of LAs in the face of cuts also provided a powerful incentive for headteachers to seek out alternative structures of support. Thus, MATs have been identified in the policy arena as capable of delivering economies of scale. While this approach might have enabled more schools to survive austerity, it also renders the selling points of freedom and autonomy devoid as stand-​alone schools must sacrifice their existence to join a MAT, with levels of autonomy generally determined by the MAT central board (Greany and McGinity, 2021). These shifting promises show the various rationales used to push academisation, which Rayner et al. (2018) suggest is not simply a policy assemblage but the largest systemic educational change in England since comprehensive schooling was introduced in the 1950s. The authors develop Gewirtz’s notion of the ‘post-​welfarist education policy complex’ (2002: 3) to claim we are now living with the ‘Academisation Policy Complex’ (2018: 3). Moreover, they assert that this fundamental restructuring of education not only affects schools that have undergone academisation, but non-​academised schools are also embracing the activities and practices typical of academisation to instigate ‘non-​policy system redesign’ (2018: 16). Here we can see how system redesign is pushed forward by creating an unstable atmosphere

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where schools must grapple with the hollowing out of traditional governance structures coupled with an acute lack of funding.

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Academisation and neoliberalism We can see how neoliberal governance and its creation of a sense that ‘there is no alternative’ is useful in understanding the rapid shift to academisation and the limiting of an educational imagination beyond it (Massey, 2011). Neoliberal does not function as an empty signifier here, as many headteachers feel that academising or joining a MAT is crucial to their survival and this shift away from the LA or other forms of governance feels inevitable (Hall and McGinity, 2015). While the promises made to schools and headteachers by the DfE regarding academisation might change, the underlying ideological movement of this policy complex remains the same: moving schools out of the public sphere and relocating them within a less accessible, transparent and privatised space. Hughes et al. (2020) have used Arendt’s concepts of pariah and parvenu to examine these ‘new dark times’ in education through the professional biographies of MAT CEOs; the biography of a high-​flying MAT CEO and pariah turned parvenu shows how decision-​making in the name of the public has been rendered darkly private. They describe how ‘such decision-​making is focused on the policy-​enabled disposability of children, families and staff who do not fit’ (2020: 3). These non-​fitters are invariably ethnic minorities, working-​class students, students with special educational needs; they are subjects who do or are anticipated to require additional labour or funds from schools. Wendy Brown describes how through neoliberalism humans become homoeconomicus and human capital throughout all spheres of life (2015: 35). Competition replaces exchange as the market’s basic good, with people competing with one another rather than ­exchanging. Brown posits that these human capitals are not infused with the same intrinsic values as Kantian individuals: they are not ends in themselves and their status is unclear: ‘As human capital, the subject is at once in charge of itself, responsible for itself, yet an instrumentalizable and potentially disposable element of the whole’ (2015: 38). This disposability of human capitals rendered unworkable and incongruent presents a pressing moral problem when these capitals include not only teachers, but vulnerable children. Academisation’s instantiation also shows how neoliberalism requires continual work and effort to produce. It is not a laissez-​faire process, but one of attention and intervention as there is a ‘constant push to define and regulate social life’ through market principles (Gane, 2012: 613). It is also not, as Gane adds, anti-​statist and does not devolve power to individuals; we can see

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this through the continuously active, shaping interventions of the DfE that propel academisation by creating a climate for it. Early proponents of academisation argued that it would provide schools with greater autonomy and decision-​making power, yet rather than devolving power, power is centralised as local governance structures are pushed to the periphery (Wilkins, in this volume). The extent to which public education in England has been privatised through the academies programme is a matter of intense debate. Academies are state funded but not maintained by the state, existing as ‘independent’ entities run by not-​for-​profit private trusts with directly brokered contracts with the DfE that cover a number of operational functions from financing to teacher pay and conditions. Advocates of academies and MATs have claimed the programme will produce a wide range of positive outcomes through the structures they enable. With great confidence and aplomb, grand narratives have been trumpeted by both Labour and Conservative politicians that academies will promote social mobility, raise standards, improve communities, promote inclusion and allow schools greater autonomy (Adonis, 2008, 2012; Blair, 2006; Gibb, 2017). Despite the privileged position of quantifiable data in education policy-​making, these claims are often made without any recourse to data. In 2016, the DfE sanctioned Reach Academy Trust to run 15 more schools after only 16 of its 52 schools had been inspected by Ofsted and 14% of those inspected required improvement (Dickens, 2016). Three years later, two of Reach’s primary schools were deemed inadequate and threatened with re-​brokering by the DfE (Staufenberg, 2019). This story is not unusual. In this contradictory landscape, the place of careful qualitative work by social scientists is more important than ever in order to provide more nuanced and situated accounts essential to understanding the effects of these policies on the everyday life of schools. As a result, system reform processes putatively focused upon raising standards and improving general educational conditions as a result of increased autonomy within and across the system have been achieved through what De Lissovoy has called ‘anti-​ democratic appropriations’ (2019: 244). Mansell (2020) describes such developments as a ‘privatisation creep’, where accountability for and transparency of the running of the majority of England’s schools are obfuscated at best and deliberately mendacious at worse (Thomson, 2020); a symptom of the limited public scrutiny of the functional and financial operations of MATs and academy schools (Thomson, 2020). There is no empirical evidence that suggests these newer forms of governance structures produce better outcomes for students (Greany and Higham, 2018), with one study suggesting that disadvantaged students in the majority of MATs studied had worse outcomes as measured by a range of government indicators on attainment than those

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Introduction

in maintained schools (Hutchings and Francis, 2018). Despite the lack of supporting data, the policy of academies and MATs has been embedded since 2014, along with high-​stakes accountability, diversity of provision and increased autonomy.

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Academisation and social justice What has been particularly noticeable in the political and discursive rhetoric used in the promotion of the academies programme is the framing of social justice as a mechanism through which academy schools will contribute to and achieve social and educational parity for disadvantaged and marginalised communities. In one of the more egregious examples, one of the architects of the radical reform processes, Michael Gove, claimed that those opposed to academisation did not care about the achievement of ethnic minority children when he said ‘let’s be clear what these people [opponents of academisation] mean. Let’s hold their prejudices up to the light. What are they saying? If you’re poor, if you’re Turkish, if you’re Somali, then we don’t expect you to succeed. You will always be second class and it’s no surprise your schools are second class’.3 To be opposed to academisation is likened to being opposed to the educational progress of poor and ethnic minority students. Academisation is therefore progressively aligned with the promotion of ethnic minority and working-​class students’ success. While government policy-​makers may refute the notion that such reform processes are in fact forms of privatisation (see Kulz, 2021), the cataloguing of protest against the instantiation of such policies (i.e. in the case of forced academisation) would demonstrate that communities are locked out of decision-​making processes about their children’s schools. This form of exclusion is framed not as a chipping away of democratic rights and responsibilities, but rather as a distracting technicality that must not obscure the greater good of the reform agenda. Where academisation might be a choice taken voluntarily in many cases, forced academisation occurs when schools are deemed to have a sustained record of failure to improve and the government recommends a takeover that might then be met with resistance by the school and their community. Who are the communities that fight and lose? And are they disproportionately affected by reform (who needs to be reformed?). We know that their children are more likely to attend schools that are deemed ‘failing’; we know that their communities are more likely to be served by schools that ‘underperform’; and in these neighbourhoods parental choice might be understood as more illusory than a reality, despite the central discursive and political role that the policy of parental choice has played in English educational reform since 1988.

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Such developments present academisation as a fait accompli, where community consultation is undertaken as part of due process, and the language of social justice is writ large as part of a rescue narrative, which casts existing provision as beyond the pale, and where neoliberal agendas which force conversion are reframed as what De Lissovoy calls ‘an act of care’ (2019: 252). There is more than a whiff of paternalism in such accounts –​ where the exclusion (or meaningful inclusion) of particular groups from the process of decision-​making is one of the conditions for successful reform implementation, and the process of removing control from local hands to remote MAT boards is sold as blazing a trail for autonomous organisations. Public participation becomes positioned as a negative measure of failure, with democratic accountability processes regarded as outdated, ‘quaint’ concepts (Kulz, 2021). The MAT is portrayed as better structured for rapid and extensive improvement, where failure has until now been the accepted norm and narrative. Academisation has at its heart a central claim related to market-​based reforms. Greater autonomy is underpinned by a high-​stakes accountability system; this is positioned as enabling mechanisms of competition that will ensure schools can compete and survive within a fragmented, diverse and hierarchised system. One of the major sources of tension here is how mechanisms of marketisation also operationalise inequalities. The underlying argument for markets in education has always been that competition drives improvement. The academies programme is an instantiation of this position. The 2016 DfE white paper Achieving Educational Excellence Everywhere included within its recommendations that all schools in England would be academised by the end of 2022. The central claim for this call to arms for totalising academisation was framed as an approach towards a ‘school-​led system’, stating that when every school is an academy, groups of schools will be able to span geographic boundaries, with the best MATs expanding to run schools in our toughest areas in a way that no high-​performing local authority ever could. This provides real accountability, competitive pressure and choice –​improving performance, enabling innovation and scaling success. (DfE, 2016: 15)

Elsewhere in the document is the claim that the establishment of new schools (free schools) would also ‘drive up standards and stimulate competition’. The evidence base for such claims is weak (Julius et al., 2021) or even contradictory (see Allen and Higham, 2018). This total academisation approach is claimed and communicated in the white paper as ‘a matter of social justice’ (DfE, 2016: 73). Research demonstrates that educational inequalities cannot be addressed through structure alone (Andrews and Perera, 2017). Social justice claims are invoked in documents such as this white

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Introduction

paper in order to make normative judgements and demands of policies that are not actually designed to promote greater equality in outcomes. These policies are designed without a critical understanding of what equality in educational processes and practices might look like, or how it might be achieved; instead they actively work to devalue critical understandings of education. Gove, who frequently styled himself as a revolutionary fighting ‘progressive’ forces within education (Robinson, 2014), also announced while campaigning for Brexit how ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’ (Mance, 2016); this turn to a populist pragmatism unmediated by research or pedagogy –​or supported only by the selective use of data –​is used to justify academisation. Here, critical understandings of education are portrayed as unnecessary, woolly, regressive, and even harmful to the very populations they are purported to support. There is a functionality to the propagation of these claims, as the appropriation of ‘social justice’ serves to undermine the complex and intersectional intentions of work which centres equity and equality at its heart. The use of social justice rhetoric attempts to paper over the discrepant fit between social mobility as a purported goal and market mechanisms as directive of education. Academisation provides a vehicle to deliver centrally designed and desired reform strategies and goals within the public sector. This follows several decades of social justice approaches to education being hollowed out as the post 2010 settlement re-​orientates neoliberal discourses around educational inequality. Academisation’s advent highlights the long-​term effects of this erosion, as it provides a whole-​system educational solution that systematically sidelines local democratic structures. Still, the policy for total academisation was shelved following a visceral backlash from across the sector and across the political spectrum, whereby acceptance of and support for academisation as a panacea for improving educational quality was not as embedded within the discursive frame as deeply as ministers might have initially thought.4 There may be signs of academy-​conversion fatigue –​perhaps due to practitioners realising the limitations of the rhetoric surrounding it or fewer cash incentives offered to support conversion or due to an emergency holding-​pattern prompted by a pandemic. Yet academisation and the conglomeration of stand-​alone academies into MATs remains the only sanctioned direction of travel, even if it is slow and not without contest.

Academisation and internationalism England is far from alone in developing a reform trajectory which has focused on autonomy and high-​stakes accountability to produce competitive

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mechanisms for improvement, although arguably it is one of the most intense and far-​reaching instantiations of such a policy approach. Other countries which have predicated school reform on notions of autonomy are Sweden (frisckolar) and regions in Canada (specifically Alberta). The US has used autonomy as a driver for reform through its development of charter schools. In a similar vein to England, the US has gone further than either Sweden or Alberta by shoring up this policy with both high-​stakes accountability systems and competitive mechanisms to refocus improvement strategies through market-​based reform processes. England looked to Sweden, Canada and the US at various points in the development of its academies programme, but it is a fair analysis that identifies England as having a hyper-​realised version of this neoliberal educational reform strategy. This has led the country to have the most diversified, hierarchical and thus fragmented system of publicly funded education in the world (Courtney, 2015). England’s particular position and its connection to wider trends in international educational reform prompts our turn to qualitative explorations of this phenomenon to better understand how academisation shapes the daily life of England’s students, parents and teachers in myriad ways.

Data, representations and power: recognising the ‘right’ kind of data The rampant production and reliance on quantifiable data as social truth in education accompanies the deployment of standardised approaches and audit processes. Data production has accelerated over the past 30 years, from the introduction of league tables to the internal production of data in schools to school inspections to Michael Barber’s quantitative ‘Delivery Unit’ under Tony Blair extolling the virtues of managerial and purportedly apolitical, technocratic approaches to public service policy. Ozga (2017) describes how we have become dependent on quantifiable data; it is meant to show us the world how it really is, yet it is also meant to show us the world as it should be with ‘progress’ being continuously generated. The shift from governing education through ‘implicit assumptions and highly contextualized knowledge’ (Ozga, 2008: 263) to ‘governing by numbers’ is made, as performances can be displayed and claim the transparent ease of legibility (Grek and Ozga, 2008). Performance trends are continually expected to improve, with every student, teacher and school succeeding more until failure is erased. Yet failure as a phenomenon that can be pinpointed and erased is logistically impossible in a hierarchically ranked system where the creation and propagation of losers is essential to its ordering logic. Data is shaped by and shapes social interests (Beer and Burrows, 2013); it shapes

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Introduction

the field of possible action and is implicated in how power operates (Selwyn, 2014: 70). Or, as Ball (2015: 299) has described, numbers become tyrannical as they ‘bite deep into practice, into subjectivity and … do the work of governing us better’. Measuring and monitoring function as modes of reflection and representation, acting out a critical role ‘within the contemporary relationship between truth and power and the self that we call neoliberalism’ (Ball, 2015: 299). As we are called on to invest in and improve ourselves through constant labour, this demand fits against the demands of neoliberal educational structures to aspire, achieve and overcome structural barriers through individual personal responsibility. We can observe both the selective recognition of data5 and the creative composition of data by the DfE6 to show the effectiveness of the academies programme. While supposedly anti-​ideological and self-​positioned as ‘objective’, robust qualitative research is deprivileged by the DfE. Research produced in the field of the sociology of education is frequently ignored or wilfully overlooked by those in government, despite researchers outlining theoretical and practical structures to create a more socially just education system in England (see Hughes et al., 2020; Reay, 2017). Like parents protesting the conversion of their school to an academy, this research is often posited as a distraction from the central task of erasing educational failure. Barker (2009: 299) describes how Barber’s one-​dimensional positivist approach to education policy-​making and delivery offers simple and context-​free solutions ‘based on turning a blind eye towards the sociology of education’. Quantitative data is positioned as outside of politics while also actively driving education policy (Ozga, 2017; Selwyn, 2014: 66); we can see how New Labour’s embrace of New Public Management based on competition and choice aimed to transcend difficult negotiations and struggles across education and society by subsuming them in managerial approaches. This turning of a blind eye to the sociology of education and ridding education of social context has continued apace from 2010 onwards with Gove accusing ‘The Blob’,7 or, Marxist academics, of running university education departments. These ‘enemies of promise’ are stuck in the 1960s (Harrison, 2012), while a ‘zero tolerance’ and ‘no excuses’ approach to the achievement and behaviour of poor or racialised students transcends structural issues of inequality. Mocking educationalists, researchers and concerned members of the public as antithetical to progress has justified shifting teacher training from universities to schools, with many large MAT chains like Harris or ARK now running their own training programmes. Ozga (2017) describes how data dependency shifts away from contextualised expert analysis shaping education policy to the application of rules derived from data patterns. Yet, as evident with Reach MAT’s expansion, sometimes the application of rules is more obviously ideological as it overrides data’s implications.

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Despite numerous explorations of how current educational structures compound and reproduce pre-​ existing inequalities (Kulz, 2017; Reay, 2017), the answer to how we can create a more equitable model of education appears to be more of the same. The creation of the ‘failing school’ and routines of naming and shaming that began under Thatcher in the 1990s continue today. Tomlinson points out that it is ‘easier to blame schools than to restructure education or plan the economy to ensure all young people [have] an educated future’, while school-​choice policies worked to ensure failing schools are primarily attended by students from poor, minority, refugee and special needs backgrounds (2019: 135). Through academisation and the proliferation of MATs we see further measurement, monitoring and centralisation, a focus on behaviour and character education, the further erosion of teacher professionalism, the curtailing of democratic participation and reduced scrutiny of how public funds are being used. In the context of a climate of increasingly centralised and authoritarian governance in England following Brexit and the instatement of Johnson’s cabinet, we need to gauge to what extent academies could pave the way for more radical forms of authoritarianism in the future.

Qualitative approaches to educational reform past and present Qualitative methodologies provide an effective counterpoint to the quantitatively driven nature of the academies programme. Like Ball (1981), the present collection seeks to highlight the gaps between policy rhetoric and practice in order to chart unanticipated outcomes and the complexities obscured by tidy numbers. Grounding research within a time and place works to counter academisation’s emphasis on speed and quantification. Rather than approaching and interpreting the academies programme on its own terms, as a burgeoning set of literature surrounding the programme’s effectiveness can do (see Nibblet and Andrews 2019; O’Shaughnessy, 2012; Porter and Simons, 2015), the chapters within this collection engage with the social and cultural dimensions of school life. In this way, the ethnographic and qualitative methods used in this volume contrast with and unpick a standards-​driven agenda. We can trace the academisation of the English education system through the policy developments and shifts taking place from 2000 (but back to the 1980s too). These tracings will highlight the rhetorical visions of what this new system will supposedly instigate through the eyes of its architects. We can also map the work of think-​tanks promoting or questioning these reforms, alongside the protests and scandals that increasingly pervade the media as academisation accelerates. While this work is certainly useful and necessary to offer a shape of the policy’s intended goals and

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Introduction

methods, to gauge who is enacting these reforms and the networks that surround them, this text-​based mapping does not take us to the embodied level of the everyday or engage with social and spatial practices unfolding within schools. Critical qualitative and ethnographic work can provide us with more multi-​dimensional ways of knowing, gauging how subjectivities are shaped through contexts and historical categorisations that are insecurely occupied (Skeggs, 2007: 433). Quantitative analyses through ‘measuring’ educational inequality have largely been thought of as the way to understand the problems of social mobility in English society. Through this collection we show how micro-​ processes that underpin these quantitative patterns also give narratives of social mobility and educational inequalities. Through an attention to everyday context, we can discern the happenings that do not neatly fit with heroic policy statements, which contest shiny academy brochures or confound the assumptions of progress accompanying higher test scores. Through this method, the sociological imagination comes to life (Mills, 2000), as the relationship between personal troubles and public issues or the micro and macro can be explored. It attempts to pull out the stories inside of these stories that often never see the light of day and do not feature in forms constructed by the powerful (Back, 2007). This is not only about letting the stories of marginalised populations be heard, but also about observing how subjects with varying degrees of power negotiate the parameters of policy within embodied milieus. Here we have a concern with the routine and the mundane (Walford, 2009) that allows for a multi-​sensory engagement with the landscape’s sights, smells, sounds, placements and movements of bodies (Rhys-​Taylor, 2013). An interest in the everyday life of schools is important given the academy programme’s initial focus on building new schools. This spatial reorganisation can be observed, as well as the continuing focus on shaping behaviours and disciplining staff and students through daily procedures. Morrin’s ethnographic research at Milltown Community Academy (Chapter 7) shows how the ‘Badges of Entrepreneurship’ scheme instituted by the new management identified set behaviour that should be learned and rewarded through the issuing of badges. These characteristics included determination, passion, creativity, risk-​ taking, teamwork and problem solving, yet Morrin’s research shows how the interpretation and application of the badge scheme by teachers and students was incredibly varied in practice. Leaney (Chapter 5) evidences how the imposition of Performance Based Learning –​a new system defined by exaggerated actions and special vocabulary where the training of bodily comportment is essential to ­learning –​comes to shape what counts as learning and processes of marginalisation. Leaney observes how one student’s keenly raised hand becomes

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an enthusiastic, yet unseated body in eager anticipation of answering his teacher’s question. Yet when the headteacher enters the classroom, Harvey’s unseated body becomes a failure of physical regulation and leads to Harvey’s exclusion from participation under the terms of Performance Based Learning’s parameters. Despite his enthusiasm, his answer becomes irrelevant, as Harvey is framed as an ‘impossible learner’ (Hollingworth, 2015). Throughout this volume, contributors draw on a blend of qualitative methods, including ethnographic approaches, to show how academisation is unfolding through daily practices across disparate spaces. A central concern of this collection is to examine how the methodologies we use make knowledge and what relationships exist between our theoretical and methodological tools. Critical qualitative research provides a means of productively examining policy claims, while inciting new ways of viewing education beyond the boundaries and values of neoliberal individualism and New Public Management doctrines.

Education, academies and ethnographies This collection was inspired by and builds upon a rich history of qualitative research in education examining the interstices between policy change, educational practice and the social and cultural dimensions of school life. It attempts to illuminate the disjunctures between policy and practice which underpin this volume, in relation to the academy system. Within England, several key studies of the tripartite system have employed an ethnographic lens. Hargreaves’ (1967) study of social relations in a secondary modern school examined the effect of streaming students, while Lacey’s Hightown Grammar (1970) sought to examine the poor performance of working-​ class boys in grammar school. Ball’s Beachside Comprehensive (1981) developed Lacey’s work by highlighting the gaps between rhetoric and practice in the comprehensive system (see also Burgess, 1983; Carspecken, 1991). Ethnographic work and its focus on processes and practices has played an important role in examining how social inequalities are being produced in and through education. Willis (1977) studied the reproduction of working-​class masculinities, while Mac an Ghaill (1988) explored how racism, not black subculture, stood in the way of ethnic minority achievement. Troyna and Hatcher (1992) used ethnographic work to examine predominantly white primary schools regarding how racialised identifications worked to shape the attitudes of white children. Mirza’s (1992) blend of ethnographic and qualitative methods developed a structural understanding of inequality and racism through the experience of black British women in education.

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Introduction

From Coard’s seminal text on the ciphering of West Indian students into institutions for the educationally subnormal in 1971 to work emerging from the Centre for Cultural Studies questioning the historical trajectory and fundamental rationale of state-​run education in the UK (CCCS, 1981), critical qualitative work has also unpicked the social dynamics of educational structures. This work has questioned the relationship between racism, education and the state and the social consequences of educational selectiveness (Gillborn, 2008; Tomlinson, 2001). Reay’s (1998, 2017) work has focused on how classed difference is produced and reiterated through educational structures, while Rollock (2015) and her colleagues have shown how black middle-​class Britons navigate the English education market. In addition, critical studies of policy bring together macro issues and micro practices (Crib and Gewirtz, 2015; Gewirtz, 2002) and Ball and Junemann’s (2012) mapping through network ethnography demonstrates the new webs of finance capital and educational business manifesting and weaving through the delivery of public education. In the US, there is a critical body of literature exploring the social and cultural effects of charter schools which occupy a similar ideological space to academies. Lipman’s The New Political Economy of Urban Education (2011) explores the effects of the shift to New Public Management in the US context of Chicago, mapping the relationship between these reforms, racialisation and ongoing poverty. Michael Apple’s Educating the Right Way (2006) explores how ‘conservative modernisation’ and impositions of marketised education reform across the US do not benefit schools and students, despite their claims of transformation. Buras (2015) has written about the reshaping of urban space through the privatisation of public education in New Orleans, the nation’s first city entirely served by charter schools, and the ensuing displacement of black students and educators. Yet this collection is not only relevant to spaces within England, the US and Sweden that occupy the harder edge of marketised reform processes; it will also find purchase across the vast range of contexts whereby local educational provision is being tailored to respond to globalised educational standardisation. It also provokes an attention to how corporeal and spatial regulations are being locally regulated and performed.

Ways of producing knowledge: measuring to compete? A drive to quantitatively compete permeates the national educational landscape through league tables, Ofsted’s inspection regime and mechanisms like performance-​ related pay introduced by the Education Reform Act 1988. It also dominates the international stage through mechanisms like

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PISA and multinational educational businesses who set and shape decontextualised benchmarks of what success should look like. Competitiveness functions as the bedrock of politics, featuring as ‘the very condition of all democratic possibility’ and regarded as ‘beyond democratic debate’ (Davies, 2014: 137). This competition flourishes on all levels: between academies and state-​maintained schools, between and within MATs, as well as within schools between students and teachers through continual processes of ranking, comparison and observation. Yet as Ozga (2017: 2) comments, the continual need for comparison between nation states and within them is not always helpful, as ‘systematic assessment is not always systematic’ and comparison is only possible through simplification. Qualitative research pushes against and complicates the flattening and standardisation of the social world, gauging what these policies actually do in practice. What social worlds are being created, foreclosed or transformed? The complexity of human life can be reduced to grey systems of audit that not only encompass primary and secondary education, but also extend to higher education. As academic researchers frequently working in deregulated, precarious labour markets, we cannot ignore how our own positioning shares many similarities with teachers and educational professionals. As market logic is applied to all aspects of social life, political questions are subsumed by a focus on efficiency, the production of consensus, and meeting standardised benchmarks. Wendy Brown (2015: 69) describes how Foucault saw a ‘revolutionary and comprehensive political rationality’ in neoliberal reasoning that drew on the language and concerns of classical liberalism while ‘inverting many of liberalism’s purposes and channels of accountability’. Yet, these reductive systems are not just repressive, but also incredibly productive as they foster the proliferation of new systems like MATs headed by CEOs, the invention of posts like Regional Schools Commissioners (RSC) and new networks of privatised bureaucracy (Wilkins, 2017). Meanwhile, the promises of school autonomy initially made by the academies programme appear to be increasingly at odds with the centralisation of MATs and state power, as practices diverge from initial policy promises (Greany and Higham, 2018; Salokangas and Chapman, 2014). In response to the many perplexing paradoxes of simplification, qualitative methodologies have a particular role to play within this moment as they work to complicate our ways of knowing and understanding what the doing of structural reforms actually does on the ground. Back (2019: 4) asserts that it is not uncertainty which is problematic, but the dismissal of knowledge and unfounded promotion of certainty that poses a challenge. He proposes that we need to ask what is the value of our work in a world gripped by certainty? He describes how ‘fostering a different kind of attentiveness to the world is a resource in the service of hope. Our work may be of value

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Introduction

precisely because it documents remarkable things that are not remarked upon and in doing so creates an archive of emergent alternatives, directions or possibilities’ (Back, 2019: 4). The value of critical research lies not in cultivating empty hope, but in the interpretation and documentation of lesser noticed contradictions, fissures and resistance in dominant narratives that can aid the imagination of different futures. Through this collection, not only are the problematic contradictions of academisation foregrounded but also the incitement to think otherwise through engaging with the less noted, situated everyday happenings.

Destabilising dominant narratives The contributors take a diverse range of approaches to qualitative fieldwork and ethnographic methods, with a range of relationships forged between their deployment of theory and method. In his chapter, Wilkins points out how critical ethnography puts critical theory into action by not only providing us a way of naming and examining what is ‘felt’, but because critical ethnography allows us to potentially ‘demystify the ubiquity and magnitude of power’. Examining the machinations of power is essential to Morrin’s ethnographic approach (Chapter 7) that aims to show how multiple forms of power are working through the site of Milltown Academy. Rather than subscribing to notions of an apolitical objectivity, Morrin openly describes her critical orientation to the academies programme and its stated goals, asserting that her critical ethnographic approach seeks to ‘openly incorporate these political concerns and personal prescriptions in research’ in order to disturb naturalised ideologies. Here lived experience can be linked to more macro structures of power to provide a better understanding of how social practices must operate within constraints, yet also could allow space for subversive action. Across the collection, ethnographic and qualitative research is positioned as provoking a destabilisation and complication of common-​sense ideologies and power structures. In Chapter 6, Pennacchia describes how her ethnographic approach worked to complicate the dominant discourse of transformation via academisation by a focus on practices, materiality, relationality and space. She admits feeling initially ‘captured’ by these transformation discourses when approaching her fieldwork. However, taking a more Foucauldian approach, Pennacchia (Chapter 6) began to trouble this notion of change rather than search for evidence of it through her fieldwork. Leaney (Chapter 5) describes how she employs a critical bifocality that decentres the individual: ‘This focus on the research interaction de-​stabilises a notion of the authentic stable identity position that remains consistent

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through time … By providing an account of the processes of the research encounter, ethnography highlights the ways in which the self is defined and the practices by which connections with others are formed and maintained’. Leaney’s approach highlights ethnography’s value in decentring the notion of stable identities by foregrounding how the self is constantly in flux and relationally made in dialogue with others. In Chapter 3, Jørgenson and Allan focus on bridging social capital established through student connections in a free school; this is given a deeper understanding through ethnographic methods which allow for an embodied understanding of how subtle processes of social interaction are working within the site. While ethnographic research can be promoted as providing a more naturally occurring environment, Wilkins describes how these environments can also feel less than impromptu. He describes how attending governance meetings presented a somewhat ‘naturally occurring setting’ as they were not researcher-​initiated; however, he noted the less than natural feeling to these proceedings. Rather than allowing for a sense of spontaneity or transgression, these meetings presented ‘auditable truths’ that could be ‘reached and minuted in a timely and efficient manner’. Here any elements of conflict or debate are ironed out and discarded; this feeling of the unnatural meeting and its lack of exchange or negotiation corresponds to how the recipe-​like directives issued from the DfE aim to create consensus by actively limiting critical discussions in the name of efficiency. Through ethnographic work, we can see the mobilisation of policy in practice through observing how it orientates the ideological and practical boundaries of educational ­discussion. The undeliberated nature of these smooth efficiencies comes into view here as an observable practice.

Producing knowledge within high-​stakes environments: research orientations The politically sensitive nature of research within academies connects to their politically controversial nature and this shapes the parameters of how researchers access and manage relationships within their research site. In Chapter 2, Ryan-​Atkins and Rowley highlight the usefulness of ‘intimate interviews’ in their work and how operationalising ‘insider’ knowledge allowed for building relationships of trust where respondents could take greater risks and show vulnerability through the research process. They describe how through this orientation ‘participants revealed insights often not available to public scrutiny because of the increasingly hostile and high-​stakes environment which educational research and those involved in educational practice are forced to operate within’. Rather than avoiding

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Introduction

collaboration, they seek to ‘work with colleagues in schools in a trusting partnership to challenge dominant, neoliberal narratives endangering public forms of education and scrutiny’. They navigate high-​stakes institutional pressures through building relationships over time. While Wilkins’ chapter recognises the politically charged nature of academisation and how this shapes how researchers approach the academy school as a research site, his chapter takes a very different approach to Ryan-​Atkins and Rowley. Rather than describing his research as situated within the site or cultivating relationships, Wilkins tries to preserve a boundary between the site and the researchers involved. He describes how his approach ‘cannot be characterised as embedded or engaged since it was important for the researchers involved to remain detached where possible given the politically sensitive nature of the research and the cost of becoming immersed as collaborative researchers’ (emphasis added). While the feasibility of remaining unengaged with a site as an embodied researcher could be questioned, his determination to remain removed is tied to the potential ‘costs’ that immersion might entail. His use of the word ‘cost’ points to the employment of detachment as a necessary means of protection or preservation. What is the potential price of site immersion or collaboration? And who pays these costs –​the researcher, the researched, the site or the research itself? There is a sense of danger or precarity and inherent compromise that Wilkins seeks to resist through a distance that stands in contrast to the more collaborative approaches applied within Ryan-​Atkins and Rowley’s contributions. Research relationships are shaped by the specific dynamics within the site and its placement within educational hierarchies, as well as the researcher’s orientation to the institution. While some educational sites are ‘open’, others are highly circumspect or even hostile to the presence of researchers. Institutional orientations to research are influenced by internal struggles or can be, in the case of MATs, dictated by the MAT trust. Leaney describes how her initial attempts to gain site access floundered, as the school occupied a precarious and closely monitored position. Research could be seen as compounding monitoring processes. Yet with academisation and a change of head, the site became open to Leaney. She describes how openness to research became part of the new academy ethos, and her research could function as a way for the academy to display change and success. Ethnographic and qualitative research methods are not innocent, with ethnographic knowledge making bound up with the imperial gaze and interview techniques used in numerous historical contexts to assess and value the working-​class subject (Skeggs et al., 2008; Steedman, 2000). Yet training these methods on practices of those with a modicum of power can upend this dynamic (Khan, 2010). However, powerful CEOs of MAT chains are often unwilling to engage with researchers. This has been the experience of one

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of the co-​editors in her own research. One head of a prominent trust replied to Kulz’s request for an interview with the curt message stating that she was aware of her position and had nothing to say to Kulz. Another episode highlighted the tight rein that some headteachers and CEOs want to keep on their teaching staff. After interviewing one academy head and returning to the school to help prepare several sixth form students for university interviews, Kulz returned a third time to interview a sixth form teacher who was keen to participate in her research. Several days later, Kulz was contacted by the head’s PA, questioning why she had made an unauthorised visit to the academy as seen in the log book and interviewed a teacher without the head’s permission. Wariness to engage in dialogue and a clear fear of staff candidly, yet anonymously, speaking to researchers betrays the high-​stakes climate of fear and suspicion that permeates many institutions. Academies can become closed spaces where power and how it manifests cannot be accessed or observed, despite education’s continuing role as a public institution. While ideally research can be undertaken in collaboration with schools, the climate of suspicion, arguably fostered by the competitive environment and the ability of those in power to evade access and analysis, can make this arrangement difficult. A broader privatisation of the public sphere spatially connects to the privatisation of publicly funded educational ­institutions. We should consider how educational spaces are potentially being spatially reshaped and bounded through the academies programme’s removal of schools from local governance and its subsequent distancing from public scrutiny. Here there are divisions between those who have the power to remain inaccessible and invisible, and what aspects of educational institutions are laid open to dissection. Academies’ decision-​making practices around the permanent exclusion of pupils which are no longer monitored by LAs stands in stark contrast to the continual monitoring of teachers and students through weekly reviews and more formal processes like Ofsted. This inaccessibility is also evidenced through the difficulty many parents have had in accessing MAT staff to lodge concerns or complaints with when things were going badly wrong within schools (Syal, 2019). When working as a visiting scholar at NYU during her PhD, Kulz tried to visit the Promise Academy, a celebrated school within the Harlem Children’s Zone charter school chain. After numerous unanswered emails, Kulz phoned the school to try to arrange a visit. While they did not allow researchers on site, the secretary did inform Kulz that she could pay $2,500 to take a two-​hour tour of the school. In this landscape, a school visit had been transformed into a fundraising project where the rich could pay to witness the transformation of brown inner-​city children. These privatised public spaces highlight the blurry interstices between public and private spaces which have introduced new sensibilities and orientations, while providing cautionary tales for how educational spaces can become

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Introduction

performative showcases of success in a marketised landscape. Academisation could signal not so much the end of public space, but its reconfiguration into a site of ‘publicity without democracy –​a concept of the public that speaks of access, expression, inclusion, and creativity but which nonetheless is centered upon surveillance, order, and the bolstering of corporate capitalism’ (Madden, 2010: 188, original emphasis). While Madden writes in regard to parks and urban landscapes, this notion of a de-​democratised, heavily ordered yet public space could be applied to the spaces created by academisation. Yet closed or guarded sites sit in contrast to the willingness of some heads to admit researchers and their range of motivations for doing so. This sometimes stems from the assumption that researchers will witness and perhaps even advertise the benefits of their institution. This appears to be the case in Leaney’s site where she felt the headteacher was selling the new academy project to her, adopting a ‘bish, bash, bosh’ approach to site access. This orientation, while helpful for gaining research access, also highlights the sometimes-​yawning gap between the everyday concerns of headteachers and sociologists. While heads must engage with the rapid production of standards, they often lack the time and energy or inclination to engage with the social and cultural dimensions of education that also merit exploration. In Morrin’s chapter, the head of Milltown Academy admits when poking his head into Morrin’s office while giving a tour of the ‘Enterprise Bridge’ that he was not sure what was going on in there. Research can appear to be an amorphous process. In some ways, headteachers’ orientations may mirror that of the academy’s programme: the benefits are so self-​evident and indisputably correct that other critical lenses have receded from view. Yet this is not the case with some headteachers who are motivated to engage with researchers through a critical interest in research, out of their curiosity regarding educational dynamics and who are often circumspect of their own position within the reform landscape. The research in this collection also points to some of the geographic and spatial dimensions of academisation, with the use of ethnographic method illuminating the arrangement and use of spaces. This builds a wider scholarship in critical geographies of education (see for example, Donnelly and Gamsu; 2020; Finn, 2017; Nguyen et al., 2017). Many of the academies studied are located in areas positioned as economically and culturally ­deficient. This is pointed to by Leaney’s description of Estate Primary’s location at the end of a dead-​end cul-​de-​sac where the local bus turned around. Estate primary and its pupils are consigned to both the geographic and social periphery. While the community centre was spatially proximate to the school across a small pedestrianised path, Leaney highlights the social and cultural distance between these spaces. Morrin and Blood also describe how the economic deprivation surrounding their sites and place-​images of cultural lack provided powerful motivators and a place to stage the academy

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programme’s transformative processes. Morrin illustrates the spatial manifestations of Milltown’s academy entrepreneurial ethos through the 11 offices or ‘entrepreneurial incubators’ located on the school’s Enterprise Bridge for start-​up businesses, whereby an entrepreneurial ethos is presented by both the academy and the local press as the solution to both school improvement and the town’s deprivation.

Making and writing qualitative knowledge in a neoliberal landscape There are numerous contrasting viewpoints regarding how qualitative and ethnographic work can and should be represented. Feminist post-​ structuralist scholars have long challenged the idea of the researcher as merely translating experienced reality. Doing and writing research is implicated in truth production; to write the social world, there is the imposition of a degree of coherence on complex lives that exceed the parameters of representation (Britzman, 1995). Feminist post-​structuralists would assert that situated knowledges form the basis of a feminist objectivity where objectivity is not about transcending the specific, but instead about possessing a limited vision (Haraway, 1988). This limited vision avoids the ‘god trick’ of producing a view from nowhere; in this way situated qualitative work undoes the ‘god trick’ of academisation as a universal policy solution. Veena Das (2010: 143) also reflects on the process of finding limits when making knowledge. Knowledge making is also a process of recognising or arriving at limits which are felt through the boundaries of structures –​these could be the limits of the researcher’s ability to know and describe, as well as the limits of being a situated person who incompletely understands their own actions and potential effects. This attention to limits and boundaries should not be regarded as negative or problematic, but fundamentally questions and disassembles a quest for universal solutions. Pennacchia and Morrin both showcase and work with the ambiguities and unresolved contractions within their methods and the data generated. Pennacchia describes how the lack of transformation she saw at Eastbank Academy confounded her original research approach and drew her to work with ethnography and Foucauldian theory in order to account for contradictory narrative of change. Pennacchia concludes that the tensions within her site and method may not be resolvable, and that ‘Perhaps our task is instead to learn to sit with methodological tensions, to keep them in play and to put them to work as a way of thinking through the tensions of how policy is produced and as a way of extending our critical eye to include ourselves as researcher/​ethnographer’. The search for the ‘real’ through research fits with liberal humanism where subjects are autonomous, stable individuals, yet Talburt (2004: 84) rejects

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Introduction

this need for certainty. She argues for ethnographic responsibility without recourse to the real, whereby ethnographic work is a process of generation and creativity. It is not concerned with generating truth claims, but mapping how truth is being constituted. Or as Gadamer (1989) has pointed out, meaning is not something that is discovered, but is created through the act of understanding. Here research becomes a practical and moral activity. Yet in a world preoccupied with validity, efficiency and utility where qualitative research is frequently overlooked by policy-​makers, it is not hard to see why researchers attempt to prove their work is a valid, and therefore, often objective, form of knowledge. Quantitative data is often presented as a mirror of social reality rather than a creative construction of reality (Porter, 1995; Strathern, 2000). There is little acknowledgement of the creative methods and manipulations used to generate this data; as partial vision is presented as objective fact (Haraway, 1991: 582–​3). This is one reason why a turn to numbers is so powerfully seductive; the world is presented as easy to define and thus simple to view. This simplicity and definiteness enables both speed and compliance through the imposition of consensus and efficiency. Yet this seductive simplicity does not unpick the knotty contradictions at the heart of practice which critical qualitative explorations can address. Talburt (2004) describes how the very incongruity of things is what makes research interesting. Rather than trying to triangulate data in a way that dispenses with all the things that do not fit or prove contradictory, delving into these contradictions often provide the richest insights (Talburt, 2004). This is particularly helpful when researching the everyday unfoldings of neoliberal policy, as neoliberalism itself is riddled with ideological contradictions which can surface through the practice of this policy (Davies, 2014). Helen Verran has proclaimed that conventional forms of academic critique often ‘explains away exactly that which needs addressing’ (2014: 527). Researcher positionality is also central within accounts; Blood’s contribution (Chapter 4) also shows how she becomes also subject to the disciplinary mechanisms of the academy as a researcher, with entry to and movement around the site carefully organised by the institution. Morrin’s employment of the thinking tool ‘keyoxymorons’ works to analyse the three key sites of contradiction –​‘the successful-​failure, constant-​variables, and centred-​ “margins” ’ –​where tension and struggle are underway. Rather than flattening these disjunctures, she unpacks them further to show the ‘processual and oscillatory qualities of power, practice, thinking and action’. The chapters in this collection do not attempt to dispense with complexity, but to unpack and embrace the messiness of the everyday. This allows for the examination of unintended outcomes, unforeseen events and the ad-​hoc strategies used to deal with rapid structural change. The collection meets these reforms

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that have changed their focus and rationale with the times, albeit not their overarching purpose, with rigorous reflection.

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Notes 1 www.gov.uk/​government/​publications/​open-​academies-​and-​academy-​projects-​in-​ development (accessed 1 December 2021). 2 www.gov.uk/​government/​publications/​open-​academies-​and-​academy-​projects-​in-​ development (accessed 1 December 2021). 3 (Gove speech, January 2012: www.gov.uk/​government/​speeches/​michael-​gove-​ speech-​on-​academies) (accessed 1 December 2021). 4 There remains, however, a commitment to academisation by the current administration (under Boris Johnson, a government elected for a five-​ year term in December 2019, in the shadows of a messy and complicated Brexit process and on the eve of the global pandemic caused by Covid-​19). These national and international exceptional events have certainly meant that there has been a shift away from the government’s agenda to continue with academising the schools sector. It has not caused an abandonment of this position, but perhaps more of a hiatus whilst more pressing matters are prioritised (including the shutting down of schooling for the majority of the nation’s children in March 2020). 5 This includes reliance on studies conducted by government-​aligned think tanks like the Policy Exchange. 6 For example, the fast tracking of outstanding and good schools to academy status in 2010, and then using the number of outstanding and good academies to evidence the programme’s long-​term success. 7 Ofsted’s first Chief Inspector Chris Woodhead appointed under the Major government first coined ‘the Blob’ in reference those with an interest in education.

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Skeggs, B. (2007). Feminist ethnography. In Atkinson, P. (Ed.). Handbook of Ethnography. London: Sage. pp. 426–​442. Skeggs, B., Thumin, N. and Wood, H. (2008). ‘Oh goodness, I am watching reality TV’: how methods make class in audience research. European Journal of Cultural Studies. 11(5), pp. 5–​20. Staufenberg, J. (2019). Top trust could lose primary academy if more schools fall to ‘inadequate’, Schools Week, 2 April, https://​scho​olsw​eek.co.uk/​top-​trust-​could​lose-​prim​ary-​acad​emy-​if-​more-​scho​ols-​fall-​to-​ina​dequ​ate/​ (accessed 7 June 2021). Steedman, C. (2000) Enforced narratives: stories of another self. In Cosslett, T., Lury, C. and Summerfield, P. (Eds). Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods. London: Routledge. pp. 25–​39. Strathern, M. (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics, and the Academy. London and New York: Routledge. Syal, R. (2019) Education of academy pupils harmed by trust failures, MPs warn, The Guardian, 23 January, www.theguardian.com/​education/​2019/​jan/​23/​ education-​of-​academy-​pupils-​harmed-​by-​trust-​failures-​mps-​warn (accessed 8 June 2021). Swann Report. (1985). Education for all, Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Talburt, S. (2004). Ethnographic responsibility without the “real”. The 103. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ Journal of Higher Education. 75(1), pp. 80–​ 00221546.2004.11778897 Thomson, P. (2020). School Scandals: Blowing the Whistle on the Corruption of Our Education System. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Tomlinson, S. (1993) The multicultural task group: the group that never was. In King, A. and Reis, M. (Eds). The Multicultural Dimension of the National Curriculum. London: Falmer Press. pp. 21–​31. Tomlinson, S. (2001). Education in a Post-​Welfare Society. Buckingham: Open University Press. Tomlinson, S. (2008). Race and Education: Policy and Politics in Britain. Maidenhead: Open University Press/​McGraw-​Hill. Tomlinson, S. (2019). Education and Race from Empire to Brexit. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Troyna, B. and Hatcher, R. (1992). Racism in Children’s Lives. London: Routledge. Rhys-​Taylor, A. (2013). The essences of multiculture: a sensory exploration of an inner-​city street market. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 20(4), pp. 393–​406. Verran, H. (2014). Working with those who think otherwise. Common Knowledge. 20(3). https://​doi.org/​10.1215/​0961754x-​2733075 Walford, G. (1991). Choice of school at the first City Technology College. Educational Studies, 17(1), pp. 65–​75. Walford, G. (2009). For ethnography. Ethnography and Education. 4(3). https://​doi. org/​10.1080/​17457820903170093

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Introduction

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Whittaker, F. (2020). DfE paid £490k to rebroker three failing Steiner schools, https://​scho​olsw​eek.co.uk/​dfe-​paid-​490k-​to-​rebro​ker-​three-​fail​ing-​stei​ner-​scho​ ols/​(accessed 7 June 2021). Wilkins, A. (2017) Rescaling the local: multi-​academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History. 49(2), pp. 171–​185. Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs. Farnborough: Saxon House.

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Part I

‘Privatisation’: Positioning policies and publics: academies, governance and agency

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Academisation and the law of ‘attraction’: an ethnographic study of relays, connective strategies and regulated participation Andrew Wilkins Introduction During the 1980s, radical reforms were introduced in many Western and European countries to scale back the welfare state and sell off public utilities to private companies (Keat, 1991). In England, wholesale transfer of public assets to the private-sector occurred on a massive scale, albeit limited to selling off already profitable public entities. Staunch opposition to privatisation from trade unions, the Labour Party and the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was sufficient to stave off private takeover of some public utilities, including health and education services. Yet despite opposition, new mutated forms of privatisation began to take shape during the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. During this time successive governments have adapted models of service delivery to complement a ‘differentiated polity’ (Rhodes, 1997: 8) or what Newman (2001: 163) describes as ‘new forms of co-​steering and co-​governance through partnerships and community capacity-​building’. Designed to open up service delivery to community interests and business influence, these developments signal, on the one hand, the arrival of distinct forms of ‘networked governance’ in which state power is disaggregated and dispersed outwards and downwards to devolved executive authorities to improve cooperation between service users and providers (Davies and Spicer, 2015). On the other hand, these developments appear to facilitate (and make a necessity of) the technocratic embedding of business practices and actors within public administration and therefore reflect the continuation of privatisation through different means. To make sense of these developments in the context of education, Ball and Youdell (2007: 14) helpfully distinguish between what they call ‘exogenous privatization’ (privatisation from outside) and ‘endogenous privatization’ (privatisation from inside). Exogenous privatisation refers to ‘the opening up of public education services to private-​sector participation on a for-​profit basis’ (Ball and Youdell, 2007: 14). Yet privatisation management

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of education services in England does not always mean private companies occupy the role of public-​sector management groups on a for-​profit basis. Businesses and charities set up as private limited companies typically manage public services on behalf of the government on a non-​profit basis, but typically do so through ‘the importing of ideas, techniques and practices from the private-sector in order to make the public sector more like businesses’, or what Ball and Youdell (2007: 14) call ‘endogenous privatization’. England has long been a ‘laboratory’ for experimenting with structured incentives to compel, amongst other configurations, the organisation of schools as businesses. The focus of this chapter concerns a recent market-​ based experiment in education in England called the academies programme. The academies programme makes it possible for schools to operate outside their Local Authorities (LAs) as private enterprises or ‘state-​funded independent schools’ with significant responsibility for management and accountability delegated to school leaders and governors. From this perspective, the academies programme is a continuation of the idea of ‘co-​ steering’ or ‘co-​ governance’ inasmuch as academy status removes the requirement for the administration of ‘needs’ through the bureaucracy of LAs and instead empowers schools to consensually work with stakeholders to produce flexible, responsive models of service delivery. Yet, as this chapter shows through a ‘critical ethnography’ (Madison, 2011) of the different technical judgements, diagnostic tools and monitoring practices through which governance is practised, academies require the attraction of suitably skilled, professionally experienced school leaders and governors to deploy prescriptions and solutions for ‘effective governance’, which includes conditioning certain people to stay out of governance. In some cases, academy structures resemble the same techno-​bureaucratic settlements they were meant to replace and improve, namely LAs, albeit lacking the mandate or incentives to provide strong democratic accountability based on principles of citizen participation and community voice (Wilkins, 2016, 2019a). The suggestion here is that the academies programme has become a target of political control from the centre and business saturation despite claims that academy status works to depoliticise and deregulate schools.

Critical ethnography and governmentality research To empirically trace these connections, this chapter draws on qualitative data taken from a three-​year research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (Grant Ref. ES/​K001299/​1, 2012–​15) and assisted by the support of senior research officer Dr Anna Mazenod. The chapter draws on anonymised interview and observation data taken from

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a study of a London-​based secondary school academy called Richmond (pseudonym) operated by a large Multi-​Academy Trust (MAT) called T-​ ALK (pseudonym). Combining elements of critical ethnography (Madison, 2011) with perspectives borrowed from the field of governmentality research (Lemke, 2007; Rose, 1999), this chapter examines and evidences the prevalence of specific forms of expert administration considered to be operationally necessary to performing school governance. Furthermore, it considers the effects of these calculative rationalities and technologies, namely the creation of forms of epistemic injustice that include restricting school governance work to the knowledge claims of certain authorities and actors. Building on and complementing these insights, the chapter also focuses on the connective strategies through which claims to knowledge are articulated and reproduced through everyday practices of school governance. This includes a focus on the relationship or ‘relays’ between these everyday practices and the demands of external regulators and funders. Lastly, the chapter considers the success of these everyday practices in terms of limiting governance participation to those who are bearers of relevant knowledge or claims to expertise. Ethnography as a method and methodology is useful to this end as it concerns using thick description based on observations to document the interface between structure and agency and the resulting contingent formations we might call ‘culture’ or ‘sociality’. A similar focus in this chapter concerns documenting the relays and connective strategies linking the political will of government to the mundane habits and attitudes of school leaders, trustees and governors. Moreover, the adoption of a critical ethnography approach serves as an important tool for rethinking the possibilities of the present, specifically to challenge the ways in which the politics of governance is masked by an appeal to requirements for technocratic rationalism or what Davies (2014: 4) calls ‘the disenchantment of politics by economics’. In other words, it is important not to underestimate but instead make visible the extent to which the political will of government is realised through the kinds of bureaucratic proceduralism and claims to neutral expert administration used to characterise and dominate governance practices. Critical ethnography is motivated by the ethical responsibility of the researcher to challenge, and where possible transcend, the mundane organisation of social and political life according to moral and economic arguments taken to be natural and self-​evident (Madison, 2011). While much of my analysis borrows from a governmentality perspective to understand the ways in which governance is held together through specific programmes and tactics of rule (Lemke, 2007; Rose, 1999), there is a complementary focus on using critical ethnography to perform critical theory. According to Madison (2011: 13–​14), ethnographic descriptions are expressive of ‘critical

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theory in action’ since, through theory, we aim not only ‘to name and analyse what is intuitively felt’ but ‘to demystify the ubiquity and magnitude of power’. This is a key methodological contribution of critical ethnography to this chapter. The methodological importance of critical ethnography to this chapter therefore is twofold. On the one hand, critical ethnography is used here to show how individual choice and freedom, that is, the ability to connect personal troubles to wider social and political issues, becomes tempered by socially circulating discourses that work to construct and legitimate ways of doing, feeling and thinking, in effect placing limits on self-​formation. In this regard, critical ethnography, sometimes called ‘poststructural ethnography’ (Britzman, 1995), ‘takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status quo, and unsettles both neutrality and taken-​for-​granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control’ (Madison, 2011: 5). On the other hand, critical ethnography is used here in a practical sense through combining semi-​structured interviews, non-​ participant observations, documentary analysis and reflective field notes to capture empirically the everyday work of school governors as situated responses to and negotiations of different external constraints and political pressures, notably the prevalence of new accountability frameworks, business practices and professional guidelines.

Ethnographic tensions and explorations Critical ethnography differs from more traditional methods of doing ethnography that include ‘embedded’ or ‘engaged’ research, sometimes called ‘immersion fieldwork’ (Lewis and Russell, 2011: 399). In cases of more traditional ethnography, the researcher typically works directly with those being researched as collaborators and partners in the generation of knowledge, thus helping to adapt research priorities to meet specific organisational priorities and service user needs. Similar to participatory action research (PAR) in which research is directed at progressive problem solving determined by knowledge that is valued by the organisations and individuals being researched, embedded research privileges familiarity –​familiarity with the context and personal lives of those being researched –​while at the same time requiring the researcher to remain ‘detached’ or ‘independent’ in order to provide arguments and perspectives that, if need be, are sufficiently critical. This ‘co-​presence of independence and familiarity’ (Lewis and Russell, 2011: 401) forces the researcher to think and act reflexively as they move through and in-​between positions of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’. The ethnographic approach adopted in this chapter cannot be characterised as

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embedded or engaged since it was important for the researchers involved to remain detached where possible given the politically sensitive nature of the research and the cost of becoming immersed as collaborative researchers. The forced or voluntary conversion of LA-​maintained schools into academies has lots of implications for the way those schools are governed, as will be made clear in the chapter. Schools that convert to academy status are required to meet certain directives and provisos in order that they perform successfully as high-​reliability organisations. This includes displacing or adapting existing practices to make way for new forms of alternative development which uphold principles of ‘effective governance’. Broadly speaking, effective governance, sometimes called ‘good governance’, refers to the design and management of internal control systems and standard operational procedures to enable schools to meet certain performance objectives and outcomes (Wilkins, 2016). In 2012 when Anna Mazenod and I began recruiting schools to participate in the study, we quickly realised that many schools wanted to participate in order to better understand their own governance practices and the extent to which these practices complied with measures of effective governance as defined by regulators and voluntary-​ professional organisations. Immersed research, as described above, would have been suitable to this task, yet we were keen to remain detached from such obligations given our commitment to political neutrality and researcher impartiality. However, we conceded that many schools would only participate in the study if we used effective governance as a proxy measure to determine the value of their internal operations. Therefore, we drew some comparisons of the schools based on how well they documented and appraised the financial and educational performance of the school and communicated these findings to each school in the form of a report. Later we discovered that some schools used these reports to evidence to the school’s inspectorate, Ofsted, their commitment to effective governance. At the same time, we maintained a ‘critical distance’ by not working directly with school leaders and governors when producing these reports. We were careful to provide a set of judgements and perspectives that went beyond an exclusive concern with effective governance (narrowly conceived) and which were more concerned with how academisation, and the political rationalities and technologies of performance upon which it rests, results in certain forms of epistemic injustice, namely the creation of ‘enclosures’ that limit governance participation to those who are bearers of relevant knowledge, skills and claims to expertise. Following a broadly critical ethnographic approach of documenting ‘repeated patterns of symbolic behaviour’ (Fetterman, 2010: 29) through a ‘thick description of events’ (Fetterman, 2010: 1), this chapter examines how and to what effect school governors are incited and compelled to

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behave in certain ways, and therefore, in the tradition of ‘critical ethnography’ (Madison, 2011), to better understand how ‘some powerful groups are able to impose their definitions of reality on others’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983: 12). Through a critical attention to operations of power and control, this chapter examines the extent to which the everyday mundane habits of school governors reflect the ‘constitutive constraints of discourses’ (Britzman, 1995: 236), be they externally imposed accountabilities, hierarchically organised structures or professionally oriented behaviours. Yet here the actions of school governors are not reduced to such discourses, even if such actions appear to replicate, more or less in a calculated manner, the ambitions of powerful groups. Clarke (2004: 2) for example cautions against over-​deterministic accounts in which ‘either systems or subjects function according to the plans of the powerful’. He goes onto argue: Achieving and maintaining subjection, subordination or system reproduction requires work/​practice –​because control is imperfect and incomplete in the face of contradictory systems, contested positions and contentious subjects. (Clarke 2004: 3)

Nor does this mean insisting on the ontology of a purely asocial, bounded, detached subject. Rather, each person occupies and invests in a range of positions that mediate a structured social force, making subjects both bearers and producers of a multitude of cultural worlds. As Holland et al. (1998: 45) make clear in their social anthropological work on identity formation, ‘It is not impossible for people to figure and remake the conditions of their lives. It [social force] positions persons as it provides them with the tools to re-​create their positions’. Tamboukou and Ball (2003) adopt a similar position in their reading and critique of traditional ethnographic approaches to research. For Tamboukou and Ball (2003: 8), traditional ethnography appears to work within a definition of ‘power as sovereignty’ in which the ethnographer is typically concerned with who holds power and over whom such power is exercised. Moving beyond a focus on power as sovereignty, Tamboukou and Ball (2003) draw on Foucault’s theoretical project of genealogy to conceptualise ‘power as deployment’ (2003: 8) through an attention to ‘the micro-​operations of power, being sensitive to local struggles and the achievement of local solutions’ (2003: 4). A similar ethnographic approach is adopted in this chapter where the focus is less concerned with who occupies positions of power and more concerned with the complex ways in which power is deployed, maintained and co-​developed by a multitude of individuals through ‘the delineation of concepts, the specification of objects and borders and the provision of arguments and justifications’ (Lemke, 2007: 44).

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By insisting that power has no origin or permanent settlement, and therefore has no centre or privileged vantage point from which it can be studied, Foucault (1980: 93) insists that power should be viewed as a facile synthesis since ‘relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse’. Such a view complements critical ethnography. Similar to Foucauldian analyses with its insistence that ‘discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination but is the thing for which and by which there is struggle’ (Foucault, 1981: 52–​3), critical ethnography aims to ‘resist domestication’ (Madison, 2011: 5) and challenge self-​evidence through thinking through not ‘what is’ but ‘what could be’. Through its commitment to emancipatory goals and projects, critical ethnography appears to conceptualise discourse, on the one hand, as those social practices and modes of objectification which seek to constrain agency and possibilities for self-​formation. On other hand, critical ethnography recognises discourse as dynamic, productive spaces in which the contingently normal is permanently vulnerable to change. Drawing on these insights, Tamboukou and Ball (2003: 8) chart new terrain for ethnographers to explore, namely a focus on ‘the complex ways they [subjects] are constituted within historically and culturally specific sites’. This is not to say that subjects are fully constituted through discourse. As Foucault (1998: 101) comments, ‘discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it’. By insisting on the ways that humans actively appropriate the cultural resources available to them and embody those cultural resources through forms of social practice, this chapter explores how school governors are both bearers and producers of systems of signification and configurations of power. This means paying attention both to the ways in which subjectivity is fashioned through forms of ‘self-​objectification’ and ‘self-​direction’ (Holland et al., 1998: 6) but also subject to what Foucault (1982: 790) calls government, namely legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection but also modes of action, more or less considered or calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to control the possible field of action of others.

The figure of the school governor is typically celebrated for its autonomy under an academised education system. Yet the freedom to govern is not given or unconditional but instead delimited by a field of action ‘inextricably bound to the activities and calculations of a proliferation of independent authorities’ (Rose, 1999: 49). At the same time, school governors are crucial to maintaining relations and structures of power through their

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everyday performance of and investment in these activities and ­calculations. On this understanding, it is important to capture why and how school governors invest in these types of work and the different accommodations and negotiations resulting from such work. In what follows I offer a useful excursion into some of the wider political debates and controversaries surrounding the academies programme to show why and how in recent years the figure of school governor has attracted so much attention. Following this I combine critical ethnographic methods with an analytics of governmentality (see Brady, 2014) through a situated study of governance in a single academy school. A focus of the analysis is to document the mobile, connective strategies or ‘relays’ through which the formal autonomous work of school leaders and governors is connected to wider political interests and business influence.

Risks and vulnerabilities For nearly 40 years, successive governments in England have introduced a range of policy drivers and structured incentives designed to improve the capacity of schools to self-​innovate as administratively self-​governing ­entities. Yet the need to decentre schools from the ambit of traditional structures of government, notably local government jurisdiction and its accountability frameworks, democratic audits and funding arrangements, has grown in proportion to the need to intervene to better steer and regulate how schools self-​organise. These interventions have become a matter of government priority since 2010 when the Coalition government (a cooperation between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties) introduced the Academies Act 2010, in effect making it possible for all ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools to apply to the Department for Education (DfE) to convert to academy status. Academies refer to ‘state-​funded independent schools’ that are no longer directly accountable to LAs, other than on matters of special needs and exclusions. Instead, school leaders and governors are responsible for admissions arrangements, strategic management, succession planning, compliance checking, performance appraisals, resource allocation and related ‘back-​office’ functions. At the time of publication in 2022, there are 9,752 open academies in England, i.e. 38% of primary schools and 79% of secondary schools (DfE, 2021). In the case of the academies programme, ‘endogenous privatisation’ (Ball and Youdell, 2007: 14) has not only conditioned and exposed education services to new kinds of vulnerabilities and insecurities but engendered a culture of moral hazard. According to Žižek (2009: 12), moral hazard is ‘the risk that somebody will behave immorally because insurance, the law, or some other agency will protect them against

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any loss that his or her behaviour might cause’. Management groups drawn from the private and charity sector to run public services have only limited liability of public assets as they are private limited companies and therefore do not face any personal financial loss in the event those public services underperform. Moreover, privatisation management of public services can have direct consequences for staff pensions, pay and conditions. In England, management groups contracted by government to run publicly funded hospitals called ‘hospital trusts’ have been accused of setting up ‘wholly owned subsidiaries’ (WOS) or ‘spin-​off companies’ in order to contract out staff at cheaper wages and cut back pension benefits to reduce costs (Campbell, 2018). Similarly, in education, private-​sector participation in public-​sector management has in some cases undermined trust in schools as public assets with evidence of nominated supplier corruption amongst academy trusts accused of hiving off public monies. In 2016, it was reported that Wakefield City Academies Trust (WCAT) paid almost £440,000 to IT and clerking companies owned by its then chief executive, Mike Ramsay, and his daughter (Perraudin, 2017). Further evidence of expenses scandal and financial mismanagement (Akehurst, 2018; Munro, 2018), related-​party transactions and conflicts of interest (Cruddas, 2018; Dickens, 2017), unofficial exclusions or ‘off-​ rolling’ (Bloom, 2017; Speck, 2019), and excessive pay to chief executives of academy trusts (Bubsy, 2018; George, 2018) has brought the legitimacy of the academies programme into disrepute. This is not to say that all academies are structurally the same and the people who run them are driven by identical motives –​a simplistic and unwarranted generalisation that conceals more than it reveals about the complexities of the current education system. Yet there is plenty that is ‘dangerous’ about these reforms to education, to the extent that the conversion of LA-​maintained schools into academies makes possible certain financial risks and opportunities which, if left unchecked, only serve to benefit the providers of education rather than the users. It is for this reason that government and non-​government bodies have continually intervened to steer the conduct of governors through the incursion of regulatory frameworks, accountability infrastructures and professional guidelines and expectations.

Attraction and effective governance Since 2010 various government and non-​government actors and organisations in England, from secretaries of state and governance consultants to school inspectors and national leaders of governance, have intervened in the field of school governance as a matter of priority to influence the conduct

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of school governors. School governors refer to local volunteers elected or co-​opted to the school governing body to assist senior leaders in setting strategy and providing oversight of the school’s educational and financial ­performance. The guidelines for school governors as outlined by government authorities and non-​government, independent governor support services remain in principle the same for academies and ‘non-​academised’ schools, e.g. schools under the control of LAs, with the exception that academies are separate legal entities called academy trusts, companies limited by guarantee and exempt charities. The implication here is that academy trusts are granted powers to delegate or deny responsibility to school governors as they see fit, including removing the statutory right of parents to be appointed as school governors, reducing the scope of influence of school governing bodies by reconstituting them as ‘advisory boards’, and downsizing or removing entire governing bodies so that control is directed by a self-​appointed board of trustees. Therefore, while the role and responsibilities for school governors in academies and non-​academised schools remain consistent in lots of ways, the academy trust model has created opportunities for a reimagining of the school governor on the basis of new demands to run schools as businesses. This partly explains why the school governor has emerged as a central figure within education policy discourse in England from 2010 onwards as successive governments seek to build ‘a school system which is more effectively self-​improving’ (DfE, 2010: 73). Moreover, successive governments since 2010 have combined this notion of self-​improvement with an appeal to greater de-​regulation of schools, specifically the removal of local government management of schools by LAs and their replacement or supplement by improved conditions for devolved management and professional autonomy amongst school leaders and governors. Such ‘disintermediation’ (Lubienski, 2014: 424) has not only given rise to concerns of a growing ‘democratic void’ given the reduced function of LAs as managers of schools (Clayton, 2012; George, 2017). Fears of ‘amateurish’ governance (Former Chief Inspector of Schools in England and Head of Ofsted Wilshaw quoted in Vaughan, 2015) and ‘governance failure’ have intensified dramatically. Governance failure (broadly defined) may refer to the ineffectiveness of internal control systems and operations to meet certain predefined objectives or outcomes, and typically it is the individuals responsible for reflexively monitoring and enabling those systems and operations that are held to account where there is evidence of governance failure. In the case of school governance, it is the key responsibility of school governors to ensure the smooth functioning of governance procedures, be it compliance or evaluation, and strengthening legitimacy with central government through holding senior leaders to account for the educational and financial performance of the school. Yet the government is concerned that some

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school governors lack the skills and experience to discharge such duties effectively. In response, government ministers with the support of charity-​ based and privately run governor support organisations have called for the attraction and participation of ‘business figures’ (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Education Lord Agnew quoted in Smulian, 2019) and ‘skilled professionals’ (Education Secretary Damien Hinds quoted in Whittaker, 2018) in school governance. Addressing the Independent Academies Association (IAA) in 2013, former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools Lord Nash stated people should be appointed on a clear prospectus and because of their skills and expertise as governors; not simply because they represent particular interest groups … Running a school is in many ways like running a business, so we need more business people coming forward to become governors. (DfE, 2013)

The academies programme therefore works to set limits on who gets to participate in the business of school governance and who is conditioned to stay out of such affairs. School autonomy is conditional on school leaders and governors deploying prescriptions and solutions of ‘effective governance’ as defined by governments and charities. Although the concept of ‘effective governance’ lacks a formal or exhaustive definition, the DfE (2017: 9–​10) use it to refer to ‘accountability that drives up educational standards and financial performance’, ‘people with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity’, ‘structures that reinforce clearly defined roles and responsibilities’, ‘compliance with statutory and contractual requirements’, and ‘evaluation to monitor and improve the quality and impact of governance’. As Grek argues (2013: 696), the reconfiguration and dispersal of state power typically relies on soft forms of governing called ‘attraction’ that include ‘drawing people in to take part in processes of mediation, brokering and “translation”, and embedding self-​governance and steering at a distance through these processes and relations’. Following Grek (2013), the recruitment of suitably skilled, professionally experienced individuals to school governing bodies can be considered an important means through which the government aims to set rules and manage expectations about how school governors, as purveyors of effective governance, should conduct themselves and run their organisations. Charities too play a significant role in coordinating such governmental work. In 2018 the charities Education and Employers and the National Governance Association (NGA) intervened to help facilitate the attraction of business people to school governance by launching the government-​ funded national campaign ‘Inspiring Governance’ in which they appealed to employers to encourage their employees to volunteer as school governors. Outlining the mutual benefits to schools, employees and their employers,

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Education and Employers and NGA highlight the skills acquired through volunteering as a school governor:

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employees can develop their professional skills in a board-​level environment which they can bring back to the workplace … They also develop wider skills from working as part of a management team. All of this experience is then brought back into their workplace with obvious benefits to the individuals and their employers. It really is a win-​win situation. (Inspiring Governance, 2018)

Conditional participation At the same time that government and non-​government organisations are keen to recruit skilled volunteers to school governing bodies, existing school governors are expected to possess similar professional attitudes, competencies and commitments which are mapped internally by the school governing body against a skills audit and evaluated externally by the school’s inspectorate, Ofsted. In some cases, certain people are conditioned to stay out of governance unless they possess the skills and orientation to respond to ever-​ growing demands for political neutrality, impartiality and non-​partisanship (Young, 2016). Elected school governors, namely parent governors, have been identified as ‘problematic’ for example, principally because of their vested interest in their child at the school. According to some school leaders and governors, such vested interest can skew the judgement of parents in favour of school policies that directly benefit their child or a group of children rather than serving the interests of the school as a whole (see Wilkins, 2016). In other cases, school governing bodies have been displaced to make way for Multi-​Academy Trusts (MATs) in which a single board of trustees is responsible for running multiple schools. While the majority of MATs in England tend to be small and run between two and five schools, sometimes referred to as collaboratives or soft federations due to their distinct shared collaborative models of governance (see Salokangas and Chapman, 2014), there are a number of large MATs called hard federations in which a single board of trustees oversee accountability for lots of schools (see Greany and Higham, 2018; Wilkins, 2017). The DfE favour these governance arrangements for different reasons, a key one being that they successfully attract highly skilled professionals to their boards of trustees: The growth of MATs will improve the quality of governance –​meaning that the best governing boards will take responsibility for more schools. As fewer, more highly skilled boards take more strategic oversight of the trust’s schools, MAT boards will increasingly use professionals to hold individual school-​level heads to account for educational standards and the professional management of the school. (DfE, 2016: 50)

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Post-​panopticism and the conduct of others From this perspective, school governance can refer to a post-​panoptic, albeit ‘neoliberal arrangement whereby the market increasingly structures the form and activities of the state’ (Gane, 2012: 612). As Peck et al. (2009: 51) observe, the shift towards decentralisation and de-​regulation under neoliberalism is typically accompanied by an ‘intensification of coercive, disciplinary forms of state intervention in order to impose versions of market rule’ (Peck et al., 2009: 51). Similarly, Davies (2011) points to the persistence of rule-​bound hierarchies framing models of service delivery despite increasing evidence of the cooperation and co-​planning of service delivery through communities, charities, social enterprises, policy networks, businesses and public–​private partnerships. In the field of school governance, for example, we can discern a range of tactics and methods deployed by government and non-​government authorities to delimit the role and responsibilities of school governors in an effort to effectively steer the actions of school governors towards the realisation of certain goals and outcomes. This is not to say the actions of school governors are the residual effect of some predetermined sequencing in which attitudes and responses flow uniformly and predictably across spaces, places, organisations and peoples. School governors sometimes act in ways that are at odds with the provisos and directives prescribed by government as they seek to balance internal and external accountabilities and achieve a congruence of multiple stakes and interests (Wilkins, 2019b). On this account and borrowing from Bevir (2010: 437), we can conceptualise the actions of school governors as ‘a contingent product of a contest of meanings in action’, namely that while school governors sometimes achieve similar results in terms of compliance and evaluation, these practices are the outcome of ‘quite disparate motives’ (Li, 2007: 13). At the same time, it is important to document the ways in which disparate motives are carved out of ‘ways of speaking truth, persons authorized to speak truths, ways of enacting truths and the costs of so doing’ (Rose, 1999: 19). To this end, a focus of this chapter concerns the extent to which governmental work has been successful in shaping the ‘conduct of others’, to borrow a phrase from Foucault (1982: 794). By conduct of others, Foucault (1982) is referring to the ways in which different authorities, be it the church, the school or the government, seek to guide the actions of individuals by elevating certain kinds of knowledge or ‘truths’ about the human subject to the point where they are judged to be ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’, even desirable. Such interventions in the conduct of others does not mean to remove the freedom of individuals but, on the contrary, ‘to acknowledge it and utilize it for one’s own objectives’ (Rose, 1999: 4). Hence, Foucault (1982) does not characterise the relationship

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between subjects and authorities, freedom and power, in terms of domination or confrontation since power presupposes the freedom of others. For Foucault (1982), the conduct of others therefore cannot be reduced to expressions of political and economic subjugation, especially in advanced liberal societies where governments seek to enjoin citizens to perform certain freedoms and responsibilities rather than crush their capacity to do so. In what follows I draw on anonymised interview and observation data taken from an ethnographic study of a London-​based secondary school academy called Richmond (pseudonym) operated by a large MAT called T-​ALK (pseudonym). Research was conducted at Richmond over a period of seven months during 2013 and 2014 in which interviews were carried out with various school leaders, trustees and governors connected to the school. Several ‘non-​participant’ observations of the full governing body and premises and finance committee meetings were also conducted during this time. The purpose of these observations was to supplement the interview material and official documentation gathered with a record of how school leaders, trustees and governors interact to resolve complex governance issues within ‘naturally occurring settings’ that are both formally and informally ­organised. These meetings can be considered naturally occurring to the extent that they, unlike the interviews, were not instigated by the researcher. At the same time, there was something seemingly unnatural about these meetings: they lacked spontaneity, experimentation and transgression. They were structured in a way that made them predictable, orderly, even circumscriptive, and appeared to be designed to pre-​empt digression or conflict in order that evidentiary requirements and suitable, auditable truths could be reached and minuted in a timely and efficient manner. A critical ethnographic approach is useful here in terms of tracing empirically the ways in which governance is reproduced through the social organisation of these events. Moreover, a critical ethnographic approach forces us as ethical researchers to challenge the limiting effects of these arrangements, of ‘operations of power and control’ (Madison, 2011: 5), both on the self-​formation of subjects and on the scope for reimagining governance differently –​governance as public pedagogy, civic training and participation, community empowerment or democratic citizenship.

Systems, structures and discipline The focus of this critical ethnography is Richmond, a Church of England, non-​selective, all-​through 11–​18 mixed secondary school. Surrounded by several large, underused industrial sites, a long elevated dual carriageway and a busy railway line, Richmond is located in what the local council

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describes as a ‘socially deprived area’ –​hereafter referred to as Crownsdale (pseudonym). Yet Crownsdale is also a highly commercial, cosmopolitan area in which a large number of creative, retail and media businesses thrive and where various domestic and international students study at the local ‘Russell Group’ university. Situated somewhere between the slick veneer of an imposing and growing post-​modern cultural industry complex and the more traditional sites of a post-​industrial, community-​dwelling urban landscape, Richmond occupies something akin to a liminal space bordering gentrification and poverty. In many ways the school imagines itself as a bridge or gateway between these two life-​worlds as it seeks to transform the lives and aspirations of local young people and their families through its ethos: ‘Believe, Dream, Achieve’. Yet there is a fundamental cultural and economic disconnect between the mobile, business-​ savvy, metropolitan, predominantly white middle-​class people who run the school and the young people and families served by the school: I don’t necessarily think that all of them [school leaders and governors] fully understand the needs of the school population, neither do they want to necessarily just because of the background that they come from, and I find that quite frustrating sometimes … A lot of them make judgments and make sort of throwaway comments about Crownsdale and the local estates without truly understanding those estates. (Angela, parent governor)

Richmond attracts a large number of its student intake from the surrounding housing estates where mainly working-​class black African, black Caribbean and white British families reside. Historically and culturally, families in this area have experienced high levels of deprivation relative to income, employment, health and disability, and education skills and training. At the time of the research in 2013, the number of students at Richmond eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and the pupil premium (PP) (both proxy measures for disadvantage) was well above the national average: out of the total roll of 885 students in Year 7–​11, 593 students were on FSM and therefore 67% were PP funded (the national average being 16%). Speaking about the student intake, the then headteacher, Joanna, commented: Schools that do well tend to improve the intake. We haven’t particularly improved the intake. We’ve got far more people applying, so we are massively oversubscribed, but the actual intake in terms of ability or [social] class hasn’t particularly changed, because we are still serving this estate.

Rather than describe the student population in terms of a differentiated and heterogenous whole, the headteacher uses the term ‘estate’ to invoke a different kind of social imaginary, notably one lacking ‘in terms of ability or [social] class’ difference. Describing her first impressions of the school when taking over as headteacher in 2006, she comments: ‘it was doing really, really badly

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at that time. The school was under-​achieving and the systems and structures weren’t working properly. Discipline was really poor’. Similarly, the deputy chair of the school governing body and academy sponsor appointee, Sam, stresses the importance of ‘proper behaviour and having proper discipline’ as key reasons for the successful transformation of the school from requiring special measures in 2004 to being rated outstanding by Ofsted in 2013. Yet the roll out of improved ‘systems and structures’ underpinned by ‘proper behaviour’ and ‘proper discipline’ were not only designed to influence behaviour change amongst students. These newly developed systems and structures had as their focus behavioural change amongst school leaders and governors themselves, the idea being that improved organisational change and behaviour at the level of governance would have a trickle-​down effect on the educational performance of students: Controls and balances internally, these are sort of process driven things that we’ve focussed on, the sort of objective, in a sense, that we can agree what they are and let’s implement it. And from that culture, discipline has sort of flowed if you like. So that’s the trajectory for us, so I think certainly governance has been very important for operational success of Richmond and also for academic performance. (Sam, deputy chair of the school governing body).

Philanthropic ventures in governance In its previous incarnation as a voluntary-​controlled school operated by the LA and the London Diocesan Board, Richmond was judged to require ‘special measures’ by Ofsted in 2004, meaning that the school was failing to provide its students with an acceptable standard of education. Later the school was successfully removed from special measures and judged ‘satisfactory’ by Ofsted in 2006. Yet despite evidence of improving standards of education, the school was deemed by the DfE to be eligible for takeover by a private sponsor and in 2006 Richmond came under the control of one of the largest MATs in England: T-​ALK. T-​ALK is similar to other MATs in England insofar as it is a registered private limited company and charity that runs schools on behalf of central government and is subject to a funding agreement setup with the Secretary of State. Yet T-​ALK differs from most conventional MATs, the majority of which are small and operate between two and five schools, in that it benefits from private donations which help to drive its philanthropic ventures and it is a ‘system leader trust’ both nationally and internationally. Nationally, T-​ALK operates a network of 38 schools and has developed its own approaches to teacher training, professional development, data collection and performance evaluation, and learning strategies, which it rolls

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out across its schools nationally and other programmes internationally. Internationally, T-​ALK runs a number of different education and health programmes in sub-​ Saharan Africa, India, the US and Eastern Europe where there is a strong focus on building capacity and knowledge exchange between the private, public and voluntary sectors. In this sense, T-​ALK is a service and training provider but also a ‘knowledge broker’ or ‘boundary spanner’ (Hogan, 2015: 317), namely an organisation that is ‘proficient at creating inter-​and intra-​organisational social connections’ spanning the interests and involvement of private and public actors and organisations. A major influence and strategic priority of T-​ALK since taking over as sponsor of Richmond in 2006 was the technocratic embedding and routine performance of checks and balances to enhance transparency of the internal operation of the school, or what Sam describes as ‘bringing private-​sector discipline into the public space’. The following observation recorded during a full governing body meeting reveals the extent to which governance work is increasingly vulnerable to private-​sector discipline, specifically the logic and ontology of business: The chair of governors starts with providing a verbal summary of the developments to date. He comments that he doesn’t usually talk much, preferring to leave space for other governors to do the talking, but that in this instance a summary would be useful as the issues are complicated. As in the premises and finance committee, much of the language used is very business and finance-​like.

Through establishing various oversight mechanisms, including sub-​ committees, working groups and audit trails, to control the school’s constituent operations and instruments, T-​ALK was effective in transforming Richmond into a high-​reliability organisation in which the school governing body closely resembled a corporate entity. As Sam recalls, the operational and strategic takeover of Richmond by T-​ALK involved a lot of process, a lot of initially trying to understand what was going on financially, and that took a lot of time because there was poor reporting before, there was no transparency around any of these things. Then imposing structure, and agreeing structure, and from that you can then start to hold people accountable, and from that culture those, because there’s now an agreed framework for how we communicate, what we communicate on financially and how we do so.

Business saturation and endogenous privatisation While these developments may seem little more than an administrative process, they are far more profound in cultural terms. As Herman, a Diocese

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representative school governor, explains, ‘the governance is much more like corporate governance’. These developments necessitate what Hatcher (2006: 599) describes as a process of ‘re-​agenting’ in which old social actors and their preferred practices are displaced to make way for the control of schools through new epistemic communities who embody the kinds of knowledge and expertise valorised by central government: we pay a lot of attention to financial control in governance, proper reporting, and my own background is actually private equity, so I’ve spent a lot of time working with management teams on systems and strategy and the like, and some of those skills also apply to what we are doing at Richmond and elsewhere. Not all of it. Our objectives and ambitions are different, but the skill set and how we apply that is quite similar. (Sam, deputy chair of the school governing body)

At the time of the research in 2013, the school governing body meetings were noted for their ‘business-​like’ approach to school governance. ‘Just as it would be in business, if there is no drive for achievement or to improve, or do better, then things stagnate’, remarked Garfield, support staff school governor at Richmond. Regardless of the agenda item under discussion, be it teacher retention, premises expansion, admissions policy, or information and communication technology (ICT), the tropes and repertoires used to communicate and frame these issues was typically couched in the language of economics. Key words and phrases typically used during school governing body meetings included ‘human capital’, ‘cost-​neutrality’, ‘contingency funds’ and ‘operating costs’, amongst other financial jargon. Such language was the ‘agreed framework for how we communicate’, as suggested by Sam. The school governing body also made consistent use of competitive-​ comparative frameworks and performance-​ related data on educational attainment to draw parallels with other local schools. ‘The core business is educational outcomes and everything else that’s discussed effectively supports that’, remarked Wendy, governance manager at T-​ALK. School governors are therefore prized for their technical expertise and ‘governance capital’ (Gobby and Niesche, 2019: 75), namely individuals who are adept at navigating, gaming and securing advantage from a market-​ disciplined education system that values and understands output controls, performance indicators and private-​sector styles of management practice. These performances in effective governance are also embodied through the leadership qualities of headteachers, notably so-​called ‘heroic’, ‘exceptional’ or ‘inspirational’ leaders who are technicians of universally prescribed models of ‘what works’ (also see Kulz, 2017). Like the headteacher at Richmond, Joanna, these new educational leaders are less interested in democratic solutions than in ‘best practice’ models as responses to educational problems.

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Described by the parent governor, Angela, as an ‘autocratic head’ who ‘runs the business’, Joanna is precisely the kind of leader sought after by large MATs and central government for their effective role as translators for the realisation of government-​ mandated initiatives, especially performance-​ driven objectives and targets (Courtney et al., 2018). I kind of had to be not particularly democratic, but more like this is what we are going to do, trust in me, it’s going to work, follow me, and all that kind of thing. So it wasn’t democratic or consultative at all, but I tried to bring people on with me by kind of getting them to believe in me, I suppose, that I could do it. So it was a bit like kind of being on that charger, and charging forward, and not against the children but against the obstacles and the barriers, and breaking things down. (Joanna, headteacher)

In the spirit of ‘breaking things down’, only two members of the previous school governing body were retained after T-​ALK took control of Richmond in 2006. These school governors were retained as part of a discrete selection process managed by the board of trustees following the academisation of the school. The majority of the members of the new school governing body consisted instead of T-​ALK appointees, namely people employed by T-​ALK. At the time of the research in 2013, Richmond was one of the few schools operated by T-​ALK that had its own school governing body called a ‘local governing body’. Local governing bodies differ from conventional school governing bodies, however, in that the statutory rights of school governors are rescinded by the academy sponsor. Under arrangements where a cluster of schools are operated by a large MAT, it is typical for those schools to lose their autonomy since non-​executive powers are shifted to the MAT’s board of trustees. I think ultimately because all the major decisions are made at the sort of trust level that, you know, I feel we are quite powerless, so because we are powerless I don’t see how there is any accountability if that makes sense. (Angela, parent governor)

This is not to say that there was no evidence of a ‘constructive tension between the executive and the advisory’, as Sam explained it, but such tension was the result of exchanges between like-​minded professionals with a shared mandate for effective governance and rational self-​management, and therefore who already operated within a limited ‘field of action’ (Foucault, 1982: 790) determined by business directives and provisos framed as forms of rational account giving. Understood from this perspective, claims to ‘constructive tension’ typically conceal a deeper, more political appeal to consensus and the regulated participation of school governors with shared priorities and commitments who can contribute to the smooth functioning

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of the school as technicians of compliance and evaluation. Discussing the composition of another school governing body, the headteacher, Joanna, commented: ‘their governors are very unprofessional, they are all members of the local community. They are lovely, lovely people, but they have got absolutely no idea about running a school’.

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Reflections on the shadow state In this chapter I have combined elements of ethnographic research methods with a governmentality perspective through a situated study of governance in a single academy school to reveal how political rationalities and governance technologies overlap and interact through the everyday work/​practice of school governors to produce certain kinds of effects. Through a general focus on how ‘some powerful groups are able to impose their definitions of reality on others’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983: 12), the analysis draws on Foucauldian perspectives to develop the concept of power to trace the ways governance is assembled through the ‘production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse’ (Foucault, 1980: 93). The suggestion is here is that, following Foucault (1980), power and truth as signifying practices in the formulation and imposition of different realities operate in unsettled, impermanent ways as the struggle to maintain hegemony, at least in post-​authoritarian settings, is always a discursive accomplishment made possible by practices of fact construction, the management of stake and interest, and the authorising of certain speaking positions and reactions. As detailed in the analysis, what comes to stand in for truth is rational self-​ management or effective governance, rational account giving underpinned by auditable and actionable truths, and routine performance of checks and balances, amongst other business tropes and practices. Working within a critical ethnography approach, it then becomes important to ‘demystify the ubiquity and magnitude of [such] power’ (Madison, 2011: 13). Demystification here means denaturalising that which is taken to be self-​evident, necessary or unavoidable. It means rethinking governance as the attempt to produce within specifiable limits and finalities the production of available solutions and speaking positions. Moreover, it means both challenging the kinds of everyday practices that diminish the scope for struggles of meaning over governance and opening up those everyday practices to new epistemic communities and voices. The kinds of everyday practices described above make a necessity of regulated or conditional participation in which the management and operation of schools has been successfully co-​opted by certain powerful groups who win favour with central government through their claims to optimising

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structures and processes in ways that uphold government-​prescribed definitions of ‘effective governance’ (DfE, 2017: 9). From this perspective, large MATs, like T-​ALK and others, can be viewed as a shadow state who operate on a scale similar to that of some local government authorities, albeit modelled more explicitly on the corporate competitive enterprise. Viewed from a governmentality perspective (Rose, 1999), these new powerful bureaucracies and professional entities provide a vital set of relays for linking the formally autonomous operations of the school with the requirements and objectives of the state apparatus (see Wilkins, 2017). It is evident from this study and others (see Gobby and Niesche, 2019; Wilkins, 2019a; Young, 2016) that when viewed as an instrument used to strengthen accountability between schools and central government, the school governing body is likely to encounter problems when trying to introduce and sustain participatory, democratic forms of governance (Wilkins, 2019a), especially under the academies programme. This is because effective governance is increasingly conditional on the ability and willingness of school governing bodies to create themselves in the image of corporate boards. On this account, school governance can be described in terms of a ‘post-​panoptic’ arrangement (Gane, 2012: 612) since school leaders and governors operate beyond the immediate disciplinary gaze of external funders and regulators. School leaders and governors possess certain professional discretion in terms of how they run their organisations, which they typically do through adopting self-​evaluation strategies in their monitoring and appraisal of the school’s financial and educational performance. Yet, the self-​evaluation strategies employed by school governors, be it output controls, performance indicators or skills and competency audits, are not designed to improve teaching or learning so much as providing evidence to external regulators and funders that a culture of ‘performativity’ exists in which school governors, like staff, ‘organize themselves as a response to targets, indicators and evaluations’ (Ball, 2003: 215). As Lemke (2007: 55) argues, ‘governance is about steering and regulating a world without radical alternatives, it is animated by the search for “rational”, “responsible” and “efficient” instruments of problem management’.

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Inspiring Governance. (2018). New campaign urges employers to support local school governance and develop their staff, Education and Employers and National Governance Association (NGA), 23 April, www.inspiringgovernance. org/​new-​campaign-​urges-​employers-​to-​support-​local-​school-​governance-​and-​ develop-​their-​staff/​ (accessed 6 March 2019). Keat, R. (1991). Introduction: Starship Britain or universal enterprise? In Keat, R. and and Abercrombie, N. (Eds). Enterprise Culture. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 1–​20. Kulz, C. (2017). Factories for Learning: Making Race, Class and Inequality in the Neoliberal Academy. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lemke, T. (2007). An indigestible meal? Foucault, governmentality and state theory. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory. 8(2), pp. 43–​64. Lewis, S.J. and Russell, A.J. (2011). Being embedded: a way forward for ethnographic research. Ethnography. 12(3), pp. 398–​416. Li, T.M. (2007). Practices of assemblage and community forest management. Economy and Society. 36(2), pp. 263–​293. Lubienski, C. (2014). Re-​making the middle: dis-​intermediation in international context. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 42(3), pp. 423–​440. Madison, D.S. (2011). Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Munro, B. (2018). Academy chain accused of misusing government funds, BBC News, 10 September, www.bbc.co.uk/​news/​education-​45472189 (accessed 6 March 2019). Newman, J. (2001). Modernising Governance: New Labour, Policy and Society. London: Sage. Peck, J., Theodore, N. and Brenner, N. (2009). Neoliberal urbanism: models, moments, mutations. SAIS Review. 29(1), pp. 49–​66. Perraudin, F. (2017). Collapsing academy trust ‘asset-​stripped its schools of millions’, The Guardian, 21 October, www.theguardian.com/​education/​2017/​oct/​ 21/​collapsing-​wakefield-​city-​academies-​trust-​asset-​stripped-​schools-​millions-​say-​ furious-​parents (accessed 6 March 2019). Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997). Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity, and Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salokangas, M. and Chapman, C. (2014). Exploring governance in two chains of academy schools: a comparative case study. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 42(3). pp. 372–​386. Smulian, M. (2019). Minister urges business figures to become school governors, TES, 7 March, www.tes.com/​news/​minister-​urges-​business-​figures-​become-​ school-​governors (accessed 6 March 2019). Speck, D. (2019). Academy suspected of off-​rolling could have funding terminated, TES, 1 March. www.tes.com/​news/​academy-​suspected-​rolling-​could-​have-​funding​terminated (accessed 6 March 2019).

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Tamboukou, M. and Ball, S.J. (2003). Genealogy and ethnography: fruitful encounters or dangerous liaisons? In Tamboukou, M. and Ball, S.J. (Eds). Dangerous Encounters: Genealogy and Ethnography. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. pp. 1–​36. Vaughan, R. (2015). ‘Amateurish’ governing bodies will no longer do, says Wilshaw, TES, 15 November, www.tes.com/​news/​amateurish-​governing-​bodies-​will-​no-​ longer-​do-​says-​wilshaw (accessed 6 March 2019). Whittaker, F. (2018). Hinds to tell professionals to ‘play your part as governors’, Schools Week, 9 June, https://​scho​olsw​eek.co.uk/​hinds-​to-​tell-​profes​sion​als-​to-​ play-​your-​part-​as-​govern​ors/​ (accessed 6 March 2019). Wilkins, A. (2016). Modernising School Governance: Corporate Planning and Expert Handling in State Education. London and New York: Routledge. Wilkins, A. (2017). Rescaling the local: multi-​academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History. 49(2), pp. 171–​185. Wilkins, A. (2019a). Wither democracy? The rise of epistocracy and monopoly in school governance. In Riddle, S. and Apple, M. (Eds). Re-​imagining Education for Democracy. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 142–​155. Wilkins, A. (2019b). The processual life of neoliberalisation: permutations of value systems and normative commitments in a co-​operative trust setting. International Journal of Inclusive Education. 23(11), pp. 1180–​1195. Young, H. (2016). Asking the ‘right’ questions: the constitution of school governing bodies as apolitical. Journal of Education Policy. 31(2), pp. 161–​177. Žižek, S. (2009). First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London and New York: Verso.

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When the MAT moves in: implications for legitimacy in terms of governance and local agency Helen Ryan-​Atkin and Harriet Rowley Introduction Since the growth of Multi-​Academy Trusts (MATs) there has been increasing concern about the impact of the blurring of the public and private agendas for education, and the consequent shift towards a more market-​driven education system. A number of studies have looked at this in terms of the large-​scale implications for the culture of school governance (e.g. Wilkins, 2015), local democratic accountability (e.g. Gunter, 2011), and the impact of a centrally controlled system (e.g. Ball, 2017), but there has been limited exploration about what this means for governors and local governing boards at the local level. In this sense, much of the literature has pointed to various concerns about possible implications of rapid policy reforms and what this means for public accountability but there are still relatively limited empirical studies which are able to evidence what is happening at the ground level. This chapter aims to do this by making empirical contributions to the existing literature by showing how national policy is being translated within one MAT at different levels of management and governance. It presents an analysis of how fears about the blurring of boundaries between public/​private bodies and practices are transpiring by using supporting data from an in-​depth ethnography of Chalkdown MAT.1 In doing so, the chapter identifies two main findings. First, that the increased professionalisation of governance appears to be leading to a preference for a trust board which is weighted towards business skills, at the expense of education expertise. Second, but related to the first, is the marginalisation of local figures, with their insider knowledge, and the implications for localised democratic oversight. These two findings enable us to make a contribution to the growing body of literature (Gibton, 2016; Glatter, 2017; Greany and Higham, 2018; Hatcher, 2014) which raises ‘legitimacy’ as an important consideration for the academised system to consider. Using Tinker (2015) and Glatter (2017)

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we argue that local governance structures operating as part of the introduction of MATs mean that schools are moving further away from being conceived as public interest institutions, based on inclusive and democratic forms of decision-​making. Instead, the blurring between private and public forms of accountability means that local governance concerns are more likely to be trumped by business rather than educational rationales. This has implications for the legitimacy of MATs and the extent to which they can operate in the interests of themselves and their students but also the contribution they can make to their local communities and society as a whole. On a methodological level, the chapter connects with earlier work (Gunter et al., 2014) by tracing the influence of scholarly doctoral lineages and knowledge production which have informed the authors’ scholarly activism. By reflecting on positionality and disrupting the binaries of insider/​ outsider status, we discuss the complexity of the research process in order to identify how this affected the data collection and analysis. We take seriously the need to grapple with the productive complexity of the research process to reflexively engage with our multi-​layered positionality as a­ cademics. Using Mayer et al. (1995), Rousseu et al. (1998) and Bottery’s (2003) conceptual tools on trust, risk and vulnerability we identify how participants revealed insights often not available to public scrutiny because of the increasingly hostile and high-​stakes environment within which educational research and those involved in educational practice are forced to operate. We argue that the empirical contribution of the study was enhanced because the methodological approach afforded the opportunity for these reflections to come to light. By conducting intimate interviews with a range of individuals within one research site over a sustained period, the researcher was able to construct a trusted reputation. Expectations of trust amongst individuals were therefore high, resulting in participants being ‘willing to assume an open and vulnerable position’ with regard to knowledge giving (Klijn et al., 2010: 195). This has implications for how knowledge is produced and alliances of activism are formed. The literature tends to define trust as being based on the expectation that actor A will take the interests of actor B into account within an interaction, and thus trust can facilitate risky choices in the type of information shared (e.g. Gambetta, 1988; Lane and Bachmann, 1998). Throughout our presentation of the data, we discuss the implications for the presence of such a trusting relationship between the researcher and the ‘researched’. We show the importance of supporting those with particular expertise to carry out research so that those involved in university teacher education and school leadership research can work with colleagues in schools in a trusting partnership to challenge dominant, neoliberal narratives endangering public forms of education and scrutiny.

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The chapter sets the scene for both the empirical and methodological contributions. The discussion focuses on the two main findings in relation to these two aspects. The chapter concludes by arguing that there is an urgent need for university teacher educators/​researchers with ‘insider’ expertise to work with schools to challenge the growing narrative of business-​led education.

Setting the scene: the introduction of MATs –​the blurring of the boundaries between public and private governance structures The diminishing role of public forms of accountability and governance in the English education system is not new. The academies programme has its origins in the Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997. The City Technology College (CTC) initiative was introduced in 1986, with the aim of establishing business-​sponsored colleges as state-​independent schools in industrial areas, with a focus on technical and practical education. Many saw this as the beginnings of the blurring of lines between public and private investment in education (Gunter, 2011; Walford, 2014), particularly with its emphasis on the current (Local Authority) system ‘failing’ children. In 1988 the government allowed secondary schools to opt out of Local Authority (LA) control through Grant Maintained Status (GMS). While the New Labour government brought GMS schools back under LA control in 1997, the governing body retained control over employment in the school, admissions, and school land and assets. In the New Labour administrations (1997–​2010), the language used was very much around a vision of ‘transformation’ of the education system, with underperformance, radical, innovative ideas and preparation for the world of work as key agendas. In the early 2000s New Labour presented the private–​public partnership of newly termed ‘City Academies’ within a market-​driven philanthropic framework to address socio-​economic disadvantage, much as the Conservatives had done with CTCs in the 1980s. To add to this mix, the 2000s saw the rapid development of trust schools, which enabled schools to maintain state-​ funded status, while being supported by a charitable trust. The trust board held the school’s assets on trust for the school, and like GMS schools, the governing body employed the staff and controlled admission arrangements. Unions have raised their concerns about the charitable trust model of education, warning of the potential dangers for staff if a business-​dominated charitable trust assumed majority control of the governing body (Unison, 2009). The Academies Act 2010 introduced ‘converter’ academies, initially giving high-​performing LA-​maintained schools in England the right to convert to academy status. Such academies would be state funded by the central government, but no longer within LA control. The intention to create a

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nationwide compulsory education system independent of local control was crystallised in the Education Excellence Everywhere white paper, which proposed ‘a school-​led system with every school an academy’ (DfE, 2016: 53). The 2016 white paper also set out plans for all academies to become MATs, which has enabled chains of schools, which in some cases have included non-​statutory pre-​schools, to be formed with a single funding agreement with the Secretary of State. Each MAT is run by a single board of directors and there are varying governance arrangements at school level. Some MATs have retained local governing bodies (LGB) for their academies, while others have re-​named them ‘Local Academy Boards’ (LAB). In either case, the meaningful power and authority they had under the LA system has been greatly reduced. Within a MAT, an appointed board, comprising executive and non-​executive trustees, which manages and governs all the schools in its MAT, has ultimate responsibility for decision-​making in all matters of both education and business. This board typically comprises around seven to nine individuals. In a recent national study of the emerging hierarchies, markets and networks, Greany and Higham (2018: 12) sum up the situation as ‘chaotic centralisation’, which is broadly ‘characterised by competing claims to authority and legitimacy but diminishing local knowledge about schools’. There has been growing concern that as part of such policy changes, there are diminishing levels of public scrutiny. Gunter (2011:12) points to a ‘democratic deficit’, where, because of their governance system, academies and academy chains are not subject to local elected representative scrutiny. Ball (2017) has argued that the move towards central control of education policy-​making has led to the marginalisation of traditional community-​based policy-​makers. Simkins et al. (2015) have expressed concern over LAs’ limited role in this new policy landscape, including their ability to prevent fragmentation of the local school system, when MATs take on schools across boroughs. There are also concerns that the values and ethos of the academies programme are in competition, not harmony, with those of education as a public good. Apple (2006) argues that, under the neoliberal agenda, education has to become a marketable commodity, and brings with it the values, systems and language of business. Under this agenda, all these factors have to be standardised and measurable, which in turn will make them ‘legitimate’ (Apple, 2006: 62). Ball concedes that market logics have now been ‘naturalised’ within the education model, and that the real question is how loosely or tightly are education institutions regulated (Ball, 2012: 140). He recognises that ‘new knowledge brokers’ are at work within the education system, whose motives include enhancing the competitive advantage of their institution which may not be aligned with public interest. Such concerns have led to a growing body of literature (Gibton, 2017; Glatter, 2017; Greany and Higham, 2018; Hatcher, 2014) which raises

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‘legitimacy’ as an important issue for the academised system to consider. Tinker (2015: 11) proposes that publicly funded schools should be considered as ‘public interest institutions’ which operate on a principle of ‘shared ownership’; for them to operate legitimately, all stakeholders must be involved in inclusive and democratic forms of decision-​making. Similarly, Wilkins (2012: 22) has argued that participative accountability (i.e. accountability to a range of stakeholders from pupils, parents, teacher, governors and community members) posed the greatest challenge for academies, as they were in the ‘unique position’ of being independent from the LA, but not from their sponsor. This is especially pertinent, given the new (and often opaque) relations between trust boards and members, local governing bodies, staff, parents and community stakeholders. Stoker’s (1998) theorising of governance is pertinent here; he identifies a governance such as that found in MATs as the blurring of boundaries and responsibilities, which creates uncertainty and ambiguity about who is responsible. To gain public support, he claims, those holding power must be seen as being ­legitimate. The new MAT system has provoked growing concern that power and accountability are located within a relatively small group of individuals, and subsequently, there is increasing doubt over the extent to which employees, stakeholders and even citizens ‘have a sense of belonging and control’ over schools (Tinker, 2015: 11). The above literature sketches out concerns about the legitimacy of academies in the face of blurred boundaries between public and private concerns over the accountability and governance of schools in England. Yet relatively few studies focus on how these broad trends are being interpreted at the micro, everyday level. This chapter will centralise two important empirical findings from an ethnographic study of one MAT, which provides evidence to show how MAT governance is increasingly professionalised, and has preference for a trust board which is weighted towards business skills at the expense of education expertise. First, through the mode of intimate discussions with individuals at the top level of management and governance, afforded by the ethnographic approach, we reveal the extent to which such preferences are having an impact on desired skills and experience thought necessary for a CEO to run a successful MAT. Second, by offering local governors and non-​managerial staff the opportunity to talk frankly and confidentially about their experiences, hopes and fears of the new system, we show how changes in governance arrangements are contributing to the marginalisation of local figures who have insider knowledge, which has implications for localised democratic oversight and control. These empirical findings enable us to make an analytical contribution to existing literature by substantiating concerns about the impacts of blurred boundaries

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between private and public forms of accountability and the emerging doubts over the legitimacy of the governance arrangements of MATs.

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Researcher positionality: disrupting binaries between insiders and outsiders to enable risk and trust. Before describing the context, research site and design, it is important to introduce the literature and conceptual tools which are pertinent to the methodological contribution of this chapter. First, however, we must trace some scholarly lineages because these are important for understanding how we conceptualise the research experience and forms of knowledge production present within this chapter. Harriet Rowley, the second author, was supervised by Helen Gunter for her doctorate; she now supervises Helen Ryan-​Atkin’s PhD, who is the first author. In 2014, Gunter, Hall and Mills edited a book in which Ruth McGinity (co-​editor of this collection) and Harriet Rowley each contributed a chapter detailing their experiences as embedded doctoral researchers doing ethnographic research in two academies at a time of rapid policy reform. Through this collection, a number of themes were raised, including the importance of reflexivity in what it means to become a critical scholar, the importance of doing research in partnership with schools, and in a way which offers space for educators in schools and universities to reflect and offer views on significant changes that were happening in their ‘field’ of education. As is still the case, educational research was recognised to be under threat while knowledge production was increasingly captured by political pragmatism and unholy alliances between neoliberal and neoconservative arguments put forward as common-​sense (Apple, 2014). Gunter et al. (2014) argued that the book presented a counter-​narrative while exposing the realities of doing research; this was positioned as a form of scholarly activism. Following Arendt (1993), authors threw light on the everyday realities of doing research and what was being done in schools but in the shadows of public scrutiny, or as Gunter et al. (2014: 3) sum up, ‘taking publicly funded education away from the public and our publics’. Such framings can be recognised as influential in how Harriet has supervised Helen’s doctorate and in turn the empirical and methodological contributions of this chapter. In a similar vein, throughout her doctorate, Helen continues to reflexively engage in what it means to be a critical scholar researching local schools and knowledge production within academia, while also being employed as a teacher educator in a context where universities are being increasingly marginalised (Brown et al., 2014; Rowley

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et al., 2015). Helen’s regular contact with student teachers who will be navigating the very impacts of the policy reforms she is researching ‘opens up spaces’ to give a platform to those who do not have access to such spaces (Apple, 2013: 43–​4), and thus informs her teaching and scholarly activism. Apple suggests that the model of researcher as ‘unattached intelligentsia’ (Mannheim, 1936) is out of date, pointing to the importance of the researcher being one that does not ‘stand aside, neutral and indifferent’ (Bourdieu, 2003: 11) from the concerns of individuals, and the struggles of education: but rather, one who is a critical secretary who ‘comes down from the balcony’ (Rowley, 2014: 52), to engage with such struggles and concerns. We have aimed to do this in the current research. Helen has a multi-​layered research positionality as a former primary school teacher, senior leader, national strategy consultant and governor within the same borough as her doctoral research. To this extent, the productiveness of disrupting the binary of insider/​ outsider distinction enables the experience of doing ethnographic research as both a familiar and unfamiliar observer to be exposed. Through the analysis of the empirical material, the discussion section identifies how Helen’s positionality enabled access and supported a trusting relationship with participants, ensuring that contact could be maintained with various key figures working in challenging circumstances over a substantial period of time. As Armstrong (2014) identified, the ‘repeated encounters’ to the research site which formed the basis for the research design facilitated ‘mutual familiarity’, which strengthened the level of trust and degree of risk-​taking each participant calculated could be made (Armstrong, 2014: 75). We posit that through this research respondents were able to take risks as an essential component of trust (Mayer et al., 1995), and expose levels of vulnerability (Rousseau et al., 1998) based on a positive belief of Helen’s intention as someone with dual insider/​outsider status. Applying Bottery’s (2003) hierarchy of trust, within which the construct of risk (calculated by the participant) is embedded, we suggest that between Helen and the participants there was ‘role trust’, where the perceived risk is lessened by both parties belonging to the same profession, underpinned by a common set of values and ethics. This meant that the empirical contribution of the study was enhanced because the methodological approach afforded the opportunity for reflections which are often not exposed to public scrutiny to come to light. This is important in the increasingly hostile and high-​stakes environment within which educational research and those involved in educational practice are forced to operate. Adopting an approach which sought to support interviewees to show vulnerability enabled the researcher to, in Apple’s terms, ‘deconstruct’ what was happening in this education environment in relation to the government’s Academies Act, and thus to ‘bear witness’ to

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the experiences and stories of actors within this turbulent and high-​stakes landscape (see Apple, 2013: 41; Apple, 2014: x). In this way, we were able to expose how public/​private interests are being blurred, but by building trust with participants and using the researcher’s own prior experience and positionality to do this, we have been able to present ourselves as ‘critical secretaries’, able to ‘construct’ a picture of articulations, creating an opportunity for professionals to ‘talk back’ (Apple, 2014: x–​xi). The researcher was able to build alliances with individuals, becoming more of an ‘insider’ because of the ethnographic approach to data collection which, in turn, enhanced the empirical contributions. In this chapter, we grapple with the productive complexity of the research experience as we take seriously the need to articulate the relationship between research and practice and the interplay between ideas and action (Gunter et al., 2014). In the next section, we detail the research site and design before discussing the empirical and methodological contributions in tandem in the discussion section.

The research site: Chalkdown MAT Chalkdown Multi-​Academy Trust (see Figure 2.1) is a medium-​sized trust, operating in what the CEO termed ‘areas of multiple deprivation’. One of the boroughs in which Chalkdown operates, Tollston LA, is in the top 20 LAs which have the highest proportion of highly deprived neighbourhoods (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2019). Tollston LA has a young and diverse population, with nearly a quarter of residents (22.5% in the 2011 Census) being recorded as ‘non-​white’. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations are the main ethnic groups, comprising 9.5% of the total population. 52% of the Pakistani population are under 25 years, as are 58% of the Bangladeshi population (ONS, 2011). Chalkdown’s main office is based in Local Authority Borough 1, where its original academy is situated. The original academy was in an area with a large ethnic minority population, and high levels of deprivation. It had achieved two ‘Outstanding’ Ofsted judgements under the headship of the person who went on to become the CEO of Chalkdown. Chalkdown was undergoing rapid expansion, at the beginning of the research (2017): it had eight academies covering two LA boroughs, but at the time of writing in 2020 had grown to ten (secondaries, primaries and pre-​schools), expanding into a third, neighbouring borough, with another school due to join Local Authority 1 in 2019, and a School-​Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) centre, where schools, working as a hub, Teaching School or MAT, have the authority to train students in their schools, in partnership with

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Members

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Trust board (CEO, execuve and nonexecuve directors Paid MAT staff (Operaons, Finance, Legal, HR, IT, School Improvement)

LA Borough 1 (5 schools)

LA Borough 2 - Tollston LA

Tollston Primaries Hill Top Secondary

(Joint Execuve Head and LAB)

Vale Grove

Forest Row

Head of School

Head of School

LA Borough 3 (1 school)

Primary school joining since research began

Figure 2.1  Chalkdown MAT. Source: author.

a university. At the time of the research, Chalkdown was the sponsor of three academies in the borough of Tollston: Hill Top Secondary School and Vale Grove Primary School, and following a re-​brokering process in 2016, Forest Row Primary School. As part of this process, Local Governing Bodies (LGBs) of the individual academies were re-​named Local Academy Boards (LABs). A fourth school from Tollston has since joined Chalkdown. Hill Top Academy has its own LAB, whereas Forest Row and Vale Grove Primary Academies have a joint LAB.

Research design The doctoral study covers four MATs, but for the purposes of the empirical contribution of this chapter, only the data from Chalkdown MAT is

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presented. Across the sites, an ethnographic approach was adopted, to enable an in-​depth exploration of the research questions. By spending time in the MAT over a period of over 12 months, holding both group and individual interviews with 20 participants, Helen was able to hear the stories of lived experiences from various representative communities. Here, the role of the researcher as critical scholar was essential, not only to avoid the role of detached observer, but to present oneself as credible and trustworthy (Emery, 2014), and thus establish and maintain empathy between researcher and participants. Hammersley and Atkinson (2007: 236) acknowledge the power of reflexivity in an ethnographic approach, in its capacity to address the ‘knowing’ over the ‘doing’, and its attempt to cut through the rhetoric of words. In order to hear the full range of experiences, the sample included individuals with varying degrees of power and accountability. At trust level, this was the CEO (Shelia) and trustees (Paul, David and Anna); at academy level, this was within Tollston LA, in Hill Top Secondary, and two of its feeder primaries –​ Vale Grove and Forest Row, involving senior school leaders (Susan, Tony and Ray), teaching and administrative staff, local governors and parents (see Figure 2.1). The data from these interviews is foregrounded within the two main findings put forward as the empirical contribution of this chapter. The interviews themselves often took a dialogic approach; participants were encouraged to reflect and were occasionally challenged through the use of contrasting evidence either by those present in a group discussion or by the interviewer. This approach meant that the complexity and messiness of arising issues was invited and jointly grappled with. For example, there was an instance in which two trustees were discussing their differing views of their MAT’s values; and another in which one Executive Principal was openly negotiating her views on local governor positioning. Such a feature is difficult to achieve in a system which is closely scrutinised and rehearsed for the majority of external observers. As discussed in the next section, we argue that Helen’s position and knowledge disrupted the binary between insider and outsider, meaning that participants took risks and exposed vulnerabilities in what they told her and that the analysis produces greater critical insights.

A study of Chalkdown MAT: national policy translated to a local level –​the professionalisation of governance Trust board expertise The first main finding put forward as part of the empirical contribution of the chapter recognises how as part of the blurring between public and private interests in education, the values, language and systems of business –​in

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effect, the business model, were becoming increasingly prevalent. Across Chalkdown MAT, business values and ‘hard skills’ (Wilkins, 2015: 195) were often the driving force, with the language of business and commerce being appropriated. The CEO (Sheila) described the members of the board, the top level of governance, as ‘the shareholders’, who had little involvement at operational or strategic level. Typically, local people known to the CEO, some of whom had been former governors of the original academy, ‘who have grown with us … linked to the values, to the community, ethos … but don’t necessarily have the skill-​set to become a trustee’ (Sheila, CEO). Only one of the members had an educational professional background. Given the trust is a non-​profit organisation, we argue this ‘shareholder’ and business model view of the members is mismatched and problematic. Trustees were formally appointed by members, following a recommendation by the CEO, but there was no election process. Sheila was very clear that she sought individuals who had a track record in business and high-​ level directing, or ‘values and modes enshrined in entrepreneurism’ (Ball and Junemann, 2012: 24). As well as those who had the concomitant skills identified as ‘very senior –​leaders, directors or managers within the larger companies that they’ve worked for’, and with HR, legal and financial acumen. Most of the education expertise was provided by the CEO herself, and her paid MAT staff, whose focus was on school improvement and ensuring high academic standards. Chalkdown appointed what the Trust Chair termed their ‘education trustee’ some years after the MAT had been established, although since the beginning of this research, Chalkdown has appointed a second trustee with an education background. The imbalance in business/​ education skills amongst the trust board begs the question of the MAT’s priorities, what model of education they are following, and, as Higham and Greany (2018) question, their legitimacy as providers of education. This reflects Ball’s concerns over education-​as-​business, where strategic decisions by definition are ‘intended to enhance competitive advantage’ and that such businesses are ‘subject to the same market and business processes as other companies’ (Ball, 2012: 16).

Trustees’ concerns over their own lack of education expertise The Trust Chair was concerned that a board with minimal education expertise could be misled by a less scrupulous CEO. Such a CEO could indeed exert undue influence over the board, particularly when they encountered little resistance to their proposals and educational claims, due to a lack of knowledge on the board’s part. There was an awareness that lack of education knowledge amongst non-​executive trustees might compromise their ability to make informed challenges, as the Trust Chair confided:

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I am no schools expert, and whilst there is no thought that Sheila would try to pull the wool over our eyes, our lack of knowledge meant that she could. (Paul, Trust Chair)

This very frank admission came about, we believe, through the level of ‘calculative trust’ that existed between the participant and researcher (Bottery, 2003: 250; Bottery, 2004: 6). Paul had not known the researcher before the interview, but had evidently researched her background and was very interested to know about the research study. Paul made links between his role as trustee with his earlier experience of being an instructor in the armed forces, and also with the researcher’s role as an educator: several times he used the phrase, ‘well, as you will know’. Rousseau et al. (1998: 395), in their construct of multi-​disciplinary trust, describe it as ‘a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another’. Despite not sharing the same professional role, the fact that the researcher was able to generate ‘positive expectations’ was a product of her positionality and openness about the research, and a clear desire to listen to his story, which in turn led to Paul exposing his ‘vulnerability’ with his lack of educational expertise. Through using an ethnographic approach, it has enabled us to peer ‘under the veil’ to what would normally remain secret from public view (Apple, 2014: viii). Anna, the ‘education trustee’, believed this lack of understanding of educational issues meant that the CEO and executive directors had to do a lot of explaining of what should have been fairly straightforward issues. Other trustees seemed to be translating the language to a business model and while they were confident in their role to challenge, question and probe business-​ type decisions, Anna thought they seemed more reticent to do so in matters of education; as she told Helen, ‘they can’t necessarily understand why it’s done a particular way’. This sense of trustees being out of their depth in education matters, and trying to apply a business model to these educational issues, could have serious implications for the enactment of trustees’ responsibilities and powers. Trustees were involved in high-​level decision-​making and were accountable for the whole MAT, as well as holding the CEO to account. If there was the possibility that, because of the trustees’ lack of educational expertise, the CEO could present information to them which they were not qualified to properly scrutinise, then there is a question over the basis on which important decisions about the children’s education were being made. The Trust Chair implicitly admitted the Boards’ lack of educational legitimacy and stated: We desperately need training for new non-​executive directors, coming into education, because we may have all the business skills in the world, but it’s a different world, it’s a different language. (Paul, Trust Chair)

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Again, this open admission of deficit by the individual at the very top of the MAT governance acts as a warning sign that this MAT, and indeed others where business values and strategies are sharing a platform with education values, needs to find ways of ‘securing trust amongst professionals, as well as parents and students’ (Greany and Higham, 2018: 18). Paul’s plea suggests a mismatch between expectations of being a MAT trustee, and the reality. When Chalkdown appointed a trustee with education expertise, Paul said he felt it ‘was a breath of fresh air’. Looking to the future, when trustees were needing to be replaced, one trustee felt the trust would have difficulty ‘finding people who were prepared to give up their time, with the knowledge and experience’. He thought there may be a role for non-​experts on trust boards, who might ask questions that provoked new thinking and exercise the CEO to think of clear ways of explaining what the schools were doing, as suggested here, when he was asked about the value of having a trustee with education expertise on the board: I think it probably is useful to have someone in education, but on the flip-​side I also think it’s useful to have people not involved in education, because we ask the stupid questions! … there is a balance to be had. (David, trustee)

While there is obvious merit in having ‘a balance’ to provoke debate, these conversations raise important issues around trustees’ level of confidence in their ability to hold the CEO and the executive directors to account. The analysis of this case implies that this situation could result in at least two different scenarios. One scenario could be that due to a possible misplaced confidence in their own expertise and status, trustees are holding the MAT to account, but through the values of business and markets. Depending on the values of the CEO, this could result in tensions between the two. Another scenario could be that due to a lack of confidence in their own capability to present enough educationally informed rigour and scrutiny, trustees fail to hold the CEO and executive directors to account. Either scenario highlights the ‘competing claims for authority’ (Greany and Higham, 2018: 12) between education and business values, and challenges the expectation that the MAT is able to balance the two with confidence. This brings us to the important issue of the skills and expertise which are valued and sought after in a CEO.

How to replace the ‘jewel in the crown’: CEO expertise and succession planning CEO succession planning was a matter of concern for the trustees, while the growth of the MAT meant that the post-​holder had increasing responsibilities

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and power. The present CEO, Sheila, noted, slightly regretfully, how she had become more removed from her original academy (where she had been headteacher), and was becoming used to running the MAT in a business-​ like manner due to its expansion. Sheila’s past experience in education was impressive, both regionally and nationally. She was well-​regarded by both the LA and Department for Education (DfE), based on her work around school improvement, her outstanding Ofsted grades, her contribution to the National College for School Leadership and her role as an Ofsted ­inspector. This made Sheila feel confident and qualified when moving into the role of CEO: ‘I had a lot going for me!’ she told Helen. However, in further discussions, Sheila revealed an element of her own vulnerability, which she evidently felt able to share in the interview: The job is so very, very different to what I thought –​you’ve got to be careful you don’t end up putting yourself in a very vulnerable position actually, and you know I’ve talked about competing with Exec Principals, … you’re very vulnerable, because you are the person that can be suggesting change needs to happen, supporting and implementing it, and weighing the outcome as well, or … monitoring it … you know, it’s just conflict across the way, isn’t it? (Sheila, CEO)

This suggests Sheila’s growing awareness that managerial skills were needed far beyond those of headteacher for one school, with huge responsibility for individual school leaders and their staff, and implications for her own health and well-​being. She was acutely aware of the importance of developing good relationships with her staff, but also of having to challenge and ‘monitor’. Reflecting on how the methodological tools used within the research shaped this encounter, several points are of interest. First, at the start, a degree of distance existed between the researcher and Sheila, as, unlike the other three CEOs in the larger study, Sheila was not previously known to the researcher, and the interview had been set up through her personal assistant. Also, because of Sheila’s reputation and position, the researcher felt a little intimidated and adopted a more deferential attitude than with the other participants. Emery points to Fitz and Halpin’s discussion of ‘power asymmetry in the interview process’, where the researcher is put in the position of ‘supplicant so grateful to obtain an interview that he or she is unwilling to ask critical or demanding questions’ (Fitz and Halpin, 1994, in Emery, 2014: 101). The interview transcript is peppered with the researcher’s comments such as ‘why didn’t I probe more?’; ‘why didn’t I ask her x?’ However, this interview was almost two hours long, and as the interview progressed, the interviewer gained more confidence to ask probing questions and to stay longer on a point. It was noticeable that, when given space, Sheila took time to think things through, and revealed

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an unexpected or alternative perspective, as this exchange shows, where she knows that what she is saying is controversial, especially to a fellow education professional:

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Researcher:  Do you think you would have to have been involved in education to be a CEO? CEO:  [intake of breath] No, I think you could do it without, if I’m honest about it. We would suggest that because of the researcher’s professional background, ‘role trust’ had developed through the course of this interview, as some of their common values and ethics were revealed (Bottery, 2003), and Sheila had calculated it was worth taking the risk to make likely unpopular pronouncements. She qualified this comment by saying that a deputy would need to be the ‘educator’ if the CEO was not. Through ethnography, the researcher’s role had become part of the interaction, prompting reflection and reflexivity on both parts (e.g. Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). It is very likely that Sheila judged the risks of ‘unveiling’ a truth which may have otherwise remained hidden. This strengthened mutual trust between researcher and participant and guided the direction of the next part of the interview. For the trustees, when considering Sheila’s replacement in the (not-​too-​ distant) future, achieving the desired balance of education and business skills in one person was the focus of discussions, and illustrated the challenge this would be. They were all too aware that Sheila had been crucial to the success of the MAT: The whole MAT was based on her. And it was her expertise that allowed us to become a sponsor, and to sponsor academies … she is the jewel in the crown. (Paul, Trust Chair)

Amongst the trustees in this research, there was no consensus on whether her successor should come from the business or education world. In the absence of a successor of Sheila’s calibre –​they had ‘gone to the market’ (Chair), but without success. The board had come to the conclusion that the role might have to be split: a CEO from the business world to oversee the MAT business, and a Director of Education responsible for school improvement, standards and the ‘business’ of education, much as Sheila herself had said, because, as Paul argued somewhat defensively, perhaps sensing the researcher’s objection to this: Whether you like it or not, we are a business, and our business is education. If you went into industry, the CEO might not come from that industry, but the operations director almost certainly will. (Paul, Trust Chair)

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It was Anna, the late-​appointed ‘education trustee’, who was most vocal in requiring a future CEO with a solid education background. She preferred a flat model, where expertise was shared across the team. She questioned the CEO-​as-​business-​person model, preferring a ‘true educator at the top’:

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I think you can have anyone in your SLT [Senior Leadership Team] who can be that bean-​counter, but I don’t think they should be in charge of the sweet-​shop, really. (Anna, trustee)

Anna was concerned about the motivation of someone with very little education background seeking to become a CEO of a MAT, and in effect, raised the issue of ‘career MAT CEOs’: Someone might pretend they’re an educationalist … they’ve gone into Teach First because they want to be a CEO because they know there’s huge pots of money, so they’ve made it a career plan to be a CEO of a MAT by doing one year in school. So I would have to carefully look at that replacement. Because it’s one thing saying ‘I’m an educator’, but what sort of educator, and what sort of trajectory has that person had? (Anna, trustee)

Anna could see in Sheila’s qualities which she implied could be lacking in a CEO who was a non-​educator, or an educator with very little education experience. Several times Anna used the term ‘integrity’ to describe Sheila, as well as ‘honourable’. Reflecting on the benefits of the research process, it is not certain that Anna would have been so open in her criticism of a non-​or limited-​educator as CEO, if she had been in a group with the other (business-​oriented) trustees. She made these comments tentatively, feeling her way to gauge the reaction. Because of their shared professions (Anna was a university lecturer in education), again, the concept of ‘role trust’ was prominent (Bottery, 2003). Also, through shared misgivings on the academies programme and previous conversations on the neoliberal influences on the education system, it was clear that there was an alignment of educational values and views, which is likely to have made her ‘feel safe’ in being critical of a business model of management. We can see from these conversations that this CEO’s experience, skills and status within the world of education gave the MAT credibility and meant that the majority of the governance structure trusted her to do a good job. However, the problem around succession planning emerged as a source of tension amongst trustees, as there was no consensus over the skills and background valued for this role. The business model of the MAT demands that the skills related to running an organisation –​finance, HR, legal –​are vital, and without these, the MAT would not function. On the other hand, the ‘business’ of these MATs is education, and as such, it is considered important that the trust board has representatives whose skills

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and expertise are embedded in education. For some participants, if business values took precedence, then this would raise questions about the MAT’s legitimacy as an education provider (Greany and Higham, 2018).

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The marginalisation of local figures, and the implications for localised democratic oversight This section examines which skills and responsibilities are required and valued at the individual academy level of governance, and the impact on local participants of the move away from an LA-​supported system to centralised governance. Local governors and school leaders in Chalkdown were acutely aware that through centralisation, the local voice, including that of the LA, was ‘diminished’. Depending on perspective, this centralising process was either the chance to relieve governors of the ‘huge burden’ of finance, HR, legal issues, etc., and focus on ‘what really matters’ –​teaching and learning (CEO, trustees and Executive Principals’ views); or it was a stripping of crucial powers of accountability –​in particular, holding the Principal to account, being fiscally responsible, and being able to make decisions at a local level for the local school community (local governors’ views). For this latter group, local governance had become a ‘sideshow’, where they were the observer, causing dissatisfaction amongst those interviewed.

Reduced involvement of locally elected councillors The extent that local voice filters through accountability and governance systems of schools has been a controversial and veiled debate, which is not confined to recent changes. In the past, under the LA-​maintained school system, representation of LA councillors was ‘limited and indirect’ (Radnor and Ball, 1995: 3), and good relationships between the LA and the school were arguably based on mutual respect. Furthermore, there is a tendency in the literature to portray the LA governance system in an overly-​rosy light, whereas the reality was one where ‘discordant voices’ were not always welcome (Radnor et al., 1998: 3). The academies policy was a deliberate move to shift how accountability and governance is legally understood and experienced, with its desired result of a distancing in decision-​making (Carter, 2016; Gunter, 2011). Chalkdown had only seven non-​executive trustees for ten academies, over three boroughs. This raised problems for levels of communication between the MAT board and individual schools, which all participants in the study mentioned. To help address such issues, and to try to counteract the image of a remote governing body, Chalkdown introduced a system

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of ‘link governors’ who were attached to particular academies. However, the replacement of governing bodies with Local Academy Boards (LABs) made local governors keenly aware of their diminished powers, and the effective end of an LA presence. LA governors had realised that being on the LAB, with effectively no power, no longer held the professional and personal kudos it once had, and so had resigned or not re-​applied: Because these [current] sponsors are out of the borough, a lot of [local councillors] aren’t that interested on being on the Local Governing Body, because they actually can’t get much out of it. (Local governor)

This governor was especially concerned that with the departure of these individuals, the board would lose education expertise and knowledge of policy at a local level, as they were ‘movers and shakers in the borough … in the field of education and social policy’ (Governor). Another, a community governor of South-​East Asian heritage, was unhappy because two LA governors of Bangladeshi heritage had resigned, for similar reasons, telling him: ‘I don’t want to be in a position where I’m a councillor and I don’t have any powers’. Given that Hill Top Academy has large Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupil populations, this governor seemed to raise concerns over the ethnic representation of the LAB, while this was also the case for Chalkdown’s non-​executive trustees, where no one was of Pakistani/​Bangladeshi heritage, despite the MAT covering an area where high numbers of the population were from these communities. While cultural and social representation at trust board level is worthy of examination, this is not within the scope of this chapter.

‘Marginalised in the business of governance’: the sidelining of local values and views Chalkdown’s scheme of delegation states the delegated powers for each academy and their LAB. Better-​performing academies had more delegated powers than poorer-​performing ones, although ‘it just might not be what they want to do’ (Sheila), having ‘earned autonomy’, as she explained. Sheila knew that some of the LAB members were unhappy with their reduced accountability and responsibility, but she was very clear that ‘with responsibility [came] risk and liability’, which was now at trust level. Such change in local governing powers had caused dissatisfaction and frustration amongst LAB members. Many of these local governors had been in post for some years, and had made personal investment in supporting and improving the school, often through difficult circumstances. They were now sensing that their values and views did not matter; that they were in fact being ‘marginalised in the business of governance’, as Clarke (2009: 38)

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predicted. In her critique of transformative leadership, Gunter (2016) looks to critical science to urge researchers to examine not only which values are important, but whose values seem to matter most and why. The researcher had developed a good rapport with the group of governors in the discussion, and was able to present herself as a former governor in a high school in Tollston, with the knowledge and understanding of the role it demanded, and of the school and community populations. Most of them had been with the school under the previous sponsor and agreed that since the re-​ brokerage they had seen a significant reduction in their meaningful involvement in governance. One governor regarded the LAB meetings as ‘pseudo scrutiny’: ‘there’s not enough time to fully scrutinise from a quality perspective, it’s reduced, compared with its previous incarnation’. Another said he felt ‘reduced’. With this reduction in meaningful local scrutiny, monitoring and accountability, the LABs were moving to a role of advisor to the Principal, where local knowledge and scrutiny were diminished. As Apple (2014) warns, we need to raise questions not only about Foucault’s panopticon, but in fact about the absence of knowledge, and the absence of scrutiny within these new education institutions. The governors were now ‘totally reliant on what the Principal gives us at the LAB meeting’ (Community governor and parent) rather than being able to independently hold the Principal to account. This could have implications for local governors’ sense of identity and purpose, as they saw their role as ‘less significant in terms of … influence’, and more of a ‘rubber stamp’ (Local governor). Wilkins (2015) notes that the move for governing bodies to professionalise their members was starting to affect relations between governors, and creating a sense of inferiority when he states ‘weak school governors are positioned through a deficit discourse which views civic or lay knowledge as either impractical or inexpedient to the task of ensuring the school is fit for purpose in an administratively self-​governing institution’ (Wilkins, 2015: 194). What was happening at Chalkdown was in fact the deprofessionalising and minimising of the LAB, while professionalism was sought in the trust board. Although, at one of the other research sites, Wilkins’ depiction of ‘deficit discourse’ was being enacted at the local governing body level, where the possession of ‘lay’ or ‘tacit’ knowledge was not enough, and was contributing to a feeling of exclusion amongst parents from ‘the business of governance’: If I was going to apply to be a governor next year, I can’t actually think of any skills I have … it would put me off now, cos they say ‘we want someone with HR experience’, or ‘we’re looking for someone with project management experience’. I think it would exclude a lot of parents. (Parent, Hazeldene MAT)

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Thus we have the situation where a weak/​strong divide is emerging, which is already leading to the self-​exclusion of individuals who could otherwise have made a valuable contribution with their unique local knowledge. There is the possibility that Chalkdown, with its growing portfolio of academies, has generated Rose and Miller’s ‘enclosure’, with its ‘crucial resources’ of business and managerial expertise and skills (Rose and Miller, 2010: 286). In this case, the emphasis on ‘hard’ business skills, at the expense of lay and tacit knowledge, was showing signs of excluding from the enclosure those individuals with the latter skills ‘from the business of governance’ (Clarke, 2009: 38). We argue that the resulting exclusion of peripheral voices who are not in the experts’ ‘enclosure’ is a concern for the capacity of stakeholders within a MAT’s community to have agency that can be used to ‘illuminate a situation, contribute to a discussion, take on tasks and functionally sort something out’ (Gunter, 2016: 167).

Lack of transparency over the change in accountability and responsibilities The data in this study identified a lack of clarity by the MAT and senior leaders over changes in governance and accountability, and the implications for individuals. This led to misunderstandings and confusion amongst local governors and parents, and highlighted the importance of clear ­communication. Some school leaders were aware that local governors who had previously been held in high regard and with substantial responsibilities were not aware of the implications of the changes, with one Executive Principal admitting, somewhat shamefacedly, that the governors were being kidded into feeling they were needed: The Chair of Governors has been a governor for a number of years, so she’s treating it very much as she’s always treated it, but actually, perhaps they haven’t all got the awareness of … they’re all diminished. The responsibility, the accountability is diminished … hugely’. (Susan, Executive Principal, Vale Grove/​Forest Row, emphasis added)

As the LAB of these two primaries had been only recently set up, there seemed a reluctance on the part of the Executive Principal (Susan) to be open about these ‘diminished’ roles; the Chair of Governors pre-​dated Susan, to a time when the LGB had power and prestige, and Susan may not have wanted to jeopardise their relationship. Throughout this part of the conversation, Susan spoke tentatively, and showed reluctance to admit how much the governors’ responsibilities had changed. At this point, the interview had taken on what Emery describes as an ‘intimate dimension’, which seems to have engendered a greater degree of trust (Emery, 2014: 101). We believe

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the researcher at this stage was acting as critical secretary, ‘bearing witness to negativity’ through deconstruction (Apple, 2013: 41). Yet she was seen as a ‘safe pair of hands’, someone whose shared background in education meant she was an ‘insider’, and could be relied on to understand the decisions and problems a school leader faced, and would not be critical of views and actions which could otherwise have been regarded negatively. Because of this creation of trust between researcher and interviewee, the researcher felt able to probe deeper into Susan’s opinion of the impact of such a ‘minimising’ of governor responsibility on their self-​confidence and self-​esteem. Susan believed that by the allegedly more qualified trust taking on responsibility for many areas previously within the LGB’s remit, it would ‘free up’ the lesser-​qualified local governors to focus on teaching and learning in their school: Yes, but you see these people are volunteers. I think one of the difficulties here is when you’re on a governing body, the responsibility is massive, you’re not paid, quite often you’re not interviewed for these positions –​what qualifies you to make these massive decisions?’ (Executive Principal, Vale Grove/​Forest Row, emphasis in original)

Susan’s remark highlights one of the key contradictions identified in the research, in relation to who governs in a MAT. Local governors were not seen to be qualified to be tasked with the responsibilities and accountabilities they had previously held; not able to make the ‘massive decisions’ because they did not have the skills or expertise. As volunteers, neither were they paid to do so. However, the previous section has raised doubts over the selection process of appointing trustees, and of the skills and expertise needed and valued to be in a position of high governance and ‘massive’ decision-​making. Like the local governors, these trustees were unpaid volunteers. Unlike some of the local governors, however, none had been through an election process by their local community, pointing to a deficit in democratic processes (Gunter, 2011). The local governors had been reduced to the role of ‘observers’ and ‘advisors’ to the Principal: their powers of scrutiny and accountability had been ‘greatly diminished’, to the point where senior school leaders were wondering why they were even there.

A MAT as a legitimate and trusted model in the eyes of its stakeholders With this blurring of public/​private accountability, it will be increasingly important for the legitimacy of the trust board to demonstrate to its community that it can embody both the values of education and business in a way which benefits the students most (e.g. Greany and Higham, 2018),

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and that it can engage in participative accountability (Wilkins, 2012). These communities can sometimes be geographically far-​ reaching, as was the case with Chalkdown, and quite diverse in their demographic profile. They include the school staff and governors, parents and pupils –​both current and ­potential –​ of each of its academies. Legitimacy is also likely to be important for members of the business and commercial communities around the school, local councillors and elected politicians, each of whom would probably feel a sense of pride, and have both personal and communal investment in having a trusted group of people in charge of their local schools. The board needs to convince its stakeholders that the people creating those values and shaping the MAT’s mission are trusted individuals who are making decisions from a position of educational experience and a­ uthority. Parents were concerned that if they had a problem, they would come up against the ‘­business’: ‘my worry would be if you did have a problem, you’d have to fight the business’ (Parent). There are concerns that the viability of the academy would supersede the interests of the child, that the trust board could not be entirely trusted to have the best interests of the children at heart. Ehren et al. (2017) noted that where there were high levels of reciprocal trust in a network, then accountability ‘becomes a tool for learning and improvement instead of control’ (cited in Ehren and Perryman, 2017: 956). ‘Trust’ recurred throughout these interviews at all levels, as something to be earned and valued: ‘Sheila trusts me, she’s backed me superbly’ (Executive Principal, Hill Top); the MAT ‘trust what you’ve got inside of your academy … that breeds confidence within staff’ (Assistant Principal, Hill Top). Building reciprocal trust is fundamental to creating and maintaining a positive, effective network of schools, where accountability is grappled with as a tool for improvement, as Ehren et al. (2017) suggest.

Conclusion This chapter has presented stakeholders’ views on the shift in governance from a local democratic process to a centralised, appointed body, within one MAT, and has identified a very fragile situation, where MATs are extremely dependent on the current CEO –​on their ‘integrity’ and ‘honour’. It identified a professionalisation of governance, which had led to a preference for a trust board weighted towards business skills, at the expense of education expertise. This has raised questions over the ability for such a board to present informed, rigorous challenge, and thus to hold the CEO to account. There was clear evidence of the marginalisation of local figures, with their insider knowledge, and the implications for localised democratic

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oversight: ‘we’re just observers now’ (Interview, local governor), ‘it would exclude a lot of parents’ (Interview, parent). This blurring between private/​public forms of accountability questions the legitimacy of this, and similar MATs, in acting on local interests (e.g. Greany and Higham, 2018), and indeed in earning their trust (Ehren and Perryman, 2017). Local players would be entitled to ask whose values and beliefs matter most to the MAT, and why (Gunter, 2016), and what makes trustees qualified to make ‘massive decisions’ affecting an ever-​ growing number of schools in their care, but local governors unsuitable to make decisions on a local scale. By ‘bearing witness to negativity’ (Apple, 2013: 41), we have exposed how public/​private interests are being blurred, but through acting as a critical scholar, we have been able to construct a space for participants to give their narrative a ‘thick story’, of what is both social and personal (Apple, 2014). The researcher as ethnographer was not only part of this education world through her professional experience, but she also brought her own personal and cultural perspectives, and her own tacit political commitments, to the understanding of participants’ narratives (e.g. Apple, 2013). Through this process, and the supervision Helen received from Harriet, it meant that she became confident to become a critical secretary who was able to ‘come down from the balcony’ (Apple, 2013: 43; Rowley, 2014: 52) and use her positionality to open up spaces for professionals to talk back. By reflecting on positionality and disrupting the binaries of insider/​outsider, we have argued that the use of Bottery’s (2003) conceptual tools on trust, risk and vulnerability, and the ‘mutual familiarity’ engendered between both parties (Armstrong, 2014: 75), prompted participants to reveal insights which are often hidden from public scrutiny: ‘you’re very vulnerable … it’s just conflict all the way’ (Interview, CEO). We would argue that our methodology sought to offer a space where vulnerability was valued, and not regarded as a sign of undesired weakness. When being a critical scholar it is essential to not just be a detached observer (‘on the balcony’), but to build trust and empathy with those in schools. We were able to do this through the researcher’s prior experience, which in turn enhanced the empirical contribution we have been able to make. We have provided a space for alliance-​ building and opportunities for educators inside and outside of the academy to jointly reflect on what it means for education to be increasingly taken out of public scrutiny, and in fact, perhaps surprisingly, the drawbacks of the absence of the panopticon (Apple, 2014). The trust built up as part of the ethnographic approach was crucial to this. Finally, the research has prompted us to argue for stronger support for researchers in teacher education, and school leadership who have particular expertise, to work with colleagues in schools to challenge the dominant,

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neoliberal narratives which threaten to normalise the professionalised business model of education in our schools. It means using our privilege of being scholar/​activists to open up the spaces for those who feel they do not have a voice (e.g. Apple, 2013), or that what they have to say is not relevant. It also means reflecting upon how doctoral lineages can support multiple generations to be committed to both scholarly research and activism, whose aim is to ‘interrupt dominance’ (Apple, 2013: 43).

Note 1 All names of institutions, local authority boroughs and participants given in this chapter are pseudonyms.

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Education Policy Research: Design and Practice at a Time of Rapid Reform. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 119–​130. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. (2019). The English Indices of Deprivation 2019 (IoD2019) Statistical Release, September 2019. Crown Copyright. London: MHCLG. Office for National Statistics (ONS). 2011 Census, www.ons.gov.uk/​peoplepopulation andcommunity/​culturalidentity (accessed December 2020). Radnor, H., Ball, S. and Vincent, C. (1995). Local education governance, accountability and democracy in the United Kingdom. Education Policy. 12(1–​2), pp. 124–​137. Rowley, H. (2014). Navigating research partnerships as a critical secretary. In Gunter, H., Hall, D. and Mills, C. (Eds). Education Policy Research: Design and Practice at a Time of Rapid Reform. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 43–​54. Rowley, H., Brown, T. and Smith, K. (2015). The Beginnings of School Led Teacher Training: New Challenges For University Teacher Education. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University. Rose, N. and Miller, P. (2010). Political power beyond the State: problematics of government. The British Journal of Sociology. 61(s1), pp. 271–​303. Rousseau, D., Sitkin, S.B., Burt, R.S. and Camerer, C. (1998). Not so different after all: a cross discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review. 23(3), pp. 393–​404. Simkins, T., Coldron, J., Crawford, M. and Jones, S. (2015). Emerging local schooling landscapes: the role of the local authority. School Leadership and Management. 35(1), pp. 1–​16. Stoker, G. (1998). Governance as theory: five propositions. International Social Science Journal. 50(1), pp. 17–​28. Tinker, R. (2015). Stakeholder schools: why collaboration is key to the next phase of school reform. www.fabi​ans.org.uk/​publi​cati​ons/​engl​and-​needs-​a-​natio​nal-​const​ itut​ion-​for-​scho​ols-​says-​fab​ian-​rep​ort/​ (accessed 28 June 2019). Unison (2009). Trust Schools: Negotiating Advice for School Staff. London: Unison Education Services. Walford, G. (2014) From City Technology Colleges to free schools: sponsoring new schools in England. Research Papers in Education. 29(3), pp. 315–​329. Wilkins, A. (2012). Public battles and private takeovers: academies and the politics of educational governance. Journal of Pedagogy. 3(1), pp. 11–​29. Wilkins, A. (2015). Professionalizing school governance: the disciplinary effects of school autonomy and inspection on the changing role of school governors. Journal of Education Policy. 30(2), pp. 182–​200.

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Part II

‘Practice’: Schooling the body and bodies in schooling: practice, strategy and the everyday

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Free schools, inclusion and social capital of children with special educational needs and disabilities Clara R. Jørgensen and Julie Allan Introduction Marketisation, standardisation and performance measures have come to dominate educational policies globally. England in particular is an example of a national educational system adopting the neoliberal agenda through a steady flow of reforms aiming to increase specialisation and diversity, decrease the control of Local Authorities by giving schools more autonomy, promote competition between schools, and raise standards (Higham, 2014; Walford, 2014; West and Bailey, 2013; Wilkins, 2015). Courtney (2015: 799) notes that ‘it has been a truism of Conservative, Labour and Coalition policy that school-​ type diversity, following market ideology, would improve the system’ and that ‘this has produced a 30-​year period of diversification, internationally unparalleled’. One manifestation of this development was the introduction of free schools by the Conservative–​ Liberal Democrat Coalition government in 2010. Free schools are a subset of academy schools. These are funded by the government, but unlike other state-​sponsored schools, they are not controlled by Local Authorities. Free schools may set their own curriculum and school day, as well as staffing and admissions arrangements, but are not allowed to select students based on ability. Research exploring the impact of free schools has predominantly centred on structural questions of social justice, equality and inclusion, more specifically whether free schools are located in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, whether schools operate fair admission policies, and whether parents and children of disadvantaged backgrounds are equally able to exercise their choice and access the schools (Green et al., 2015; Morris, 2014, 2015; Stokes, 2014; West, 2014). These three questions are closely linked, as families from lower socio-​economic backgrounds may choose schools based on different indicators than families from higher socio-​economic backgrounds, and their ‘choices’ may be limited by transport options and complex admissions policies (Allen et al., 2014). Very little

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has been written about what actually happens at free schools in terms of day-​to-​day practices and interactions and many questions remain as to how the schools use their freedoms and the extent to which they work inclusively with students. Furthermore, most existing literature is based on quantitative research, resulting in a lack of in-​depth qualitative studies of the development, context and daily practices of free schools. This chapter reports on a project carried out at a secondary free school in 2016–​18, using qualitative and ethnographic methods to examine the views and experiences of teachers, school staff, parents and children, particularly in relation to inclusion and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Drawing on findings from semi-​structured interviews and participatory group interviews with research participants and observations within the school, the chapter discusses the extent to which the school was able to use its free school status and particular ‘freedoms’ to foster inclusive practice and strategies. We use a broad definition of inclusion as a process whereby ‘all children and young people are included both socially and educationally in an environment where they feel welcomed and where they can thrive and progress’ (Lauchlan and Greig, 2015: 70). This definition emphasises the importance of social relations as a resource for inclusion, and reflecting this, we draw on the theoretical framework of social capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Putnam, 2004) to explore the role of social relations in developing and maintaining an inclusive environment. The concept of social capital has been used extensively to explore outcomes of education, but has not previously been used to deepen understanding of inclusion. Traditionally, the literature has focused on the capital of parents and (adult) communities and their impact on the academic outcomes of children (Morrow, 1999), but increasingly researchers have also looked at the way children and young people generate social capital through their own networks and the consequences for them (Ream and Rumberger, 2008; Stanton-​Salazar and Spina, 2005; Weller, 2010). Little attention has been paid to how children and different groups of adults (for example, teachers) may work in tandem to generate social capital within diverse school contexts and little is known about the social capital of children with special educational needs. In this chapter, we discuss the strategies used by the specific school in question to promote inclusion, and the impact these had on the social capital of children with special educational needs. In addition, and acknowledging the dynamic nature of social capital, we outline the main challenges experienced by staff in developing an inclusive school, and some of the limitations presented by the performativity and ‘standards agenda’ of the current English school system.

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Free schools, inclusion and social capital In 2018 there were 520 open free schools in England and of these 251 were secondary schools.1 The main arguments for the introduction of free schools were that these would make it easier for local groups to set up schools, and that this would improve parental choice, respond to a demand for better schools in deprived neighbourhoods, raise standards and enable innovation (Andrews and Johnes, 2017; Higham, 2014; Wiborg et al., 2018). However, various issues have been raised in relation to these claims and the impact of free schools on educational provision for students from disadvantaged backgrounds has been discussed extensively. Research has shown that free schools have generally been opened in areas of disadvantage (Bolton, 2016; Green et al., 2015), but also that a significant number have been opened in areas that already had excess places (Andrews and Johnes, 2017). Data from the National Pupil Database 2011–​2014 indicate no major differences between free schools and regular state schools in the affluence or poverty of their students (Green et al., 2015). Reinforcing this, Andrews and Johnes (2017) argue that while many free schools have been established in areas of disadvantage, this has not necessarily been reflected in their proportion of students on Free School Meals (FSM) and that this is a particular issue in primary free schools. However, Morris (2015) has shown that not only do free schools vary significantly in their intake of FSM students (with some admitting disproportionately low numbers and others disproportionally high numbers), there is also a marked difference between schools in the first three phases of the introduction of free schools (2011, 2012 and 2013) with phase 2 and 3 much more likely to have a diverse intake. Allen and Higham (2018) analysed the intakes from the first five phases and concluded that free schools were socially selective and contributed to the reproduction of socio-​economic inequalities. They also found that schools did not become more representative as they admitted more year groups. In terms of ethnicity, free schools on average have a higher number of students from minority ethnic backgrounds and students whose home language is other than English. This has been explained by the high proportion of free schools being opened in London and because many of them are faith-​based (Andrews and Johnes, 2017; Green et al., 2015). With regard to children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), Andrews and Johnes (2017) found a lower proportion in primary free schools than in other state-​funded schools, whereas at secondary level, the percentage of children with SEND was approximately the same. In England, the inclusion of children with SEND in mainstream settings is actively encouraged and the SEND code of practice states that schools

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must not discriminate against disabled children and young people directly or indirectly, and that they have to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that they are not disadvantaged compared to their peers (DfE; DoH, 2015). In spite of this, in 2018, 44.2% of children with SEND statements or Education and Health Care (EHC) plans2 attended state-​sponsored special schools rather than mainstream schools, a number which has been increasing since 2010 (DfE, 2018). Concerns have been raised about the impact of marketisation and the ‘standards agenda’ on children with SEND, showing how the pressures on schools to perform have worked to the detriment of students, who may not be expected to do well in standardised tests (Rogers, 2007; Tomlinson, 2012). The national education inspector, Ofsted, has recently warned against the ‘off-​ rolling’ and disproportionate exclusion of children with SEND and noted that 30% of pupils who leave school between Year 10 and 11 have special educational needs (Bradbury, 2018). This has obvious implications for both educational and social elements of inclusion, and raises some important questions not only about where SEND children go to school, but also the extent to which they are included while attending mainstream schools (e.g. in the class content, activities and social interactions). In the context of free schools, this question extends to whether the freedoms the schools are allowed may enable the development of different or extra practices to facilitate inclusion, considering not only the great diversity of children with SEND, but also their multiple ethnic and socio-​ cultural backgrounds, which may intersect in different ways to create disadvantage or vulnerability. Discussions of the day-​to-​day practices of free schools and the degree to which they make use of their ‘freedoms’ have been almost absent in the literature, with the exception of a survey of 74 headteachers of free schools carried out in 2013–​14 (Cirin, 2014) and a mixed-​methods study involving semi-​ structured interviews and questionnaires with a total of 47 headteachers of free schools (Wiborg et al., 2018). Of the responding headteachers in Cirin’s study, 62% said they delivered an alternative to the national curriculum in some or all subjects, 57% said they ran an extended school day and 41% said they ran a school year different to other schools. Furthermore, 81% of the schools felt that they offered ‘something innovative’ (for example, a different ethos/​style or taught material), with many of the schools also reporting to offer an extended extra-​curricular or enrichment programme. While these numbers provide an overall picture, they do not offer very much information about the nature of these innovations and activities, and whether they have been developed with inclusion in mind. Wiborg et al. (2018) have gone into further depth, distinguishing between innovation in the areas of management/​governance and teaching/​ ­curriculum. They found that free schools were generally more innovative

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in their management and governance structures than in their teaching and learning styles. Furthermore, they argue that most of the teaching and learning practices described by the headteachers at the schools were also available outside the free school sector and thus were not particularly innovative. Both Cirin (2014) and Wiborg et al. (2018), however, rely exclusively on the perspectives of headteachers and fail to take into account the experiences of class teachers, parents and students. In this chapter, we include the perspectives of a wide range of actors, including teachers, governors, school staff and students, to explore the practices of one particular free school.

Social capital The day-​to-​day experiences of children and the impact of school practices on inclusion can be usefully explored using the concept of social capital, with its concern with social relations. Social capital has been described as the resources and outcomes of social networks (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2004), which may be homogenous (producing bonding social capital), heterogenous (producing bridging social capital) or connecting people with different amounts of power (producing linking social capital) (Woolcock, 1998). Different types of networks may generate different outcomes and while bridging and linking social capital is generally considered to be more desirable (Putnam, 2001), bonding social capital may also be an important resource and can act as a buffer against exclusion (Reynolds, 2007). Catts and Ozga (2005) have identified a number of possible indicators to measure social capital within schools, including relationships, contacts, and activities between schools, parents and the community and between different actors in the schools. While these present a useful strategy for mapping different networks, they do not say much about the outcomes generated by these networks. Some educational discussions about social capital have focused on outcomes of social capital in terms of school performance (Allan et al., 2009; Dika and Singh, 2002), but the benefits of social capital for more general well-​being in school is also increasingly recognised (Allan and Catts, 2012; Ferlander, 2007). In the following, we illustrate some of the strategies which the school in question used to encourage relationships, contacts and activities within the school and what the perceived outcomes of these were in relation to both educational and social inclusion. Emphasising the dynamic and contextual nature of social capital (Allan and Catts, 2014), we discuss how school practices may be developed to generate different kinds of social capital, but also outline some of the challenges encountered in doing so, considering the particular context of free schools and schools

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in England more broadly. Measuring educational and social inclusion is challenging; our response to this challenge is to utilise social capital, with its central component of relationships, to infer that inclusion was occurring when there were high levels of social capital, particularly where this social capital was of the bridging or linking variety.

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The project The school, which formed the basis for the project, opened in 2015, initially with two year groups (Year 7 and 12), but gradually increased its intake until it reached full capacity in 2019–​20. In the academic year 2017–​18, the school had a total of 718 students –​445 in Year 7, 8 and 9 (Key Stage 3) and 273 in Year 12 and 13 (sixth form). The student body of the school was diverse in terms of ethnicity, socio-​economic background and SEND status. The proportion of students with SEN support in Key Stage 3 (Year 7–​9) was 12.7%, which is in line with the city average of 12%. However, the figure for children with an EHC plan was significantly higher (7.2% compared to 1.4%). One of the key aims of the school when it was established was to be inclusive and this was fulfilled partly through the adoption of an admissions policy which admits students from four ‘nodes’. These were: an area with a mixture of private and council housing and a predominantly white population but with some ethnic diversity; an area with a large amount of nineteenth-​century housing and high numbers of people from Irish, West Indian, East African, South Asian and Pakistani communities; a working-​ class, inner-​city area, with a culturally diverse mix of people; and an inner-​ city area that is subject to urban regeneration, with a large business area, a mixture of housing and an ethnically diverse population. In addition, the school ethos and teaching practices strongly emphasise inclusion. Contrary to most secondary schools in England, students are taught in mixed-​ability classes in all subjects. This decision, taken by the applicants for the school and its first principal, was based on research evidence against setting and streaming, which has shown that while grouping children according to attainment may have some benefits for higher-​ achieving students, it disadvantages low-​achieving groups and increases inequalities between higher and lower-​ attaining groups (Francis et al., 2017; Johnston and Wildy, 2016). The school has a school day which is approximately one hour longer than normal, allowing for an extended enrichment programme. This has had some impact on teacher workload, but is seen as a key way of ensuring that pupils have the opportunity to engage with education in its broadest sense and create relationships with

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peers and teachers. The school is furthermore located in a new building, which is physically accessible and has been designed to foster social relations across year groups and backgrounds. The purpose of the project was to follow the school as it grew and to examine 1) how it prioritised, welcomed and managed the admission of children with SEND and their families; 2) how staff understood the needs of children with SEND and their families; and 3) how effectively the school provided an inclusive and equitable educational experience for children with SEND. To explore these questions, a qualitative research design with ethnographic methods was utilised.

Methodology Ethnography, as a qualitative methodological approach, has a range of definitions and interpretations. It involves the researcher participating in people’s daily lives ‘for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said –​in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995: 1). To this end, ethnographers often make use of three key methods: participant observation, field note writing and ethnographic interviewing. However, ethnography is also distinguished from other qualitative approaches by its ‘ethnographic intent’ (to document cultural behaviours in their context) and ‘ethnographic comportment’ (a critical awareness of the researcher’s own positioning and power dynamics in the field) (Harrison, 2018). The project which forms the basis for this chapter was not explicitly designed as an ethnography even though key characteristics, such as the use of interviews and observations, and the aim to explore what an inclusive culture means in the context of free schools, were set as objectives from the beginning. However, as the project evolved, some of its ethnographic elements became more prevalent, through the extensive collection of different types of qualitative data over time, which allowed us to explore inclusion from different perspectives and in context, and our increased attention to reflexivity, positionality and wider power structures. There are different views of how inclusive definitions of ethnography need to be, for example relating to the amount of time the researcher spends in the field, the extent to which they immerse themselves in the lives of the researched, and how they report their data (Harrison, 2018). The project which we report on here took place over a period of 18 months, during which time we interviewed 12 teachers, 4 senior school staff members, 3 school governors, 10 parents and 22 students (aged 12–​17). We used

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individual semi-​structured interviews with teachers, parents, school staff and governors, and group interviews based on photo-​elicitation with students. We conducted approximately 20 hours of formal observations over a period of 4 months, and spent a significant amount of time at the school on other occasions, for example attending events or waiting in reception for interviewees. Notes were taken from the observations about patterns of interaction in different school spaces (e.g. classrooms, the library, the atrium and hallways), the strategies applied by teachers in class to engage all students and support children with SEND (e.g. differentiated learning tasks and communication styles) and other practices of relevance to the research questions (e.g. behaviour management or sanctioning). As acknowledged by other ethnographic researchers (e.g. Davies, 2001), the observations helped us establish rapport with our research participants, provided a context for the interviews, and helped us explore and understand some of the more salient and subtle indicators of social interaction and inclusion. It also allowed us to reflect on some of the challenges of establishing an inclusive school culture within a general educational environment dominated by performance and standardised measures. In addition to the participant observation in classes and common areas, both researchers engaged with the school in various other capacities, including as guest presenters at seminars, as an advisor for teachers doing research, and in the case of the second author, as a governor of the school. While reflections from these interactions were not formally part of the data collection, they helped us to better understand the school context over a significant period of time and some of the dilemmas encountered when opening a new school. For example, through the second author’s role as a governor she was regularly updated on challenges in relation to inclusion of children with SEND, which we drew on to think about our data or areas for further exploration. Addressing the questions raised by participants at our presentation to school staff similarly challenged us to think about our findings in new ways. At the same time, however, we had to be reflective about the impact of these different roles on our role as researchers, by ensuring that we maintained an open approach to our data and the experiences of our participants, and were seen as external to the existing relationship dynamics at the school (for example, between teachers and management). Researchers who study children often adopt strategies that minimise their ‘adult-​ness’, which in the context of ethnographic school research may involve participating in classes on an equal footing with the students (e.g. Jørgensen, 2015). The focus of our research was to understand the school as a whole and from different perspectives, rather than seeking the views of any particular sub-​group within it. Therefore, we did not choose to adopt any particular role (e.g. amongst the students or teachers). In interviews

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and observations with the young people, we positioned ourselves as non-​ authoritative adults (Christensen, 2004; Eder and Corsaro, 1999) and in conversations with adults (teachers, senior staff, governors and parents) we took the perspective of outsiders, with some familiarity with the school, its structures and ethos. Participants for the project were recruited through various channels. Most of the school staff self-​selected by responding to an email sent through the newsletter, but a few key personnel were also contacted individually via email to ask if they would be willing to be interviewed. Parents were contacted by the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) at the school, who also facilitated contact with some of the students. The remaining students were contacted through their form tutors. All interviewees were given information about the research aims and objectives and were asked to give their consent prior to participation. For the young people, consent was provided by both themselves and their parents. General observations around the school were agreed as part of the initial decision to allow the researchers access and observations in classes were conducted with the agreement of teachers, who consented to have the researcher join their class. The data derived from the interviews and observations were collated and analysed using content and thematic analysis. Transcripts and notes were read by both researchers to identify key themes. Some of the themes were derived directly from the questions asked in the interviews (e.g. how would you describe inclusion?); others arose from the broader discussions with participants (e.g. relations and familiarity between students and teachers) and our observations (e.g. spaces for interaction). The interviews were analysed first separately within their participant groups (students, teachers, staff, governors and parents). The themes derived from this process were entered into a table, where they were revised and refined by comparing what had been said by different groups of participants and considering the observations made by the researchers. Descriptions of particular strategies or practices (e.g. enrichment, behaviour management) made by teachers, staff, governors, parents and children were joined together to provide an understanding of how these were perceived and experienced by different individuals. The data from the project centred around three key areas: social interaction and space (analysed in detail in Allan and Jørgensen, 2020), distinctions between schooling and education (Jørgensen and Allan, 2020), and inclusive strategies and practices. We discuss the last of these areas below by first analysing the key theme of inclusion as defined by our participants, highlighting social elements and the links with different kinds of social capital. This is followed by an exploration of the strategies the school used to facilitate inclusion, their perceived outcomes, and the challenges encountered in the process.

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Inclusion and social capital at the school

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All adult participants were asked about their understandings of inclusion, and in their discussion of the concept they focused on a range of issues. First, they saw inclusion as a question of access, but rather than focusing on access to a mainstream school, they discussed it in relation to access within a mainstream school to a mixed classroom and to the general curriculum. They displayed a strong rights and equality oriented narrative in discussing inclusion: Inclusion means to have everybody access everything. Individuals with different needs are within the same setting. Things are put in place so that they can access the same as everybody else at their age within that environment. So, it means being together, learning together and sharing learning with others all at the same time, rather than being separated, excluded. (Teacher) Inclusion for me personally as a teacher is broad, as every child has an equal opportunity to progress, and to develop and to enjoy, and actually every child has got a right to understand where they come from … and to develop the skills that will stand them, no matter what their background. Or what their prior attainment is. The fact is that it’s there for everyone. And I need to ensure that they can all access that. (Teacher)

This description of inclusion emphasised the importance of children ‘feel[ing] complete’ and being ‘a full member of the group’ (governor), both physically, educationally and socially, and thus moved away from the question of access to be about what happened at the school and in the classroom. Furthermore, and closely linked to the idea of being a full member of the group, there was an acceptance of diversity and seeing difference as ‘­normal.’ This reflected a more general view of society and how it should look: For me inclusion is definitely not about blurring differences and it is not so much about the message that we are all the same because we are not –​we are all unique, but we are all human beings and therefore equally valid within the space we take up physically. (Parent) I think the principle is fairly inspirational in that it requires all students to interact on a day-​to-​day basis. So, as it expands, students are able to meet and work with people who have different needs and requirements and I think that is important in life when you go forwards. (Parent)

A final element of participants’ understanding of inclusion was the view that inclusion was universal. Although the majority of the parents interviewed were parents of children with SEND, their views on inclusion was thus broader and acknowledged that SEND might just be one relevant dimension: So, it is about knowing about disability and other children’s toleration, looking at all that. It is not just inclusion for these children. It is about inclusion for the mainstream children as well. (Parent)

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The adult participants’ emphasis on the social elements of inclusion and on children’s rights and entitlement to access mixed groups, to be a full member of the groups and to work together with peers of different backgrounds can be interpreted as a commitment to the production of social capital, as the relations which were expected to form as a result were assumed to be of benefit for the students academically and socially. In particular, the participants demonstrated a strong orientation towards bridging social capital amongst students along a range of lines (not just SEND/​non-​SEND, but also in terms of ethnicity, locality and ability). Our observations of informal school spaces at break times showed a mix of grouping patterns with some groups being mixed by gender and ethnicity, and others that were more homogenous. However, our lack of knowledge of all students’ background made it difficult to assess whether these groups were also mixed in relation to other characteristics, e.g. ability, locality, religion and special educational needs, and whether bridging social capital along one dimension was perhaps combined with bonding social capital on another. In his discussion of inclusion and social capital, MacBride (2012) notes that it is relevant to consider whether social capital is predominantly understood as an instrument that benefits individuals or understood more as an indicator of social cohesion. The comments from our research participants above primarily reflect the former approach as they focus on the effects of inclusion on individual students. Some of them, however, also acknowledged the broader social outcomes of inclusive practices and linked these to the way they saw the development of society in general: The fact that the school has the nodes system and picks up children from a wide range of backgrounds is very good, because England now isn’t a white ­country. There are all sorts of skin colours and cultures and backgrounds, which is becoming the new normal. So that school is making a new normal. (Parent)

This perception of the school as an actor in the community, with a significant role to play in terms of facilitating interaction between and across different groups through inclusive practices, was reiterated in conversations with staff. However, they also emphasised that the diversity of the student body required them to develop and continuously revisit strategies to engage all students.

School strategies The admissions policy of the school, together with the practice of teaching the students in mixed-​ability classes and form groups, were seen by many of the participants as a way of facilitating social interaction and modelling the inclusive ethos of the school. The teaching strategies adopted by school

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staff were based on their understanding of inclusion as both educational and social, and the important link in their mind between the two. Teachers described ‘effective differentiation’ as one key strategy by which they ensured that all students in the class were able to follow the taught material. Many different manifestations of this were observed in the lessons. For example, in one class students were given three questions with different levels of description and analysis. They were asked to work in groups and given three different challenges: ‘1) I think I can do… 2) My teacher thinks I can do… and 3) My group thinks I can do…’ Based on this, they were asked to select one of the questions to work on in the lesson. In another class, students were similarly given different levels of tasks, and asked whether they were ‘brave’ enough to attempt a higher level. Those who did were praised for being brave and trying their best. Rather than allocating tasks to students, they were thus asked to choose themselves and encouraged to challenge themselves. Those students who were struggling were sometimes given individual attention by the teacher while the others were carrying on with their work. Students were also often asked to work in groups, provided that they could ‘work and whisper’. Some of the teachers mentioned that giving everyone a role in activities was important as this meant they could access the curriculum via diverse paths: The way our curriculum is set up is that every pupil has the opportunity to dwell into the curriculum. Someone might not be interested in PE at all, but if you give them an iPad, and ask them to be filming other people because they are interested in technology or gaming, that might be a passage way into PE in a meaningful way, which means that it is inclusive for that pupil. (Teacher)

Seating plans were used purposely to mix up students of different abilities for learning and social interaction: We try to think really carefully so that students who sit next to each other can benefit. It is not just seating some of the problematic students next to a high achiever. We try really carefully to think about that, because the goal is that they should be independent. (Teacher)

Teachers spent a great deal of time developing these strategies, but also emphasised that the key to their success was their knowledge of the s­ tudents. This latter aspect was supported in the interviews with parents, who sometimes mentioned issues encountered at the beginning of the school year, where teachers did not yet know the students. Teachers’ relationships and familiarity with the students developed over time and were described as enabling them to construct appropriate and differentiated material, consider in advance which roles to allocate to different students and develop appropriate seating plans, emphasising some of the particular outcomes of these

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networks. As far as students with special educational needs were concerned, getting to know them was considered crucial for inclusion:

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Next day you think he (student) will love the lesson, and he throws himself on the floor and is having a bad day. And you think ‘Oh no’, but it is about developing that relationship. And the fact that you can get the pupil in[to the lesson] in the first place is part of the relationship you build with pupils. (Teacher)

The enrichment programme, which the school had been able to implement due to its extended school day, was described as one way of establishing and strengthening relationships between students and teachers. At the time of the fieldwork, all students had two hours of enrichment twice a week and, unlike in other schools, this was within the school day rather than extra-​curricular. Enrichment classes involved a wide range of sports activities, languages, games, visits to external sites, cooking, music and other activities. All teachers had to be involved in enrichment and all students choose their own preferred subject for several weeks at a time. Some of the enrichment classes involved external speakers from business and industry and from the university associated with and sponsor of the school. In the course of the fieldwork we observed a local academic teaching a group of students about ancient alphabets. This session linked ancient and contemporary alphabets, and students were asked whether they knew any alphabets besides the Latin one, acknowledging their varied backgrounds. While these varied subjects and activities were seen as a way to broaden the students’ learning and cater for a wide range of interests and capabilities, they were also described as enhancing more (and different) opportunities for social interaction between students and teachers: I have been put on lots of different ones (enrichments) (and) got to know lots of students … outside their subject. (Teacher) I really feel that we are part of a family and enrichment is part of it. It builds those bonds between staff and students. That’s inclusive. (Staff)

In addition, enrichment was described as a way to generate peer interaction across groups, because they were based on common interests rather than particular classes: Enrichment –​he [student] loves that as well, because he gets the opportunity to mix with other kids. And they are really friendly. They are in an environment where they are taught values and they are part of the school and that reflects on how well they interact with [name of student] (Parent).

Student:  For me, part of the school [is] enrichment. because it can be of benefit. Interviewer:  Do you like it? Student:  You can talk to everybody and we can play with each other.

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Inclusive strategies, practised within mixed-​ability classrooms and combined with relationships formed through enrichment and other activities, can be a powerful generator of bridging social capital between students and linking social capital between students and teachers. The outcomes or resources deriving from the bridging networks fostered by these strategies were described by our participants as substantial and included learning about each other and becoming familiar with diversity, increased confidence and new experiences. The very possibility of leveraging these resources from outside individuals’ own socio-​cultural milieu (Woolcock, 2001) gives them added significance to individuals and can potentially improve their life chances (Field, 2017). Linking social capital networks are often relatively weak, but are at the same time able to provide the greatest outcomes because they connect people of different status (Hawkins and Maurer, 2010). Some of these outcomes were illustrated in the teachers’ accounts of how familiarity with the students helped them to teach inclusively. However, teachers also reported some major challenges to the full inclusion of all children in their classes, often coming from the external factors and competing priorities that had to be negotiated.

Challenges to inclusive practice The findings from the project showed that the development of practices to foster inclusion and social capital was limited by some logistical issues, located in the school, and some structural challenges, external to the school. Of key importance was the question of time, which was raised frequently by teachers and other members of staff at the school: Inclusion is very difficult to do when you’ve got a massive range and limited time. Because to do it properly you need time. In this school the biggest problem we have is the range and the time. We don’t have both, we need both, but we only have one. We have the range, but we don’t have the time. (Teacher) My biggest barrier is time. I teach every day and I don’t have time to develop strategies … if you don’t have the time to put strategies in place, then behaviour starts to get a bit … and then they have to be removed from lessons. (Teacher)

Some of the time pressures experienced by teachers were described as being related to them being new to the teaching profession and/​or the school. Many teachers, however, also noted the diverse range of students at the school and the difficulties they experienced in teaching in mixed-​ability classrooms: It leads to that kind of gulf and it is difficult because I still want to include them, but the rest of them are at such far points. Do I go back and do something simple that is going to drive nuts the other 90% of the group or do I focus on the 10%? That is a challenge. (Teacher)

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I have been taught here to plan but be versatile, because things can change in an instant. Inclusion doesn’t always go to plan. The plan doesn’t always stay the same. Vulnerable students with complex needs … can detract away from the main aims of the lesson. Depending on the needs of the class, that can determine whether an inclusive class is successful or not. (Teacher) A pupil came into school and we were told he was non-​verbal and autistic. And as a new teacher, I didn’t really know what that meant. And he came into my lesson and I didn’t know what to do. It was very difficult for a long time … The others didn’t know how to communicate with him and I couldn’t model it, because I wasn’t even sure how I could get him to learn [subject]. That was hard, really difficult. (Teacher)

While the mixed-​ability classes were generally considered favourably by participants and as a resource for generating interaction between different groups, they were also experienced as a challenge for teachers. As a consequence of the general policy of setting and streaming children in UK English secondary schools (OECD, 2012), teachers were seldom used to working in a mixed-​ability setting and many felt they needed more time and resources to ensure that their lessons were fully inclusive. However, because the school was still expanding, time was limited and new material had to be continuously developed. In addition, funding and the way resources were allocated were mentioned as an issue because the school, with a higher number of SEND than predicted, did not receive what it considered to be adequate funding to meet the pupils’ needs. While these challenges were predominantly situated within the school, some participants, including both parents and teachers, also reflected upon the way schools were being externally measured as a barrier to inclusion, due to the focus on the outcomes rather than the processes of schooling. This illustrates Wiborg et al.’s (2018) observation that (even) free schools remain subject to government accountability and assessment systems, which are inevitably distracting, forcing schools to become ‘sweatshops’ (Goodley, 2014: 99).

Freedom to include? Former UK Minister of Education, Michael Gove, heralding the introduction of free schools, proclaimed that ‘Innovation, diversity and flexibility are the heart of the free schools policy’ (House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Nov, 2010). The impetus for innovation comes from a recognition, within government, that schools have been prevented from being innovative by the bureaucratic control placed upon them. However, Wiborg et al. (2018) have argued that, in spite of their freedoms from Local Authority control, free schools have generally remained conservative, constrained by parents, Ofsted and the wider educational culture of which they are part.

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Most literature on free schools has centred on structural issues, such as location and admissions, and therefore little is known about the daily practices of the schools, how they use their freedoms, and how this is experienced by teachers, parents and students. In this chapter, we have begun to address this gap, by highlighting the endeavour of one particular free school in developing inclusive strategies and the challenges met in the process. The school at the centre of the chapter has used the freedom that comes with its status as a free school both to actively and assertively create an inclusive school and to do this by dedicating time and resources to building and strengthening relationships amongst students. We have interpreted this as an explicit attempt to develop social capital, and consider the acquired social capital to have contributed to the inclusive nature of the school. More work would be needed to explore how the described strategies and practices compare with those of other free and mainstream schools, but we suspect that the school has created capacity to work against the principles inherent in the free school reform. Enrichment activities, such as those described in the chapter, may for example, be used by schools that are not designated as free schools in their work to facilitate inclusion, although they will be more restricted with regards to the time they can spend on such activities within the standard school day. Furthermore, the challenges identified in the chapter in the form of time, financial resources and standardised assessments and evaluations are not unique to free schools, but may be experienced in different ways in free schools, most of which are relatively newly established. Wiborg et al. (2018) have identified a lack of collaboration between free schools and mainstream schools and argued that free schools tend to operate in relative isolation. More comparative research into the strategies and practices adopted by free schools and mainstream schools to facilitate social relations, inclusion and social capital could potentially bridge some of this gap by identifying common practices and challenges, and this might also help to aid a shift away from a discourse which predominantly focuses on academic rather than social outcomes of schooling. Field (2017: 77) has reminded us that developing policies for social capital is a ‘wickedly complex challenge’, yet it can make a difference to individuals’ life challenges. The investment in social capital within the school discussed in this chapter and its consistent message to the young people that relationships do matter, reinforced through its programme of enrichment activities, seems to have helped to establish an inclusive environment. Our findings do not allow for firm conclusions about the association between the various social capitals we have identified and inclusion, not least because ‘much of what is relevant to social capital is tacit and relational, defying easy measurement or classification’ (Healy et al., 2001: 43). Furthermore, the outcomes of inclusion, as we have noted, are difficult to pin down

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precisely (Allan, 2008; Goodley, 2014). Nevertheless, we can say that this school, through its explicit development of social capital, especially of the bridging variety, has planted the recognition amongst its community of students, staff and parents that relationships do indeed matter and that the ties that connect and unite them are key to their sense of belonging (Durkheim, 1993). This highlights the significance of school –​especially an inclusive one –​as a unique space-​time relationship where teachers can manage their encounters with students together in a communal setting (Korsgaard, 2019; Masschelein, 2011) and can help them to learn to be present, together, in the world.

Notes 1 Government data retrieved from https://​get-​info​rmat​ion-​scho​ols.serv​ice.gov.uk/​ Est​abli​shme​nts/​Sea​rch?tok=​8TGa9​6C8 (accessed 1 December 2021). 2 An official document for children with special educational needs that specifies their education and health and social care provision.

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Healy, T., Côté, S., Helliwell, J.F. and Field, S. (2001). The Well-​being of Nations: The Role of Human and Social Capital, Education and Skills. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development. Higham, R. (2014). Free schools in the Big Society: the motivations, aims and demography of free school proposers. Journal of Education Policy. 29, pp. 122–​139. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​02680939.2013.792017 House of Commons Hansard Debates. (2010). 15 November, www.parliament. uk/​business/​publications/​hansard/​commons/​by-​date/​commons-​hansard-​bound- ​ volumes/​(accessed 7 April 2022). Johnston, O. and Wildy, H. (2016). The effects of streaming in the secondary school on learning outcomes for Australian students –​a review of the international literature. Australian Journal of Education. 60, pp. 42–​59. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 0004944115626522 Jørgensen, C.R. (2015). Three advantages of cross-​national comparative ethnography –​methodological reflections from a study of migrants and minority ethnic youth in English and Spanish schools. Ethnography and Education. 10, pp. 1–​16. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​17457823.2014.922891 Jørgensen, C.R. and Allan, J. (2020). Education, schooling and inclusive practice at a secondary free school in England. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 41(4), pp. 507–​522. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​01425692.2020.1726171 Korsgaard, M.T. (2019). Bearing with Strangers: Arendt, Education and the Politics of Inclusion. London: Routledge. Lauchlan, F. and Greig, S. (2015). Educational inclusion in England: origins, perspectives and current directions: Inclusive Education in England. Support for Learning. 30, pp. 69–​82. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​1467-​9604.12075 MacBride, G. (2012). Commentary: social capital and inclusion: implications for Practice. In Allan, J. and Catts, R. (Eds). Social Capital, Children and Young People: Implications for Practice, Policy and Research. Bristol: Bristol University Press. pp. 99–​115. Masschelein, J. (2011). Experimentum scholae: the world once more … but not (yet) finished. Studies in Philosophy and Education. 30, pp. 529–​535. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1007/​s11217-​011-​9257-​4 Morris, R. (2014). The admissions criteria of secondary Free Schools. Oxford 409. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​03054985. Review of Education. 40, pp. 389–​ 2014.921614 Morris, R. (2015). Free Schools and disadvantaged intakes. British Educational Research Journal. 41, pp. 535–​552. https://​doi.org/​10.1002/​berj.3168 Morrow, V. (1999). Conceptualising social capital in relation to the well-​being of children and young people: a critical review. The Sociological Review. 47(4), pp. 744–​765. OECD (2012). Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools. Paris: Organisation for Economic and Co-​operative Development. Putnam, R. (2001). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Touchstone. Putnam, R. (2004). Education, diversity, social cohesion and “social capital”. Note for discussion. Meeting of OECD Education Ministers, Dublin, Ireland, 18–​19

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March, http://​adiscu​ola.it/​Pubbli​cazi​oni/​Capi​tale​Soci​ale/​put​nam%20ingl​ese.pdf (accessed 24 March 2022). Ream, R.K. and Rumberger, R.W. (2008). Student engagement, peer social capital, and school dropout among Mexican American and non-​Latino white stu139. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ dents. Sociology of Education. 81(2), pp. 109–​ 003804070808100201 Reynolds, T. (2007). Friendship networks, social capital and ethnic identity: researching the perspectives of Caribbean young people in Britain. Journal of Youth Studies.10, pp. 383–​398. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13676260701381192 Rogers, C. (2007). Experiencing an ‘inclusive’ education: parents and their children with ‘special educational needs’. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 28, pp. 55–​68. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​01425690600996659 Stanton-​Salazar, R.D. and Spina, S.U. (2005). Adolescent peer networks as a context for social and emotional support. Youth Society. 36, pp. 379–​417. Stokes, E. (2014). Free Schools, Equality and Inclusion. Birmingham: NASUWT. Tomlinson, S. (2012). The irresistible rise of the SEN industry. Oxford Review of Education. 38, pp. 267–​286. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​03054985.2012.692055 Walford, G. (2014). From city technology colleges to free schools: sponsoring new schools in England. Research Papers in Education. 29, pp. 315–​329. https://​doi. org/​10.1080/​02671522.2014.885731 Weller, S. (2010). Young people’s social capital: complex identities, dynamic networks. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 33, pp. 872–​888. West, A. (2014). Academies in England and independent schools (fristående skolor) in Sweden: policy, privatisation, access and segregation. Research Papers in Education. 29, pp. 330–​350. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​02671522.2014.885732 West, A. and Bailey, E. (2013). The development of the academies programme: ‘privatising’ school-​ based education in England 1986–​ 2013. British Journal 159. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​00071005. of Educational Studies. 61, pp. 137–​ 2013.789480 Wiborg, S., Green, F., Taylor-​Gooby, P. and Wilde, R.J. (2018). Free schools in England: ‘not unlike other schools’? Journal of Social Policy. 47, pp. 119–​137. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S004727941700023X Wilkins, C. (2015). Education reform in England: quality and equity in the performative school. International Journal of Inclusive Education. 19, pp. 1143–​1160. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13603116.2015.1044202 Woolcock, M. (1998). Social capital and economic development: toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework. Theory and Society. 27(2), pp. 151–​208. Woolcock, M. (2001). The place of social capital in understanding social and economic outcome. ISUMA Canadian Journal of Policy Research. 2(1), pp. 11–​17.

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The great education ‘permanent revolution’? Shape-​shifting academies and degrees of change (and ‘success’) Katie Blood Introduction This study examines a new academy in a marginalised Midlands town that has replaced a ‘failing’ school. It explores field-​specific conditions of existence including its power practices, cultural ethos, values and dispositions through observations and interviews with staff and working-​class students. This chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork which, in this chapter, is taken to mean ‘the study of people in naturally occurring settings or “fields” (capturing) their social meanings and ordinary activities, involving the researcher participating directly in the setting’ (Brewer, 2000: 10). I argue that ethnographic work is useful in this context of education research as an interpretive frame facilitating and addressing ‘bold critical reflection and the problems of representation and narration’ (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000: 108). The contribution of an ethnographic methodological approach lies in its ability to explore what happens when the academies agenda is enacted in the specific context of this Midlands school. The significance of this inquiry and the reflective experiences of my respondents can be found through understanding the ways in which they engage with and make sense of the academy’s ‘school effect’ or ‘institutional habitus’ (Reay et al., 2005: 35) as it replaces that of a ‘failing’ school. In terms of the ‘reception and assimilation of the specific pedagogic message’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 87) of the academy, the research explores if students reinforce or resist its realigned pedagogical structures and disciplinarian dispositions. The analysis in this chapter is framed through a Bourdieusian lens which provides a useful analytical framework in order to explore the structure-​agency dialectic which challenges a deficit model of working-​class culture and educational attainment (often couched in notions of ‘low aspiration’ without exploration of the social, cultural and economic realities of the local milieu). Bourdieu provides the tools to analyse how capital plays out through (re) production in the social world as a means to dispel the myth of meritocracy;

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that education (and the academy) has the capacity to disrupt the ‘steer’ and ‘gravity of the social field’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 370). The methodological contribution is to demonstrate how ethnographic approaches reveal the everyday lived experiences of students as they negotiate the reality of the academies agenda.

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The academies programme: ‘working miracles’? Academies, with all their overarching policy aspirations and expectations, can only operate within the contextual and situational circumstances in which they exist. The issue regarding the extent to which academies have generative and transformative impacts in terms of removing barriers to progress and facilitating positive outcomes through the accruement of capital, particularly in marginalised locales, cannot be extricated or untangled from existing structural (and historically class-​based) social and cultural patterns. Academies, therefore, are not unproblematic engines of transformation given that the policy expectations become unrealistic when they come up against a particular locality and the daily practices of situated actors. This ethnography, at the interface between the academy agenda and the Midlands town, demonstrates a more ambiguous picture through capturing the particularity of this reality. The reconfiguration of the English educational landscape constitutes a bewildering patchwork of fragmented ‘non-​ Local Authority’ academy schools defined as ‘publicly funded independent state schools’ (DfE, 2018). Academies are in principle tied together under the rubric of ‘innovation, inclusion and regeneration … being neither state nor private’ (Ball, 2008: 184, 186). The regeneration aspect was primarily associated with the City Academy scheme. In spite of this blurring of the ‘private’ and ‘public’ sectors, academies are often, arguably problematically, conceived as being ‘independent’. The process of academisation is also embedded within a wider political ‘turn to authoritarianism’ (Kulz, 2017b: 2). Authoritarianism infers an intensification of monitoring and regulation where behaviour, conduct and action are controlled through policies, practices and interventions designed to govern through conformity and the restriction of individual agency. As an incoherent entity, academies should not be treated as monolithic in their organisation or operation, but rather as a diverse system. As Morrin (2020: 223) writes, ‘there is no single realisation of schools under these conditions, there are a number of commonalities, including emphasis on “choice”, school competition and autonomy’, while academies ‘are underpinned by the notion that these structural changes are necessary,

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progressive and equitable’. The implementation of this structural reform remains ­subjective. This is important for the analysis in examining how it is specifically manifested in the Midlands academy and establishing the consequences of this on, for example, its pedagogical practices. For their proponents, the cachet of academy school status lies in the championing of this institutional autonomy and conferment of ‘freedom to shape their own destiny in the interests of parents and children’ (DfES, 2005: 24). Detractors, however, have warned of academy’s ideologically-driven neoliberal paradigm shift that is wedded to an overall strategy of ‘deregulating responsibility’ (Bourdieu, 1998) and re-​centring central government power under the guise of autonomy. The process of conversion to academy status is equally fragmented. The messy, ad-​hoc proliferation of academies includes an amalgamation of ‘the willing, the pressured, and the forced’ (Wolfe, 2012); this is an unwieldy educational settlement. However, diverse, empirical evidence suggests that academies contribute to the retrenchment of educational disparities and other i­nequities –​evidenced by some receiving warnings by the Department of Education regarding their poor performance (Bailey and Ball, 2016: 138). While the political rhetoric frames the growth of academy schools as ‘wiping the slate clean’ and setting up sites for educational success by ‘working miracles’ (Cameron, 2012) in areas of disadvantage this chapter will argue otherwise by showing how, rather than proving to be a blank slate, the composition of most academies and the social milieus in which they operate remains, significantly, the same. A salient critique arising from this issue therefore lies in how and whether aspirations, intakes and staffs’ attitudes towards the intake and their aspirations can and do substantially change through academisation. While more authoritarian forms of discipline are enacted within the walls of freshly constructed buildings in my ethnographic study of one academy, the attitudes towards pupils and the aspirations school staff for the pupils have remain relatively untouched. Since their conception, claims have been made that position academy schools as providing the structural means for upward social mobility through the boosting of educational attainment for young people from marginalised backgrounds (Gove, 2012: 6). These claims of academies operating as a silver bullet for ‘success’ have been challenged by contemporary research by the Sutton Trust (Chain Effects, 2018: 3) which indicates that ‘there continues to be a very significant variation in outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, both between and within chains’. Against this backdrop academy status alone is not a panacea for improvement as ‘there is no success specific to academies that might not also have come from straightforward increased investment in “failing” schools’ (Gorard, 2014: 14). Thus, one perception of academies is they are vanity projects representing ‘spectacle over substance’ (McInerney, 2016). Ethnographic approaches enable exploration of

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such claims through researching the everyday lived experiences of staff and students at one academy. Through my ethnography I explored the ways in which a former ‘failing’ academy cultivates and mobilises its new academy structures. I argue the academy is tethered to a wider social system and political context of neoliberal hegemony. Through the logic of meritocratic and individualised subjectivities, the academy programme is steeped in the credentials of the ‘self-​made aspirational subject’ (Kulz, 2017a: 85) through an embedded, problematic ‘character agenda’ (Morrin, 2018: 1). In this chapter I will show a neoliberal imaginary in action, and question how the predominately working-​class students navigate and make sense of this institutionalised neoliberal rationality. I also consider the extent to which their understandings are commensurate with the neoliberal hegemonic ideology produced, shaped and disseminated by their institution. The purpose of this study is to address the ‘opaque’ (West and Wolfe, 2018) nature of these institutions by providing ethnographically-produced empirical research that explores behind the academy gates. Scrutiny of academies’ ‘ambiguous power’ (Kulz, 2017a), their daily experiential realities and the overall implications of pedagogical changes at the school level has to date remained limited in its scope. I mobilise institutional habitus, defined by Reay et al. (2005: 35) as ‘an intervening variable, providing a semi-​autonomous means by which class, raced and gendered processes are played out in the lives of students’, as a conceptual tool. The specific institutional habitus of the academy and its dispositions are examined through its official policies, modes of being, cultural ethos and branding.

Mobilising Bourdieu Part of the ethnographic approach of this study is the use of Bourdieusian conceptual tools. In particular, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which refers to: ‘a system of (durable, transferable) dispositions to a certain practice, is an objective basis for regular modes of behaviour, and thus for the regularity of modes of practice…’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 77). One’s habitus is responsive to any particular field which has its own values, rules and power-​practices. A field is a ‘configuration of relations between positions objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon the occupants, agents or institutions’ (Bourdieu, 1992: 72–​3). Individualising respondents through their unique habituses enables an understanding of their individual alignment or ‘fit’ (or lack of) when encountering the academy’s dispositions. Capitals (social, economic, cultural and symbolic) steeped with meaning, involve ‘the capacity to reproduce itself, produce profits, expand and

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contains the tendency to persist’ (Bourdieu, 1986: 241–​3). These forms of capital are relational, convertible, and used to accumulate, transfer, store and conserve advantages (class and power) in order to lay claim upon the future. Respondents are therefore viewed as having unique volumes of capitals (including unique familial habituses) which work to position them uniquely within the academy. In particular, the academy in this study promotes the value of ‘raising expectations’ in its working-​class subjects. Through utilising Bourdieu’s theoretical lens, I begin with the notion that there exists within the school a shared institutional habitus that on the one hand sees value in the promotion of ‘raised aspirations’ in order to promote social mobility, and therefore on the other hand positions students as in ‘deficit’ of this quality. As I shall show throughout this chapter, the subject habituses of students are shown to manifest themselves through ‘conforming’ or ‘non-​conforming’ practices in relation to the new, authoritarian institutional habitus. This, I argue, is a calculated process, used by students to distinguish themselves from their peers through processes of self-​identification and ‘othering’ which permeate their learning. For example, those students ‘playing the game’ view their dispositional alignment and compliance as neoliberal subjects as necessary for achieving personal advancement and successful outcomes. In doing so, they justify, legitimate and internalise any future successes through the concept of a meritocratic system and the values espoused by the academy. I argue that, under such a normalised valorisation of neoliberalism, the consequence of this relationship between their reality and their aspirations can be ‘an extremely powerful form of symbolic violence for young working-​class people’ as they feel individually responsible for their learning and, in many cases, their failure to become educationally successful subjects (Reay, 2012: 36, 43 and 44). If there is a case where a working-​class student’s aspirations are not met, then they are at risk of entering a relationship of ‘cruel optimism’ where working-​class students act and regard themselves as responsibilised neoliberal subjects within a depoliticised landscape; they subsequently only have themselves to blame when they cannot meet the aspirations promoted by the academy (Berlant, 2011).

The study: beyond the academy gates The study was conducted between 2011 and 2012, one year after the academy had opened after converting from a ‘failing’ comprehensive. Qualitative data was collected through participant observations and in-​depth interviews with ten students and three key members of staff at the academy including the Principal, Head of Year 11 and the Advice, Information and Guidance (AIG) Leader. I included the member of staff responsible for the provision

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of career advice, as this was an important element in the framing students’ imagined trajectories. Participant observations of the students took place over six months and interviews were conducted on topics including their experiences and opinions regarding the academy, the town and their imagined futures. My own position as a researcher within this study draws on multiple prior and present experiences. I have conducted postgraduate educational research into intervention and inclusion policies, while I have also worked as an Aim Higher mentor in marginalised communities. Each of these roles was conceptualised as promoting social justice. It was my intention to explore a new academy set in a marginalised setting I had prior knowledge of in order to investigate the political claims that academies raise aspirations and facilitate social mobility in economically deprived contexts. In order to gain access, I formally approached the Principal while I was affiliated to my university’s education and social justice research department. I was very knowledgeable about the area as I had grown up there; thus, I was also aware of the previous ‘failing’ school and the new academy, although I had no previous personal involvement with the institution. The school was brought to my attention when it was a ‘failing’ comprehensive and discussions were ongoing regarding its potential academisation. The academy is now owned and operated by a charitable trust and a new school was built on the site of the former comprehensive. Its intake includes 800 students between the ages of 11 and 16 years and these students are predominately white and from working-​class backgrounds. A local anti-​academy alliance group and others in the community conducted an unsuccessful media campaign against the school’s academisation, arguing that the project was ‘too political’ in the local newspaper. A central cause for protest centred around the funding disparities between the town’s schools, with a neighbouring school having its much-​needed Building Schools for the Future funds revoked. I was informed by the other school’s Principal that this cut in funding had reduced them to ‘squirrelling money away’, while inordinate levels of investment were being spent on the new academy. The academy was equipped with a swimming pool, gym, theatre, IT and conference suites, new science labs and licensed bar and catering services, which were all available to hire. The academy conversion went ahead despite local agitation. Students noted the stark structural and aesthetic contrast between what was described by the Principal as the previous ‘hideous’ school and the new academy. It was, according to 15-​year-​old student Joe, transformed from an ‘old place which was falling apart!’ to a ‘wicked’ (as in ‘really good’) modernised academy. The significance of these multiple changes contributes to the school’s evolving ‘institutional habitus’ (Reay et al., 2005: 25), or, as Bourdieu would refer to

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them, ‘transposable dispositions’ (1977: 82) by accruing capital to enhance educational opportunities. Drawing on a larger data set, the analysis within this chapter draws on ethnographic research undertaken with ten students in Years 10 and 11 as well as interviews with three senior staff members. These students had the unique position of experiencing the transition of a school placed into special measures after a failing 2008 Ofsted inspection report to becoming a modern academy that, according to its website, was ‘established to bring together the worlds of business, industry and education’. In terms of students’ decision-​making processes about the future, they were the first cohort to experience the in-​house Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) provision that replaced the national and external Connexions Service provision offering holistic and pastoral support and advice to young people aged 13 to 19. While not unproblematic in its socially decontextualised focus on success as an individualised phenomenon that can be learned, the Connexions Service did set out to provide support and guidance for all young people (DfEE, 2000). This change is significant because it has direct consequences for the quantity and quality of career guidance and in turn impacts the framing of students’ expectations and aspirations. The student respondents, all given pseudonyms for the purpose of this study, were drawn from an initial focus group, which then proceeded to in-​depth interviews conducted in private meeting rooms and the Principal’s office, as well as observations made throughout the academic year. Interviews with senior members of staff including the Principal, Head of Year, and IAG Leader provided formalised knowledge and nuanced, explanatory accounts of the running and ethos of the academy. The data set was examined through a narrative method and referred to definitions of ‘success’ in the academy and in student responses. Bourdieu’s conceptual tools help to identify the ways in which the respondents’ dispositions and their existing capital (for example, students’ positive familial habituses) remain dominant in the process of securing positive outcomes. For example, the capital accrued by the academy alone is not sufficient, which renders claims they are ‘working miracles’ problematic. Bourdieu is mobilised to draw out the meaning behind the ambiguities and incongruities of the institutional and individual responses.

Family ties and social capital The focus on student ‘aspirations’ was a key component to this study. The decision-​making processes of the students in my research are commonly narrated through aspirational ‘dreams of social flying’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 370);

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however, their narratives also reveal the knotty navigation of an economically deprived social context. The importance of this ethnographic work lies in it showing how policy expectations become unrealistic when they come up against a particular locality and the reality of the local context. According to the Social Mobility & Child Poverty Commission’s Social Mobility Index (2017), the Midlands town where the academy is situated is identified as a ‘social mobility cold-​spot’, meaning: ‘(the area) performs badly on both educational measures and adulthood outcomes, giving young people from less advantaged backgrounds limited opportunities to get on’ (2017: 5). This marginalised and self-​contained setting is problematically marked in wider discourses as ‘left behind’. As such, the town ‘may have low levels of financial and social capital, assets and capacity; low levels of social mobility and connectivity, skills and investment; few places to meet and poor connectivity … may suffer from high levels of deprivation and unemployment, ill health and poverty. Together, these factors hold back (the town’s) potential –​and the potential of the people who live there –​ for economic and social productivity’ (Gregory, 2021: 6). According to the 2011 census, 27% of residents in this Midlands town had no qualifications and only 8% held a first degree or further education. The town does not have a university although it is in commutable distance to universities in neighbouring cities. In considering the nexus between social capital and a small-​town habitus, ‘the volume of the social capital possessed by a given agent thus depends on the size of the network of connections he can effectively mobilise and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whom he is connected’ (Bourdieu, [1986] 2002: 286). The significance of localised manifestations of class for ‘small town’ students therefore lies in confinement, which constrains one’s capacity in ‘capital building’ given a limited cultural infrastructure and local opportunities exacerbated by de-​industrialisation, precariousness and austerity (Murphy, 2018). Thus, the class and spatially based constrictions that structure the parameters of opportunities, possibilities and horizons for action in terms of work, training and education available within the town fall within a mainly a low-​pay, service sector economy. The staff at the academy, nevertheless, held their own perspectives regarding what does or does not constitute inhibiting social factors. The forecast from the academy’s institutional figures regarding students’ potential futures is ambiguous, As the IAG Leader expressed: ‘I think do whatever you want to do. I don’t think the restrictions are there … the only barriers are the ones they [students] put up themselves.’ While the IAG Leader feels that this open and free imaginary is possible for any student to adopt, the Principal contradicts this by stating the middle-​class advantage is ‘unbeatable’:

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It’s quite a parochial place … it is almost impossible to compete with the middle-​classes … [students] just can’t compete on a social basis … [but] I don’t think a working-​class back ground is an issue [in ‘successful’ outcomes] it’s the sub-​working-​class backgrounds where their parents don’t work. I think that’s a barrier. For me personally, I think you have people who want to work and who will succeed and people who don’t … we have very different social norms don’t we? … for some of our pupils home is incredibly chaotic and there’s no control at home…

She disaggregates the school’s working-​class population and, in doing so, offers individualistic moralistic accounts through the coded language of the ‘sub-​working class’ rather than structural inequalities. Yet, contradictory to this, she also points to the structural advantage of the middle classes. Students do not have the ‘right’ capitals; their working-​class social and economic capital is regarded as a barrier to university education no matter what the school does. In the study however, two working-​class students in my sample showed how their aspirations and even capitals were not ‘limited’ in the way the academy official lines assume. Rachael and Joe drew on the social capital of their relatives to envision attending university. I spoke to 16-​year-​old student Rachael; she enjoyed learning, which was underlined by her studiousness. She also demonstrated a desire to study abroad. Besides her aunt, Rachael would be the only person in her family to attend university. While in many ways Rachael could be described as a hard-​working and conscientious student, she did demonstrate a lack of certainty and concern regarding how her academic self-​identity fits with her less-​studious peers. She remained focused however, and drew on her aunt’s encouragement and approval outside of school. Her university graduate aunt was shown to be a positive role model, and her approval was important to Rachael. Rachael had strategically sought out this extended family member who she feels shared her more ‘academic’ disposition. Here Rachael’s aspiration to go to university is validated, giving her confidence in this pursuit. For Rachael, as a university aspirant working-​class student, knowledge regarding university imparted by family members lies not only in practical assistance, but plays an affirmative role in largely building her self-​confidence and giving her positive reassurance. Despite some issues with confidence, Rachael displayed imaginative horizons and openness to ‘social flying’ in seeking to ‘see the world’ and attend university outside of England. Importantly here Rachael is articulating her university aspirations through a closeness to her aunt, the social capital accessed through this relationship and a distance from her school peers. This both reaffirms and contradicts the IAG Leader’s statement. Fifteen-​ year-​ old Joe also aspired to attend university. He wished to become a policeman, and when asked for any particular reason he might

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have this ambition he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He could well be described as ‘the (polite and softly-​spoken) ordinary boy who, by virtue of [his] very ordinariness, seldom features in youth studies … not in immediate risk of exclusion … [his] narratives are not represented in the “masculinity” literature and they are certainly not in the sub-​cultural youth studies’ (Ball et al., 2000: 93). In the interview, Joe found it necessary to draw attention to his dad’s views on higher education: ‘my dad says university is a waste of money’. Despite his dad’s belief that university is ‘a waste of money’, Joe’s older brother who attends university functions as a positive role model for him. Joe has also become familiar with the university he hopes to attend, and the courses offered there through his work experience. These factors have enabled Joe to see himself ‘fitting in’ there and this has kept his personal goal of university on track. These students articulate their aspirations through relationships with their family members, rather than an explicit consideration of the academy. Both Rachael and Joe have narrated the usefulness and confidence instilled through social connections of relatives who have been to university and share knowledge with them about university. Their capital is accrued from their relative’s experiences, which complicates and at times contradicts the notion that the working-​class students, and their families, are ‘not aspirational’ and place no value on educational outcomes.

‘Deficit’ towns The working-​class student narratives were weighed down with a negative localism, whereby students articulated the perceived need to escape their geographical placement to access ‘success’. It gave them a palpable sense of having to ‘get out’ in order to ‘get on’ (Reay and Lucey, 2003: 424). The town was described through deficit: It wouldn’t bother me if I left … I think in [the town] you can be quite restricted … meeting new people … I like the idea of that… (Emily, 16) … [as a vet] I’d like to travel as well. I’d like to specialise in parrots or orangutans, it’s a bit different but if I did specialise in orangutans I could do six months in Borneo and if I specialised in parrots it would take me to the Amazon as well… (Zara, 16)

The desire of these working-​class students to ‘socially fly’ would not suggest a ‘lack’ of aspiration in terms of social and geographical mobility; however, a common narrative amongst students showed that such aspirations

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were framed with risk rather than certainty, primarily due to their social positioning and consequential lack of economic and social capital. Social flying would force them away from their locality, family and social connections geographically. The problematic everyday consequences of student mobilities and belonging –​including the affective and sensory elements as elucidated by Finn and Holton (2019) –​adds weight to the Sutton Trust’s report findings indicating that ‘social class is a key factor which drives the mobility choices of young people, with disadvantaged students less likely to leave home and travel further’ (Donnelly and Gamsu, 2018: 4). The bringing together of aspiration and neoliberal ideology further oppresses working-​class students in this context; as Kulz (2017a: 92) writes, ‘dreams of mobility are not only mythical because they contain visions of a future never to come for the vast majority of students, but because they present the ideology of neoliberal education reform as the only way to pursue these mythological futures’. Students and staff spoke of the complexities of having aspirations in this context, identifying a link between the spectre of debt and the tempering of mobilities and aspirations. The possibility of higher education was framed with economic risks and anxieties. As 15-​year-​old Daniel remarked, ‘what’s the point in going to university and getting into all that debt just to do the same job as everyone else?’ There was a realisation and consensus for all respondents regarding the challenging local employment opportunities whereby moving away from the town was necessary in order to find work. KB:  What are the main issues and potential barriers facing students from the academy in this town with regard to entering higher education? Principal:  It’s cost … that’s the barrier. They don’t see the point in going [to university] if they are going to rack up so much debt. And there are no jobs for them at the end of the day after their degree … that I would say is the single biggest barrier. Student debt was found to prohibit notions of aspiration and discourage students from attending university. As the Principal notes, taking on this financial risk would not necessarily ensure that students could find a job in the local area, as there were few jobs available in the vicinity. Here there seems to be an alignment between the ‘institutional habitus’ and that of the students, as the young people perceive barriers to their entry to university. While the students’ perceptions seem also to be shaped by the economic and material realities of their lives, the Principal here claims it is rather the perception, and not the economic reality, that is the biggest barrier, bringing them out of alignment again.

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Building risky business Policy changes come to shape the school environment and staff and student subjectivities. The impact of the academy’s agenda upon a particular space and the organisation of the everyday could be read in an assumptive and unproblematic way. As shown so far, this can impact in differential ways. This section explores the features of the building within a ‘frame of neoliberalisation’ and, in drawing on existing literature, identifies how such new-​ build educational settings produce space that can be ‘interpreted as spatial expressions of policy-​makers and others’ perception of teaching and learning; in ideological terms, they also trumpet a “new lifestyle” and “art of living” for staff and students…’ (Smith, 2017: 1). The respondents’ subjective responses to their new-​build environment and my own position within it is therefore examined. The new aesthetically pleasing modern building is open-​plan, high-​ceilinged, airy with sweeping glass around the building. It features stark, blank walls that created a capacious albeit sterile and utilitarian environment. For some students it was a building which, regardless of its ‘really good facilities’, nevertheless ‘lacked character’. Students moved around sensibly and dutifully in an orderly fashion without the confines of narrow corridors. With the exception of a few chairs placed near reception for students and visitors, there was little room to congregate. The lack of a staffroom for teachers and additional staff offered little space for them to meet communally and informally. Beyond the structural and aesthetic changes of the academy, I was informed there had been a 33% turnover of staff as part of a drive to tackle ‘inadequate performance’. The Principal described her adherence to the values of autonomy, although these were suffused with risk and fear: [we’re just] ignoring the wider policy issues … Personally I enjoy the freedom to be an academy. We only have to run Maths, English and Science off the national curriculum. We have a business working day here, a five-​term year, all staff have a dress code, I can ignore almost any initiative which comes through. I have the freedom, but with that comes the accountability. If anything goes wrong I’m for the high jump –​there’s nowhere to hide, but I don’t think I would ever go back to working for the Local Authority.

This high-​risk ‘business’ environment suggests, as Apple (2012: preface) posits, ‘we are witnessing a remarkable business offensive, one in which our education system is slowly being more and more drawn into the ideological orbit of the corporation and its needs’. Apple regards this as ‘a mechanistic process where the external pressures from an economy or the state inexorably mould schools and the students within them’ (2012: 24). The running of the academy as described by the Principal echoes the language of a business

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CEO (and is founded in the significant growth of Multi-​Academy Trusts as outlined in the Ryan-​Atkins and Rowley chapter of this collection) and offers an account of a pressurised ‘sink or swim’ operation whereby job security is performance driven and at the discretion of central government. Thereby, in reality, centralised power renders the liberatory concept of academies a red herring. The academy as part of a Multi-​Academy Trust is still subject to performativity mechanisms which operate within a centralised system, including being part of examination results league tables and subject to Ofsted inspections and reports. Academies can and do fall prey to ‘intensive micro-​management of space, time, and social relations (highlighting) neoliberalism’s contradictory promise: this hands-​off approach promises autonomy, yet hands and (eyes and ears) are everywhere.’ (Kulz, 2014: np). Thus, ‘neoliberalism should not therefore be identified with laissez-​faire, but rather with permanent vigilance, activity, and intervention’ (Foucault, 2008: 131–​2). In line with the authoritarian built environment, as part of the school’s vision, the strict uniform policy was a further way in which the school ethos became embedded and embodied. As their website explains, ‘founded on business principles, a smart appearance is essential to our ethos’. Students are required to wear a black blazer or tailored jacket, an academy tie and only a minimum number of respectable pieces of jewellery such as stud earrings can be worn. Responses from staff and students towards the new academy status, building, uniform policy as part of a wider disciplinarian pedological structure and ethos were mixed in terms of their impact and very much viewed in contrast to the old ‘failing’ school. Uniform changes and a sense of pride were generally linked to the accruement of cultural capital. …people are the same they’re just in another uniform … but it does give you a good bit of self respect … because if you’re in a nice clean uniform, in a nice clean school, then it’s what you learn to expect really … pride in yourself. (Rachael, 16)

While she admits people are the ‘same’ inside of their new uniform, Rachael feels the cleanliness of uniform and the school is connected with generating pride in the self. Sarah also connects the change in uniform to feelings of seriousness and importance, even if she finds some of the rules silly: You could [at the old school] get away with murder … stroll up in your jeans and no-​one would say anything to you … [here at the academy] some rules like wearing particular coloured socks are a bit stupid! (laughs) … it is more strict but in the right way … it seems more serious and important. (Sarah, 15)

Joe studied sports science and focused on sporting activities, which he derives pleasure from. He has a desire to join the police, which in some

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ways demonstrates an easy respect for authority and a liking for a safe, well-​organised hierarchical ‘world within a world’ (Ball et al., 2000: 94). The new disciplinarian structures of the academy would seem to complement and culturally match that of Joe’s disposition, and potential career destination, increasing the likelihood of a successful outcome. Joe did admit the longer days at the academy, running from 8:30am–​5:00pm, had taken some getting used to. KB:  And what does the new academy mean to you? Joe:  People respect more … Behaviour has improved … like people have more respect towards the teachers. The uniform makes a massive difference as well. I’m more proud to come here because the other school had a bad reputation and if you were out and they [children from other schools] saw your uniform you’d get teased for being there, but it’s not like that now. Fifteen-​year-​old Sarah spoke of her aspirations to become a chef with a kitchen managerial role. This chosen vocational pathway requires years of training and Sarah hoped this route would provide some form of stability at the end of her training. Sarah noted the provision of extra lessons from the academy would arguably give her more credentials in the long term, but also noted the new strictness with which academy rules were applied. A vocational college in a neighbouring city she wishes to attend is also regarded by Sarah as being more aligned with her own disposition and her desire for more agency. Sarah feels the vocational college will provide her with more freedom and autonomy in terms of how she will be treated compared to the new ‘strict’ academy, even if she appreciates this strictness in some regards. Even in my own positionality as a researcher I felt this management. Like all members of staff, I adhered to the same codes of conduct through which they were governed. I followed the dress code that permitted wearing only formal, dark-​coloured flat-​heeled footwear. I also wore the lanyard identification badge, signed in and out of the site and was monitored by the school’s CCTV systems. This created a regulated and regimented environment which could feel limiting and repressive and also instituted a lack of individuality. I was supervised and ushered straight into classrooms and meeting rooms to conduct interviews by the school’s receptionists once they had notified relevant staff of my presence. Thus, rather than having free rein to walk around the site, my access was carefully managed and controlled by staff who served as gatekeepers. This approach was taken by senior staff in particular to allow them an element of control and containment over the research in order to present the most favourable impression and optics of the school. These parameters attempted to create a choreographed and circumscribed investigation at the behest of the school, which did not provide

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opportunity to gain a fuller picture –​including any additional and unanticipated knowledge through serendipity. This spatial control has implications for ethnographic methodologies, as only a partial and strategically crafted view of the academy was allowed given the gatekeepers’ levels of control and desire to provide a positive image. Student respondents brought to my attention the fact that other students objected to the academy’s disciplinarian dispositions to the extent that it impacted on their attendance. Although I was unable to interview such students, it was reported to me that this new regime had manifested in non-​ attendance. Subjectivities can consequently be ‘torn by contradiction and internal division, generating suffering’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 160); this condition may well impede success. Bourdieu (1977: 87) continues on this theme when he states ‘where dispositions encounter conditions (including fields) different from those in which they were constructed and assembled, there is a “dialectical confrontation” between habitus as structured structure, and objective structures’. If I had the opportunity to gain access to those students, this would have added a new dimension to the research. Ball et al. (2012: 116) describe the symbolic relevance of greater discipline: …clothing, appearance and comportment are tied into the need to circulate messages about ethos and ‘tone’. A tightly monitored uniform policy signals to parents and the local community that the school is orderly, in control and is serious about (a version of) discipline.

The responses by the students to the new formal, disciplinarian institutional habitus, including the new uniform policy, signalled a new ‘pride’ and ‘respect’ from this new form of embodied cultural capital and educational identity. This disciplinarian approach sees the academy ‘cultivating compliance through a belief in the aspirational subject capable of transcending social structures’ (Kulz, 2017a: 85). Student responses were to some extent heterogeneous too; their agentic choices include ‘resistance, compliance and pragmatism’ (Connell et al., 1982: 92), which identifies students as more than passive beings in an era of a ‘character agenda’ which I now explore.

The ‘Darwinian world’ of academies? After examining the aspirations, behaviour and discipline instated by the academy, and the extent to which these were apparent in the narratives of students, in this section I make clear how and why the academy seeks to create particular kinds of students by promoting these dispositions. Drawing on theories of neoliberal meritocratic hegemony, Littler (2018: 3) describes how meritocracy is pitted against hierarchy, explaining how ‘the first

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problem with the contemporary meaning of meritocracy is that it endorses a competitive, linear, hierarchical system in which by definition certain people must be left behind’. The logic of neoliberal hegemonic thought has arguably brought about an ‘ideological displacement’ regarding structural conditions, whereby they are imagined as ‘individual behaviours’ (Dowling and Harvie, 2014: 872). ‘Getting on’ is indeed viewed as an individual project of self-​made advancement, born out of having the appropriate character. As former Secretary of State for Education Damian Hinds relates, ‘Character and resilience in people. These are the qualities, the inner resources, that we call on to get us through … learning ways to cope with whatever the task in hand is and it calls for bravery, gumption …’ (Hinds, 2019: np). The teaching of character is however ‘part of the process of the socio-​ cultural reproduction of inequality and dominance’ (Morrin, 2018: 1). In terms of individual responsibility, while acknowledging the limitations of the town in regard to future opportunities, the narratives of some staff and student respondents point towards and placed in the foreground an assumption of agency and the potential for any individual to freely control their trajectory. The language of respondents is framed by personal endeavour and hard work: individual pursuits achieve individual successes. In engaging in competitive individualism, the participants are becoming entangled in neoliberal rationalities, philosophies and policy reform. Personal success is trumpeted, while wider structural factors that might constrain the decision-​making processes or orientations of students are effectively downplayed. Consequently, hierarchical positionings against one another are accepted through the ‘personal responsibility’ agenda. As illustrated by 16-​year-​old student Zara: ‘My decision making … it’s mainly personal, I’m not stupid … I work extremely hard to get where I want to be.’ The neoliberal self is also evoked by 16-​year-​ old Emily who wishes to follow her mother and pursue a career in nursing: KB:  Who (if anyone) helps you with your decision-​making? Emily:  …an academy is seen as a higher status, but at the end of the day it’s more down to you … your skills … it’s more down to the person than the school… Students at the academy did repeat and reiterate the implicit narratives, normative learnings and overarching philosophy of individual ‘responsibilitisation’ (Ball et al., 2000: 115). Individualising concepts of personal responsibility, while pre-​dating academisation, are nevertheless more deeply and aggressively embedded. In this academy it is endorsed and projected by the staff and students rather than any notion of inclusiveness and c­ ollegiality. Thus, their ties are to common institutions and symbols, but not necessarily to each other:

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KB:  Who (if anyone) helps you with your decision-​making? Joe:  I rely on myself with my decisions because your friends aren’t always going to be there. You’re not going to get anywhere in life if you rely on others… Through an adopted neoliberal subjectivity, students relayed markers of their own ‘human capital’. This included, for example, personal characteristics and traits that made them successful and highlighted their own resourcefulness or showed that they were responsible. They also singled out those who they perceived to be disenfranchised or unmotivated in an attempt to reaffirm their own merits by contrast. Human capital and character are used to ‘distinguish oneself from fellow competitors. Here the relative performance is an important feature. Distinction from others is what creates advantage … students shape their own credentials’ (Tholen, 2013: 279). Emily distinguishes herself from other students she perceives as having no ‘drive or ambition’ and being ‘naïve’. Therefore, structural problems feature ‘as obstacles to be overcome through personal merit and sheer determination’, where everyone is deemed ‘culpable and responsible for their own fate’ (Raisborough et al., 2013, emphasis in original). I finish this section with an example of such a narrative from Emily: KB:  Are most people in Year 11 applying to the Sixth form Academy? Emily:  Most people have. Some have applied to courses at colleges. Some have taken the easy way out … some haven’t even thought about sixth form. They’re naive to how hard A levels can be. Some hardly get Cs at GCSE and they’ve chosen hard A levels like Chemistry or Biology. They’re difficult ones. If they don’t have the responsibility to take care of their grades now, then how are they going to there? There’s one person who wants to be a vet, but she’s never going to get there. She never comes to school because she doesn’t like being told what to do. She’s got no drive or ambition.

Conclusion This research has highlighted the ambiguities and incongruities of the academy programme by exploring how, for both staff and students, their particular new academy was regarded as being conducive to positive educational experiences. A large part of this was attributed to having a new, modern physical working environment equipped with numerous amenities which benefitted all as a form of capital. Nevertheless, the significance of the students’ existing familial habitus and consequential social capital remained

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primarily formative regarding their dispositions towards the academy and defined the contours of their aspirations. Academisation in and of itself has not changed certain key aspects of aspiration and social reproduction. The defining features of the town have remained in place given its relatively stable social and economic settlement and students often remained cognisant of their position in a hierarchical society and pragmatically acknowledged the boundaries of local possibilities. Their decision-​making processes regarding whether to enter higher education and leave the town were infused with economic anxieties and the likelihood of (graduate) employment. Under these circumstances academies do not advance social justice and facilitate ‘equalisations of opportunity’ (Lawler et al., 2018: 6); neoliberalism which characterises the academy school agenda is not ‘the rising tide to raise all boats’ (Willetts, 2011). An academy, which must be viewed in the context of the particular economic realities of its social milieu, is not an automatic pipeline to ‘glittering prizes’ connoting ‘success’ for all. Mobility was framed as an individual pursuit and privatised responsibility, where a level playing field is assumed whereby talent will out. Such meritocratic ideology as espoused by staff and students does not dispense with distinctions, but merely entrenches and encodes them in a harsher form. The continual emphasis placed upon the myth of social mobility (Savage et al., 2015) needs to be challenged by having an education system whereby we can rise together. Indeed, one must question the extent to which the current fragmented education system is in any way an instrument of transformation or rather ‘one of the most effective means of perpetuating the existing social pattern’ (Bourdieu, 1974: 32). This chapter has explored the ways in which an academy is run essentially through an institutional ‘neoliberal imaginary’ (Ball, 2012). The combination of aspirational, meritocratic discourses and authoritarian modes of governance promoted within the academies programme corresponds to the more explicitly authoritarian turn we are currently seeing in English p ­ olitics. Thus, Bruff (2013: 113) argues ‘we are witnessing the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, which is rooted in the reconfiguring of the state into a less democratic entity through constitutional and legal changes that seek to insulate it from social and political challenges’. At present, while students in marginalised settings can and do hold aspirations for their future, precariousness still continues to define the overall future imaginaries for working-​ class students and the academy agenda as a whole. The extent to which students took on or negotiated with the ‘neoliberal institutional habitus’ were varied but this chapter raises concerns about how structural issues cannot be solved at the level of the individual. More clarity, transparency and scrutiny of academies through ethnographic research is also necessary; this must not be filtered through an authoritarian disciplinary model, as was put upon the students, and myself, during the research.

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References Alvesson, M. and Skoldberg, K. (2000). Reflective Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research (3rd ed). London: Sage. Apple, M. (2012). Education and Power (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Bailey, P. and Ball, S.J. (2016). The coalition government, the general election, and the policy rachet in education: a reflection on the “ghosts” of policy past, present and yet to come. In Bochel, H. and Powell, M. (Eds). The Coalition Government and Social Policy: Restructuring the Welfare State. Bristol: Policy Press. pp. 125–​149. Ball, S.J. (2008). The Education Debate. Bristol: The Policy Press. Ball, S.J. (2012). Global Education Inc.: A Critical and Post-​Structural Approach. Buckingham: McGraw-​Hill Education. Ball, S.J., Maguire, M. and Macrae, S. (2000). Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-​16: New Youth, New Economies in the Global City. Abingdon: Routledge. Ball, S.J., Maguire, M. and Braun, A. (2012). How Schools do Policy: Policy Enactments in Secondary Schools. London: Routledge. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1974). The school as a conservative force: scholastic and cultural inequalities. In Eggleston, J. (Ed.). Contemporary Research in the Sociology of Education. London: Methuen. pp. 32–​46. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. ([1986] 2002). The forms of capital. Readings in Economic Sociology. 64(2), pp. 344–​364. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1992) The Rules of Art. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1998) The essence of neoliberalism, Le Monde diplomatique, https://​ mon​dedi​plo.com/​1998/​12/​08b​ourd​ieu (accessed December 1998). Bourdieu, P. ([1997] 2000). Pascalian Meditations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brewer, J.D. (2000). Ethnography. Buckingham: Open University Press. Bruff, I. (2013). The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society. 26(1), pp. 113–​129. Cameron, D. (2012). Speech to the Scottish Conservatives, Dumfries, www.­ scottishconservatives.com/​ 2 012/​ 0 4/​ d avid-​ c ameron-​ s peechto-​ s cottish-​ conservative-​in-​dumfries/​ (accessed 9 May 2017). Connell, R.W., Ashenden, D.J., Kessler, S. and Dowsett, G.W. (1982). Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Sydney: George Allen & Urwin Australia Pty Ltd. Department for Education and Employment. (DfEE). (2000). Connexions: The Best Start in Life for Every Young Person. London: DfEE, www.connexions.gov.uk/​ strategy.htm (accessed December 2020).

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McInerney, L. (2016). This academies plan doesn’t address schools’ real problems, The Guardian, 16 March. Morrin, K. (2018). Tensions in teaching character: how the ‘entrepreneurial character’ is reproduced, ‘refused’ and negotiated in an English academy school. Sociological Research Online. 23(2), pp. 1–​18. Morrin, K. (2020). Critical and ‘connected’ ethnography: the case of an entrepreneurial academy. In Delamont, S. and Ward, M. (Eds). Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education. Cheltenham: Elgar. pp. 223–​233. Murphy, S. (2018). “More charity shops than anything else”: ‘town’ typifies UK’s high street woes, The Guardian, 9 November. National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). (2015). Evidence for Excellence in Education: A Guide to the Evidence on Academies, www.nfer. ac.uk/​publications/​IMPB02/​IMPB02.pdf (accessed December 2020). Raisborough, J., Frith, H. and Klein, O. (2013). Media and class-​making: what lessons are learnt when a celebrity chav dies? British Sociological Journal. 47(2), pp. 251–​266. Reay, D. (2012). ‘We never get a fair chance’: working-​class experiences of education in the twenty-​first century. In Atkinson, W., Roberts, S. and Savage, M. (Eds). Class Inequality in Austerity Britain: Power, Difference and Suffering. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 33–​50. Reay, D., David, M. E. and Ball, S. (2005). Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education. London: Institute of Education Press. Reay, D. and Lucey, H. (2003). The limits of ‘choice’: children and inner city schooling. Sociology. 37(1), pp. 121–​142. Savage, M., Cunningham, N., Devine, F., Freeman, S., Laurison, D., McKenzie, L., Miles, A., Snee, H. and Wakling, P. (2015). Social Class in the 21st Century. London: Pelican. Smith, R. (2017). Building colleges for the future: pedagogical and ideological spaces. Journal of Education Policy. 32(6), pp. 855–​870. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 02680​939.2017.1310​301. Social Mobility Commission. (2017). State of the Nation: Social Mobility in Great Britain, http://​ass​ets.pub​lish​ing.serv​ice.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​uplo​ads/​sys​tem/​uplo​ ads/​atta​chme​nt_​d​ata/​file/​662​744/​State_​of_​t​he_​N​atio​n_​20​17_​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​-​_​Socia​l_​Mo​bili​ty_​ i​n_​Gr​eat_​Brit​ain.pdf (accessed December 2020). Tholen, G. (2013). The social construction of competition for graduate jobs: a comparison between Great Britain and the Netherlands. Sociology. 47(2), pp. 267–​283. West, A. and Wolfe, D. (2018). Academies, the School System in England and a Vision for the Future, www.lse.ac.uk/​social-​policy/​Assets/​Documents/​PDF/​ Research-​reports/​Academies-​Vision-​Report.pdf (accessed December 2020). Willetts, D. (2011). Oral statement to parliament: Universities UK Spring Conference 2011, www.gov.uk/​government/​speeches/​universities-​uk-​spring-​conference-​2011 (accessed December 2020). Wolfe, D. (2012). ‘Picking up the pieces’, conference, November 2012, London.

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What ‘these kids’ need: discipline, misrecognition and resistance in an English academy school Sarah Leaney The head teacher came out into the playground. ‘Oh look’ Tracey said, ‘here comes Hitler’. I laughed, ‘Have you met him?’ I asked. She said, ‘Yeah he’s alright actually, to the parents, don’t know what he’s like with the kids though, strict, but then that’s what they need’. (Sarah’s field notes, March 2014)

Introduction Processes of marketisation have fundamentally reshaped England’s state education both in terms of access and ethos. This chapter locates the pedagogic practices of a primary academy school on an English council estate within neoliberal logics, where dominant discourses of responsibilisation and choice (Burgess et al., 2011) are mediated through localised constructions of community provision (Bhattacharya, 2013). Drawing upon 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on a council estate between 2013–​and 2014, the chapter explores the reformation of educational provision on The Estate through processes of academisation, outlining an analysis of Estate Primary, which was closed following its ‘failing’ status and reopened as an academy in 2013. The academies programme, first introduced in 2002, aimed to replace schools in England located in areas of high socio-​economic disadvantage with new schools independent of local government control and managed by charitable companies and governing bodies established by sponsors (National Audit Office, 2010). Academy and free schools now make up 32% of primary schools and 75% of secondary schools in England (DfE, 2019). Thus, academisation has more comprehensively transformed secondary educational provision, with primary academies concentrated within the most disadvantaged communities. When compared to all primary schools, primary academies have a higher than average rate of free school meal eligibility, with 17.1% of pupils eligible, compared with 15.1% in

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LA-​maintained primary schools. In the current pupil population of Estate Primary there are 62.2% of pupils who are or have been eligible for Free School Meals at any time during the past six years (National Statistics, 2018). As such, the academisation of Estate Primary is facilitated and mediated through the material disadvantages of The Estate. Through an analysis of the interplay between the social and material conditions of The Estate and the pedagogic practices of Estate Primary, this chapter contributes to the literature by providing insight into the transformation of primary school provision through localised constructions of ‘community need’. It also offers a necessary lens on the impacts of academisation on a primary institution, building on a history of works in the sociology of primary schools (see for example, Braun and Maguire, 2018). The extension of market principles, legitimised and enacted through parental choice, have diversified and further hierarchised state education within England. The unequal distribution of resources of choice (Burgess et al., 2011) reveals the logics of this neoliberal policy. As Reay (2007) argues, schools are highly politicised spaces where the policy and practice of parental choice reproduces geographies of schooling differentiated along class lines. The responsibilisation of parents in securing access to ‘good’ schooling for their children is encouraged through admission guidance provided by the local council. The guidance champions equal access to schools through the exercising of choice, offering a ‘wealth of information to help [parents] consider the right schools’, and highlighting attendance at open days, examination of Ofsted reports and knowledge of school ethos and specialisations as examples of responsible choosing. Parents are asked to provide three primary schools in order of preference in the hope their child will be allocated one of the three (Warrington, 2005; Wright, 2012). Nevertheless, parents are advised that they ‘have the right to express a preference rather than choose a school’, with home to school distance informing admissions once priorities have been met. Therefore, despite the egalitarian rhetoric of choice, the associated resources of choice are unevenly distributed (Burgess et al., 2011), with material and social boundaries restricting the options available to families living on The Estate. Consequently, the geographical dislocation of The Estate on the eastern edge of the city, and the associated stigmatising representations of The Estate (Leaney, 2019), result in Estate Primary being unpopular amongst parents with the requisite resources to enact choice and send their children elsewhere (Benson et al., 2015; Reay et al., 2011). Thus, Estate Primary is the ‘choice’ for those unable to enact ‘responsible choosing’, a choice founded upon necessity or a rejection of the possibility of choice altogether. As an extension of broader processes of marketisation (Gewirtz, 2002), the academies programme facilitates the ‘specialisation’ of state education,

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contributing to a ‘new politics of recognition’ acting to further naturalise educational inequalities (Power and Franji, 2010: 2). The school’s rebranding centred on the ‘common sense’ discourses of neoliberal educational policy (Hall and O’Shea, 2013), locating success in the soft measures of ‘ambition’ and ‘aspirations’ (Morrin, 2018), and an embedded authoritarianism (see Blood, Chapter 4). Within this logic, the experiential consequences of material and structural inequality are relocated within a psychologised language of individual endeavour, as the school encourages its staff and pupils to be ‘great by choice’. The school mission statement is consistent with these aspirational individual logics, requiring that: ‘We won’t accept excuses and we won’t make excuses.’ The ongoing ‘diversification’ of the British education system (Ball, 2016; Exley, 2012; Gibson, 2015), facilitated through processes of academisation, has enabled the transformation of schools in terms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. This specialisation of state education provision is often framed by ideas of inclusion, where teaching is ‘designed and delivered to engage students in learning that is meaningful, relevant and accessible’ (Hockings, 2010: 1). And yet in practice, desires to be inclusive are shaped by the broader socio-​political context and social relations within which teaching and learning takes place, with Burke and Crozier (2012) theorising inclusivity as involving a complex, contextual set of pedagogical experiences, practices, identities and relations. There is therefore a specific need to interrogate normative assumptions of inclusion, particularly in terms of how these relate to the contexts of space/​place in which they might appear. As such, the academisation of Estate Primary marked a shift transforming conceptualisations of the school’s purpose, through constructions of the ‘community needs’ of The Estate. Therefore, analyses of the school as a field within which particular formations of self are produced and reproduced (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Ingram, 2011) can no longer assume education to be the site of reproduction of dominant middle-​class culture. Rather than Estate Primary forming a ‘relatively autonomous sphere[s]‌of play’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 17), together with interrelated structuring structures (such as housing, healthcare, welfare provision), it is formative of a classificatory system which defines The Estate through common-​sense divisions of value. In this way, I understand the school to be a productive site of the children’s sense of place, where the habitus is formed in moments of being positioned as ‘valueless’ (Skeggs and Loveday, 2012). In this chapter, I explore how the deepening of ‘diversification’ within the curriculum, under processes of academisation, enables the entanglement of corporeal discipline within pedagogical practices (Lupton and Hempel-​ Jorgensen, 2012). Key to Estate Primary’s transformation under academisation was the implementation of a pedagogic package Performance Based

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Learning, a new learning system defined by exaggerated actions and special vocabulary. As a highly embodied practice, Performance Based Learning identifies ‘comportment, demeanour and behaviour’ as the site of learning, constructing particular classed, raced and gendered bodies as ‘the impossible learner’ (Hollingworth, 2015: 1241). This centring of embodied practice as the foundation of learning constructs the working class as ‘­unteachable’. Therefore, I argue Estate Primary is not simply reproducing middle-​class culture; rather, through accounts of who ‘these kids’ are and what ‘these kids’ need, the school reifies an estate culture as defined through lack (Parsons, 2012). To this end, this chapter explores the role of the school in the social formation of the body through processes of (mis)recognition (Bourdieu, 2000; James, 2015). I begin by outlining the qualitative methodology of the research, identifying the ways in which ethnography draws attention to the practices of the everyday that may be made visible in moments of the research encounter. I introduce the context of the research through an account of the discursive construction of ‘community’ on The Estate, where stigmatising representations are formative of Estate Primary’s specialised provision which aims to meet ‘community needs’. The chapter is founded upon Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) as forged within the ‘moment of exchange’ (Skeggs, 2004), where relational classifications become inscribed. This theorisation of the classed body and its positioning within the field enables an exploration of the ways in which difference is read onto the body within a social context. Through analysis of the embodied processes of discipline, misrecognition and resistance within Estate Primary, I consider the impact of the narrowing conceptualisation of education within academisation. Focusing on the dynamic between habitus and field, I argue that the social production of docile bodies (Foucault, 1977) within Estate Primary may be located within the tension of resistance and domination.

Ethnographic representations The key site of my research was the community centre on The Estate and my interest in Estate Primary grew out of my participation in the community centre’s ‘after-​school’ club. There is a physical proximity between Estate Primary and the community centre, with children running from the school gates to the community centre, often unattended, through a pedestrian path which connects the two. Nevertheless, there is also considerable social distance and lack of interaction between these two sites of educational provision on The Estate. Consequently, gaining research access to Estate Primary

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took a long time. I attempted to make contact through formal and informal networks, sending emails, phoning and visiting the school. None of this correspondence was answered. Six months into the research it was announced that the headteacher would be leaving as part of the school’s rebranding as an academy. It became apparent that my difficulty gaining access had been shaped by circumstances which had placed the school under increased scrutiny, whereby many of its staff had found themselves located in precarious positions. However, upon the re-​opening of the newly formed academy, I was able to meet with the new headteacher, and as reflected in the following field note, I entered the ‘new’ school with ease. My meeting with the head teacher seems a bit of a blur –​I had an hour meeting but can’t have been with him for more than ten minutes –​I signed into the school at 10.25am and came out at 10.40am! He was very friendly, but difficult to read. He had a clear ‘Can-​Do’ attitude –​it was like bish bash bosh: you’re in, no questions asked. ‘See it’s easy’, he said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s easy’. As he walked me back down the corridor, he said there’s nothing to worry about here, ‘See it’s calm and quiet’. I agreed, ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked. ‘They’re learning!’ he said. I felt like I was getting the sales pitch. (Sarah’s field notes, March 2014)

I reflected afterwards that there was something within the rebranding of the school that also encompassed a re-​definition of what ‘research’ might represent within this newly configured space: not so much surveillance and monitoring, but more a means to display change and measure success. An apparent openness to research was part of the school’s new ethos, made visible through the presence of multiple researchers during my time in the school, which resulted in the subsequent incorporation of positivistic research instruments into the monitoring of pupils and an investment in internal observations of classroom teaching by senior members of staff. In 2014, I spent four weeks as an ethnographer within the school. Using the register of the children who attended the community centre, I selected a Year 4 (ages eight and nine) class that had the highest proportion of these children. I wanted to follow the children I had known for almost a year at the community centre and observe the ways in which they engaged within school. In the classroom I took on the role of ‘helper’, observing the whole class and working with small groups. As my focus in the school was on this one group of children, I followed the class throughout their school day. This meant I moved beyond the classroom to school assembly, to PE lessons and on school trips. During break time, I went with the children to

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the playground and ate my lunch with them in the lunch hall. My research encounters within the school were far more contained, in terms of attention to specific interactions, than those of my wider ethnography beyond the school gates. This was partly a consequence of the evolution of my research. Almost a year into the broader ethnography, my interest in the school became reshaped by emerging themes. In particular, my engagement with the school was informed by a deepening concern with children as social agents. This meant that I wanted to explore how the children engaged with school and negotiated their role as ‘pupil’, moving my concern beyond the ways in which the school merely acted upon them. My shift in focus was also strategic: I needed to find a way to negotiate access and to create and maintain working research relationships with those with power to grant permissions within the school. I therefore deliberately distinguished my research focus away from the evaluative gaze often associated with the processes of becoming an academy. As a methodology, ethnography produces a form of representation where the specificity of the ethnographic encounter is produced between the participant and researcher framing this as a site of knowledge production (of what is known of the people of the research). As such, representations of participants are formed within moments where they ‘show and tell’ aspects of their everyday lives. In this way, the ethnographic representation is not formed through being the same or even learning to become like one another; rather, it is hewn in moments of difference. This focus on the research interaction de-​stabilises a notion of the authentic stable identity position that remains consistent through time. Rather, knowledge of the everyday is produced in and through moment-​by-​moment interaction. By providing an account of the processes of the research encounter, ethnography highlights the ways in which the self is defined and the practices by which connections with others are formed and maintained. In the following field note, Ruby challenges my identity position, questioning the contradiction within my claim to be ‘researcher’ and my actions, which for Ruby, assume the authority to ‘teach’. Ruby asked me, ‘If you’re not a teacher, why are you teaching us?’ She continues to push boundaries with me but is submissive to Mr Johnson [teacher]. She acknowledges my position as other to ‘teacher’ and allows me to be part of her rule breaking, giving me a chewing gum during playtime and offering me food in the lunch hall, despite the strict ‘no sharing’ policy. (Sarah’s field notes, May 2014)

Through participation in Ruby’s everyday rule breaking, I not only accessed this social practice but facilitated it. Therefore, ethnography does not negate perceived differences and unequal distributions of power that

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define the research encounter, but centres them as the object of research (Skeggs, 2001). In this way, the ethnographic representation is not a looking in, or a capturing of an authentic way of being; rather, it is an attention to the practices of the everyday that may be made visible in moments of the research encounter. Ethnographic analysis employs a critical bifocality (Weis and Fine, 2012) that explores the potentialities of agency while contextualising the individual actor within the material and structural conditions of social position. As an analytic sensibility, critical bifocality is a practice that threads through the entire research process. In this way, I think it is appropriate to speak of moments of analysis as formative of the research project: the ethnographic encounter, the writing of field notes, and the textual representation of the ethnography. Within this conceptualisation, the ethnographic encounter can be understood as the site of everyday analysis, suggesting that meaning is co-​constructed through performances of communal beingness (Walkerdine, 2010). Processes of objectification form another moment of analysis, in the writing of field notes, their re-​stylisation and the connections and disconnections within the research narrative I construct. And there is a time and space of analysis where data becomes an artefact to be re-​presented, re-​animated and re-​told through the act of writing. This approach to analysis enables me to work within the tension of deductive and inductive reasoning, reimagining knowing as a cyclical process. Thinking of analysis as a formative process, I understand knowledge production to be iterative; where the research object is constructed and reconstructed through the dynamic between theory and observation (Cerwonka and Malkki, 2008). In the next section, I outline the formation of community on The Estate, engaging with a bifocal analysis to draw attention to the co-​constitution of dominant discourses of The Estate and everyday life on The Estate.

The classification of community Being housed on The Estate entails a structural positioning within a specific social, cultural and political milieu. The Estate of this research is located at the edge of the city, situated within a valley. It is visually and physically contained. The Estate juts into the rural landscape, the bottom forms the entrance, with the main street stretching up a steep hill; each side is enclosed by a wall of green that wraps around The Estate. There is no through way, the top of The Estate forms a dead end; it is simply the turning bay for the bus that serves The Estate. This physical dislocation of The Estate produces a social distancing whereby the ‘proximate stranger’ (Bhabha, 1996) is imagined through repeated cultural representations (Raisborough and

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Adams, 2008). Such dominant discourses which produce The Estate as ‘other’ (Featherstone, 2013; McKenzie, 2015) circulate on The Estate and are drawn upon as resources in everyday struggles for recognition. In the break between the after-​school clubs, youth workers Joe and Sharon who live on The Estate were talking about Benefits Street. They were joking about where ‘Benefit Street’ is on The Estate. Entangled with their gossip and judgements was self-​deprecation and kindness. Their conversation walked a tightrope where they negotiated the stigmatising representations of the television programme with their everyday social and material connections to welfare benefit receipt. (Sarah’s field notes, January 2014)

Thus, everyday life on The Estate is mediated through value systems which give meaning to its structured materiality. Dominant discourses which stigmatise council estates are mobilised and reproduced through everyday practices on The Estate, where housing, embodied practices and cultural aesthetics inform judgements by which residents mark distinction (Bourdieu, 1984; Robertson, 2013). As an ‘illusion’ (Brent, 2004), ‘paradox’ (Hill and Wright, 2003) and exclusionary construction (Back 2009), ‘community’ is positioned as an ambivalent concept within class analysis. Nevertheless, in representations of the Council Estate, community continues to do much of the conceptual work of connecting people and place in academic, political and popular understandings of class. Following the discursive turn within theorisations of class (Hollingworth, 2015; Reay, 2002; Skeggs, 2014), we may understand community as produced and reproduced within power dynamics which shape the possibility of individuals and institutions accessing positionings within discourse as a resource (Skeggs, 2005). Power lies in the ability to name, to claim to know and to resist and redefine such positionings (Mair et al., 2012; Pelletier, 2009). Discourse is therefore socially produced, in that it is shaped by histories which structure its reproduction, and is formed inter-​relationally, through the connections between personal and communal narratives (Walkerdine, 2010). In this way, I understand the mobilisation of discourses of community as a process of making class on The Estate. Through the telling and re-​telling of encounters with the community, Estate Primary institutionalises knowledge of the community through the active weaving together of multiple representations (Thornham and Parry, 2014). Mr Johnson talked about how he started at the school 12 years ago –​how he’d been tricked into it –​he said his agency called and said there were two possible positions: one at a Catholic School with what they said was a ‘challenging class’ and the other at Estate Primary. The agency asked whether he had ever heard of The Estate and he said no –​they said, ‘Oh okay it’s a lovely

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little school’. When he went to the school, the head teacher at the time took him into a room and asked, ‘When can you start?’ He said, ‘Aren’t you going to interview me?’ Mr Johnson told me, ‘Back then there were kids on the roof throwing tiles at the teachers’ –​he’s told me this story before –​‘it’s much better now’. (Sarah’s field notes, May 2014)

Pathological representations of children on The Estate construct working-​ class childhood against normative ideas of what childhood should be. Here, working-​class childhood becomes defined by lack (Reay, 2000). As Steedman (1986: 127–​8) notes, ‘the children of the poor are only a measure of what they lack as children: they are a falling short of a more complicated and richly endowed “real” child’. This construction of childhood informs and legitimates the school’s disciplining practices, whereby the children of Estate Primary are juxtaposed with the middle-​class embodiment of the ideal learner. Mr Johnson continued, ‘I must like it here, perhaps I’m a bit masochistic’. He said, ‘If you have a class in a middle-​class suburb, you tell them what to go and do, then they do it. You don’t really need to be there, they would do the same without you. But with these kids, it’s a constant struggle, you’re constantly pushing them’. (Sarah’s field notes, May 2014)

The requirement of children to perform specific embodied practices in order to ‘learn’ and ‘know’ constructs the working class as ‘unteachable’ (Lupton and Hempel-​Jorgensen, 2012). This is exemplified in the implementation of Performance Based Learning, where the conflation of embodied action and learning results in the entanglement of corporeal discipline and pedagogical practices within Estate Primary. Here knowledge becomes equated with the mastery of rhythmic, gentle movements and measured speech patterns, assuming ‘ontology to be the grounds of epistemology, that what I am determines what and how I know’ (Skeggs, 1997: 131). The narrowing of learning to the performance of particular actions necessitates the intense regulation of bodies within the classroom. Therefore, the academisation of Estate Primary centred on a reassertion of ‘traditional’ education, both aesthetically, with children sitting in rows, and pedagogically, with the use of teacher-​student repetition and answer-​response. In the next section, I outline Bourdieu’s theorisation of habitus, capital and field as a conceptual toolkit to inform my analysis of the classifications of the body within Estate Primary.

Thinking with Bourdieu: class and the body Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of habitus transcends dichotomies of individual and society, locating class practice within the dialectic of ‘the objectified

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products and the incorporated products of historical practice’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 52). Habitus is therefore a process of embodiment, where ‘objective potentialities [are] immediately inscribed in the present’ (1990: 53), cultivating affects compatible with the material conditions of class: ‘to refuse what is anyway denied and to will the inevitable’ (1990: 54). In other words, the objective and subjective realities of class are co-​constituted, with the material conditions of class productive of and reproduced by the social and cultural conditions of class. For Bourdieu, this process of embodiment entails the ‘forgetting of history’: as a product of history, the habitus produces more history in accordance with the schemes generated by history (Bourdieu, 1981). For example, think of a child who enjoys reading. In their practice of reading they do not need to reflect on the rules and principles of reading, they are not necessarily concerned with calculating the benefits of their reading beyond their own pleasure. Yet there is a forgotten history of this seemingly personal and often private disposition, one inculcated by early education, required by the social group and inscribed in language, thought and the body (1990: 103–​4). It is the ‘forgetting’ of such capital accumulation which is central to the meritocratic assumptions of education, where objective material conditions are assessed as subjective dispositions and in turn objectified through institutional qualifications. Nevertheless, the process of ‘forgetting’ is far from neutral (Leaney, 2018) and feminist scholars thinking with Bourdieu have explored habitus formation as an ‘affective practice’ (Loveday, 2016; Wetherell, 2012). The conceptualisation of class as a process of ‘making through marking’ (Skeggs, 2004: 12), acknowledges the ‘visceral affective reactions against one’s social fate and the attempts to escape they can generate’ (Lane, 2012: 3). For Skeggs, ‘bodies are being inscribed simultaneously by different symbolic systems’, yet it is only in the moment of exchange that this inscription becomes actualised, as ‘we learn to interpret bodies through different perspectives to which we have access’ (2004: 3). Through an emphasis on agency, feminist developments of Bourdieu map the physical and psychic distancing of the self from classed inscriptions (Reay and Lucey, 2000, 2002), exploring the ‘different forms and volumes of resources that [the working class] are able to deploy in coping with social and material limitations’ (Vincent et al., 2008: 7). Following Bourdieu’s dialectic of subjectivity and objectivity (Bourdieu, 1990), Skeggs maintains the link between symbolic value and structural constraints, which results in some forms of culture being ‘condensed and inscribed onto social groups and bodies that then mark them and restrict their movement in social space’ (Skeggs, 2004: 2). As Loveday (2016) notes, certain forms of classed embodiment are devalued within the ‘moral economy’ (Skeggs, 2009) so ‘that the mere presence of a body creates a feeling of disorder within a specific social field’ (Loveday, 2016: 1150).

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Thus, the habitus is forged through its encounters within the field, and individuals occupy relative positions in a space of relations; they ‘exist and subsist in and through difference’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 31). Following the dialectic implicit within Bourdieu’s theorisations, the field is a structure both constitutive of and by the relations of which it is made. Therefore, the field is a fluid structure; it is simultaneously a space of conflict and competition, with changes in the ‘distribution and relative weight of forms of capital’ in turn modifying the structure of the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 17). The introduction of social and cultural capital by Bourdieu into class analysis moves beyond purely economic definitions of class, highlighting that ‘cultural lifestyle is not …an effect of structure, but rather one of the means by which stratification position is constituted’ (Bottero, 2005: 83). For Bourdieu this relational network, formed of positionings of relative power and resources, is not reducible to an empirical network of permanent structural relations. Rather, the field is formed of relations ‘actualised in and by particular exchange’ (Bottero, 2009: 5). It is the feel for the game that Bourdieu suggests effects differential positioning within the field; it is the ‘sense of the imminent future of the game, the sense of the direction of the history of the game that gives the game its sense’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 82). It is in the thinking of habitus, field and capital together that Bourdieu’s theory provides a ‘metaphoric model’ of social space which enables us to think about different formations of value and mobility (Adkins and Skeggs, 2004: 21), thus introducing the possibility of ‘multiple reformations’ of class. The field as a conceptual tool for analysis does appear to move beyond deficit models of class as it is not the actions or inactions of an individual, but their relative position of difference that determines their recognition within the field: class identity is negotiated through processes of self-​identification and othering. In the following analysis, I draw attention to the intersubjective (Barnes, 2000) through an interest in the dynamic of objective/​subjective relations, exploring the processes through which one becomes classed.

Disciplining the body Following Zirkel et al.’s (2011) analysis of the ‘othering’ practices within a charter school in the US, we may understand the ‘tough’ pedagogic practices of Estate Primary as legitimised through broader stigmatising representations of The Estate. Dominant discourses mobilised within the cultural (Skeggs and Wood, 2012) and political sphere (McKenzie, 2015) discursively

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construct the ‘community’ and its respective ‘needs’. Thus, the pathologisation of the working class, specifically those ‘housed’ on The Estate, not only informs in-​school practices as ‘technologies of control’, but legitimises them within wider ‘technologies of consent’ (Jensen and Tyler, 2015). In this way, the ‘tough’ disciplining strategies of Estate Primary are accepted as ‘what these kids need’. As the teacher read another question from their script, Harvey’s raised hand, already shaking with anticipation, began to extend higher, pulling his body from the chair. Harvey stood exposed, as the classroom door opened, and the head teacher entered the class. He asked the teacher why there were children out of their seats, after a brief glance towards me, she explained it was part of the activity. Harvey was told to sit down. (Sarah’s field notes, March 2014)

In the field note above, Harvey’s body is out of place, creating disorder within the classroom (Loveday, 2016). Harvey’s failure to regulate his body in line with the requirements of Performance Based Learning, to express knowledge, participation and learning in the correct way, results in his exclusion from the activity. Yet, it is not just the student who is regulated through the implementation of Performance Based Learning, teachers are restricted to ‘act out’ their role in the exchange. In the field note, the teacher struggles to embody the exaggerated actions and special vocabulary of Performance Based Learning. Their movements are interrupted by picking up and putting down the script, their speech fragmented as they revisit instructions to ensure they have used the correct terminology. When the head teacher enters the classroom his power is palpable, impacting the behaviour of both the teacher and the children. The activity is paused, the teacher stops reading from the script and the children turn to face the head teacher. In this moment of confrontation, ‘the social order inscribes itself in bodies’ … [through the] pressure or oppression, continuous and often unnoticed, of the ordinary order of things’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 141). The head teacher asserts dominance over the children, enforcing the expectations of embodied learning in the classroom. But in addressing the question to the teacher he makes explicit his role in the surveillance of teaching and learning practices within the school. Within the logics of Performance Based Learning, there is no interest in what Harvey’s answer to the question is. Through his inability to embody learning in this context, Harvey is positioned as an ‘impossible learner’ (Hollingworth, 2015), his body disciplined as he is asked to sit down. In the next section, I further explore the ways in which embodied practice is misrecognised within Estate Primary, suggesting that as an affective practice, moments of misrecognition foreground the logics of divisions of value.

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The misrecognition of ‘doing nothing’ Drawing upon Skeggs’ (2004) conceptualisation of the possessive individual, I argue that although all identity claims have associated value (Archer et al., 2007), values connected to the structurally disadvantaged become reified through the misrecognition of bodily difference. Misrecognition occurs within education through the transformation of social classification into academic classification (Grenfell and James, 1998). This misrecognition is symbolic violence in the sense that it is the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990: 5); it is a process by which an action is not recognised for what it is and is instead attributed another meaning whereby ‘interests, inequities or other effects may be maintained whilst they remain concealed’ (James, 2015: 100). The following field note reflects a moment of misrecognition, where one principle of vision and division is constituted as the ‘ultimate, unquestionable principle of all others’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 104). In the field note, the coach draws lines of division between ‘doing something’ and ‘doing ­nothing’. For him, ‘doing something’ involves joining in, participating in formalised after-​ school clubs, and developing talents. All other forms of action, such as attending the community centre, are misrecognised as ‘doing nothing’; this action is attributed the meaning of non-​action. During the PE class, the coach sat and talked to me. He said, ‘Here it’s like taking part or joining in takes away their street cred. It’s like seen as bad to join in’. He told me that the school put on stuff for free and he thinks that’s right, but it doesn’t help with attendance: it’s not money, it’s something else. At the end of the lesson he asked me to get up in front of the class. He asked all the kids to put their hand up if they went to the community centre –​most of them did. He then asked them if they went to any other after-​school clubs to put their hand up –​a couple did. The coach went along the line asking the kids what they did. Some of the boys said they went to football and one girl said she went to gymnastics, netball and swimming. When he asked Kelsey, she said ‘I don’t do nothing, I do nothing’. The coach said, ‘See lots of the kids do nothing’. One boy the coach felt was particularly talented –​he won star pupil –​did nothing. The coach said, ‘See, he is talented but does nothing’. (Sarah’s field notes, March 2014)

As Bourdieu notes, this form of domination ‘succeeds in imposing itself durably only in so far as it manages to secure recognition’ (2000: 104). The system of division becomes justified, in the sense that it is respected and honoured, through the misrecognition of the arbitrariness of its principle. Therefore,

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the children may only articulate their experience within the established principle of division, where the social classification of formal and informal activities becomes an academic classification of legitimate and ­illegitimate. This enables some children to express their participation in ‘gymnastics, netball and swimming’, while others confirm that they ‘do nothing’. James suggests that misrecognition is an everyday and dynamic social process where action is not recognised for what it is ‘because it was not previously “cognised” within the range of dispositions and propensities of the habitus of the person(s) confronting it’ (James, 2015: 100). Therefore, moments of misrecognition are both formed by and formative of the habitus. Habitus may be understood as constitutive tension; it is the conceptualisation of an ontological tension, structured and structuring, and it is a ‘constructive bodily tension towards the imminent forthcoming’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 144). As an ‘active presence’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 52), habitus is a felt dynamic between the self and the social world. Accordingly, we may understand misrecognition as an ‘affective practice’ (Loveday, 2016) both in terms of its consequences, that it results in embodied experiences of shame, and its performativity; it is ‘a mechanism that feeds back into classed relationships, variously shoring up notions of (il)legitimacy by contributing to processes of valuation’ (Loveday, 2016: 1151). The field note demonstrates the co-​constitution of habitus and field whereby the habitus ‘constructs the world by a certain way of orienting itself towards it’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 144) as captured in Kelsey’s response to the coach’s questioning: ‘I don’t do nothing, I do nothing’. Kelsey’s response is founded upon her sense of place. For Bourdieu, this is a practical sense distinct from ‘class consciousness’, a form of misrecognition where dominant representations are mistakenly applied to the self (Bourdieu, 2000: 185). However, unlike Bourdieu’s reading of claims such as ‘That’s not for the likes of us’ as a ‘learned ignorance’, a conceptualisation of misrecognition as an affective practice moves beyond understanding these statements as simply resignation. As such, Kelsey’s assertion that ‘I don’t do nothing, I do nothing’ may feed into established divisions of action and in-​action, yet the very process of misrecognition foregrounds the logics of this division. Therefore, Kelsey may express resignation, but also anger and frustration in her unequal access to the formal activities recognised within the division of action and in-​action.

Docility as resistance It is the relationality of habitus and field, inherent in the co-​constitution illustrated above, which forms the theoretical pessimism inherent in

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Bourdieu’s account of domination, as the ‘habitus contributes to determining what determines it’ (Bourdieu, 1994: 195). For Bourdieu, the inscription of social structures in bodies results in an ‘extraordinary inertia’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 172) whereby ‘resistance may be alienating and submission may be liberating’ (Bourdieu, 1994: 155). This contradiction is built into Bourdieu’s logic of symbolic domination as a dialectic of subjectivity and objectivity, where social constructions of class, gender and race are ‘inscribed in the objectivity of institutions, that is to say, of things and bodies’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 108). However, as the field note below illustrates, the inscription of objective relations is nevertheless mediated by subjective action, introducing the possibility of resistance. Shelley and Ruby sat playing with blue tac, looking at me and smiling, while their teacher explained the task. They were not concentrating but their actions were not outwardly disruptive, they sat quietly, smiling approval at each other as they flattened and then divided, using a ruler as a cutter, their blue tac into tiny squares. Later they sat holding their breath until they turned pink and let out a burst of air. Again, their behaviour didn’t distract the rest of the class, but was a display of disinterest in the lesson. They were not approached by the teacher regarding their behaviour. (Sarah’s field notes, March 2014)

In the field note, Shelley and Ruby reject and resist the teacher’s authority to define their task. Their behaviour is a challenge to legitimate action within the classroom. Bourdieu notes that resistance may be passive and internal or active and collective, defining resistance as strategies to escape exploitation: ‘going slow, working to rule, sabotage’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 185). As such, the subjective sense of place constituted within the dynamic of habitus and field does not negate resistance. In this way, Shelley and Ruby employ strategies to avoid the imposition of the pedagogic practices of the classroom through their classed and gendered enactments of friendship formation. However, the recognition of such action as resistance requires the accumulation of symbolic capital. Therefore, resistance is a struggle for the power to impose a vision of the social world. Although Shelley and Ruby’s sociality rejects the requirements of the ‘ideal learner’, they lack the authority to valorise their friendship practices. They are restricted in their non-​compliance by the explicit authority of the teacher and as such must navigate their display of disinterest without disrupting the rest of the class. In this way, their resistance goes alongside domination; there is ‘no resistance that is not some way complicitous with power’ (Lawler, 2004: 122). Shelley and Ruby subvert the norms of the classroom in their appropriation of docility as resistance, cultivating their classed and gendered habitus through their embodied practices, playing with each other’s hair, whispering,

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giggling and sharing resources. Following Foucault, we may understand the discipline institutionalised within the school as producing docile bodies that may be ‘subjected, used, transformed and improved’ (Foucault, 1977: 136). Nevertheless, docility may also be understood as a means to liberate the self from such systems of domination. Bourdieu suggests that ‘in order not to naturalize dispositions, one has to relate these durable ways of being …to the conditions of their acquisition’ (2000: 122); cultures of necessity operate precisely as a defence mechanism against necessity. Therefore, moments of resistance may be especially illuminating as sites of class formation. Understood as formed within the dynamic of the subjective and objective, this resistance is however located within the power inequities of the field. Thus, docility as a durable disposition of the classed and gendered habitus is both transgressive and reproductive of capitalist and patriarchal systems of domination. Sociological representations of resistance must therefore explore the complex relationship between habitus and field in order to understand the dynamic formation of class within tensions of production and reproduction. As Lawler asserts, habitus is not determining; it is generative: ‘it generates the human subject qua subject’ (2004: 112). As such, the subject cannot be pre-​constituted; agency is inherent to being a subject. Lawler calls for a more expansive conceptualisation of resistance, drawing upon Fox’s (1994) critique of the division between resistance and conformity. In this way, resistance may not be ‘progressive’, and change may be ‘difficult to effect’; however, a focus on struggles for authority within the field enables an analysis of ‘what it means to be dominated’ (Lawler, 2004: 125).

Conclusion In closing the chapter, I would like to revisit the opening field note in order to draw out the role of misrecognition in legitimising discipline within the field of education. I knew Tracey through her volunteer work and her daughter’s participation at the community centre. It was my first day attending Estate Primary, and Tracey was keen to share her analysis of the ‘school drop-​off’ with me. The head teacher came out into the playground: ‘Oh look’, Tracey said, ‘here comes Hitler’. Tracey is acutely aware of the power dynamics within the playground, narrating the performance of the head teacher, whose visibility she understands as an act of surveillance. Despite this recognition of the power embodied by the head teacher, Tracey mocks his authority. Through her comparison of the head teacher to Hitler, Tracey undermines his performance; she knows it is an act, that he is ‘alright actually’. Nevertheless, Tracey reflects that this overt

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display of authority is required at Estate Primary, that the head teacher is ‘strict, but then that’s what they need’. For me, this ethnographic example captures the processes through which diversification in education is legitimised; the intensification of corporeal discipline within Estate Primary is enabled through the structuring of consent. In this way, national discourses of diversification within state education provision are mediated through localised constructions of ‘community needs’. Estate Primary may be understood in relation to structuring structures which constitute The Estate within a classificatory system which ‘others’ the tenure, welfare status and culture of those housed on The Estate. Thus, the school acts as a ‘technology of control’, reproducing classed inequality through the positioning of The Estate as valueless, and facilitates ‘technologies of consent’ (Jensen and Tyler, 2015), where disciplining practices are accepted as ‘what these kids need’. These processes are not entirely new, but reconfigured in the academies programme. Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of habitus, the chapter explored the formation of the self within moments of encounter within the field of education. Following Loveday (2016), I argue that habitus formation is an ‘affective practice’, that everyday processes of inscription are visceral and not easily ‘forgotten’. Focusing on three moments of ‘making through marking’ (Skeggs, 2004), the chapter considers the interplay of discipline, misrecognition and resistance in the construction of habitus within Estate Primary. I argue that the implementation of the pedagogic package of Performance Based Learning within the school has resulted in the intense regulation of embodied practice, with the body reified as the site of learning. In this context, ontology and epistemology are collapsed so that being is assumed to determine knowing. As a consequence, particular classed, raced and gendered bodies are positioned as the ‘impossible learner’ (Hollingworth, 2015: 1241). This process of attributing meaning to action is embodied as an ‘attention’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 144) to the social order of things. Distinction does not go unnoticed; rather, anticipated judgement is formative and incorporated into the habitus. Through an analysis of ‘doing nothing’, I argue that misrecognition is an ‘affective practice’ (Loveday, 2016), producing embodied experiences of shame and reproducing the moral economy of systems of classification (Skeggs, 2009). It is through an attention to misrecognition as an entanglement of habitus and field that we may foreground resistance. A focus on the processes by which objective relations are incorporated within subjectivities may enable an analysis of ‘what it means to be dominated’ (Lawler, 2004: 125). Thus, resistance is entangled with domination. Through an analysis of docility, I argue that durable dispositions of the classed and gendered habitus may be both transgressive and reproductive of capitalist and patriarchal systems of domination.

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Part III

‘Reflexivity’: In the contours and on the margins: re-​imagining the academy

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Producing the academy school: ethnography, Foucault and the study of policy production Jodie Pennacchia

I was re-​reading your initial email and it seems to me that you probably haven’t picked the best school for your study as not much has changed in Eastbank with academy status. (Field notes, Head of Academy)

I open with a field note that marked a point of confusion in my ethnography of an ‘underperforming’ school that had recently become an academy. This was a school that had turned into an academy in order to improve and I began this research seeking to understand the nature and extent of the transformation that had ensued. However, in those first months in the school, what struck me most was how little transformation was spoken about and how it was being actively resisted through staff accounts. This is epitomised by the opening statement of this chapter, which came from the Head of Academy. In those first few months, the familiarity with which I knew the academies policy –​particularly as a change-​agent –​became increasingly fragile. This led me to search for new tools for understanding both what I was being told and shown in the school and the basis for my own preoccupation with change and transformation. It was this stumbling block that drew me to a combination of ethnography and Foucault’s work, which is the subject of this chapter. In it, I elucidate how the intertwining of ethnography and Foucault’s thinking tools was a methodology for exploring the production of academy status and the academy school. In the first part of this chapter, I retrace my journey to this methodological combination, introducing why it is useful for the particular task of analysing policy production. Next I hone in on three relationships between Foucault’s work and the ethnographic method, which helped me to make sense of the production of academy status. Following on from this I draw on ethnographic data to elucidate these relationships, before the central arguments are posited. I conclude with some reflections on the wider value of this methodological combination for policy-​sociology research. I conclude this introduction with some important clarifications about the scope and empirical foundations of the chapter. It draws from a wider

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doctoral thesis, which included an ethnography of Eastbank Academy (pseudonym): a secondary school that was judged to be underperforming, and became a sponsored academy in order to improve. The focus is therefore on the policy strand that concerns failing schools that have become sponsored academies, rather than already high-​performing ‘converter’ academies (West and Bailey, 2013). The primary focus of this chapter is on methodology; therefore, there is little recounting of what the academies policy is, its history or wider evidence base. The sections on Foucault’s work and ethnography are necessarily brief and are not intended to offer a comprehensive introduction.

Academy schools and ontological questions Eastbank Academy is an example of the type of school that the academies policy speaks of and to, particularly, the strand of the policy that concerns underperforming schools in contexts of deprivation that are perceived as sites of necessary transformation. Eastbank Academy is an undersubscribed school grappling with a history of underperformance according to national examination benchmarks and Ofsted judgements. It is situated in an area that scores highly on the index of multiple deprivation, particularly in the areas of health and disability, local crime levels and local levels of education, skills and training (DCLG, 2011). At the time of the research, over 50% of Eastbank students qualified for pupil premium funding, in comparison to the then national average of 29%. During my research the school was rated as ‘Requiring Improvement’ by Ofsted and would therefore have been forced to become an academy at this point had it not already taken the decision two years prior. During my ethnography of Eastbank, ‘change’ emerged as a confusing and contradictory theme. It was told, shown, debated and refuted in varied and multi-​modal ways. It was a pivot for discontent; something to be denied and managed, at least at the linguistic level. Yet staff were keen to improve the position of the school, and this meant that change was also something –​albeit often cynically –​to seek and aspire to. The search to make sense of this tension drew me towards a set of tools for thinking and questioning; tools that turn a ‘given into a question’ (Foucault, 2003: 24). I traced back my assumptions about the academies policy, seeking to unravel the basis for my preoccupation with change and transformation. I returned to a set of underpinning ontological questions: What does it mean to become and be an academy? Or, put another way, how is the academy school produced? This is a question that came to guide me as I continued my ethnography of Eastbank.

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At one level, becoming an academy is a legal shift. A school becomes a new legal entity, run by a not-​for-​profit trust, registering as a company and required to adhere to company law, and entering into new contractual arrangements with the Secretary of State for Education, which alter the school’s accountability trail (West and Wolfe, 2018). But academies are also a discursive entity and through discourse academies have been imagined in particular ways (Francis, 2014; Purcell, 2011). Throughout this chapter I use the term ‘discourse’ in the Foucauldian sense (Foucault, 1969), to refer to the practices and processes through which truths about the academy school have been created and sustained, and the ways the academies policy draws on wider power-​knowledge relationships in order to be intelligible and compelling. Academies have been a controversial, adaptable policy, occupying centre-​stage in the politics of secondary education in England since 2000. They have been shaped as objects for thought through the permitting and foregrounding of particular truths and representations, while others are silenced or pushed into the shadows of discourse (Foucault, 1969). Take, for instance, the range of statements across secretaries of state and governments and a 19-​year span presented below: City academies will create new opportunities for business, the voluntary sector and central and local government to work together … to improve the life chances of inner city children … We will target disadvantaged areas and low performing schools and tackle failure wherever and whenever we find it. (Blunkett, 2000) Futures are being blighted. Horizons are being limited. Generations of children are being let down [by] ingrained educational failure [and] failing school[s]‌. (Gove, 2012) Hundreds of schools, often in disadvantaged areas, are already being turned around thanks to the help of strong academy sponsors –​education experts who know exactly what they have to do to make a failing school outstanding. (Morgan, 2015a) I want every child to benefit from the sort of education that young people get at schools like King Solomon Academy … Schools which are the real engines of social justice. (Morgan, 2015b) The academies programme … hands power back to schools and school leaders to make the right decisions for their pupils and communities, while providing teachers with mentoring, training, and the opportunity to share good practices. (Hinds, 2019)

Such accounts have established ensembles of truth, with academies imagined as a policy tool for achieving the twin aims of school improvement and

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social justice, particularly through the focus on disadvantaged young people and communities. Perhaps most powerfully, for those schools that were to begin their improvement journey by becoming an academy, academy status has been mythologised as a catalyst for change. Academies are imagined through celebrated characters and storylines. There are flagship academies, heroic leaders (Kulz, 2017) and powerful Multi-​Academy Trusts, which are established as centres of excellence with capacity for training teachers and improving other schools (DfE, 2016). While academy status is made up, day-​to-​day, within individual schools and communities, it is not only produced here. Academy status is an example of a policy that, due to the vast amount of times it has been imagined through politics, press and research, has been shaped in important ways from the sidelines. These external accounts craft and perpetuate a set of rules for what is permissible and true about the academies policy. These reflections affected the development of my ethnographic study of Eastbank Academy. I questioned my search for change and transformation in Eastbank. Change, I came to realise, is a central organising principle of the academies discourse. It is one of the fundamental building blocks on which the rationale of the sponsored academies policy rests. Academies have been shaped as objects for thought in relation to their imagined antithesis: failing schools, bureaucratic educational systems and opponents of educational change. In contrast, academies are depicted as agents of change, as inherently innovative, and as sites where entrepreneurial teachers and students are crafted and flourish. I opened this chapter as I did to introduce the idea that, when researching academies, as with researching education policy more generally, we can become captured by the discourse and encouraged to pursue particular lines of inquiry. Foucault’s work helped me to see how the early anxieties of my ethnographic fieldwork stemmed from my preoccupation with change, leading me to view this as something to be troubled rather than searched for. Through this process my work became more attuned to the effects of discourse, which had epistemological consequences. Academy status is made within a school, but it is not only made here and it is not made here in conditions that staff and students entirely choose. If the academy school is produced, at least in part, through discourse then how can it be known and are ethnographic methods alone sufficient to study its production? The argument of this chapter is that thinking and doing ethnography alongside Foucault’s theorisation of discourse led to interesting developments in my study of Eastbank Academy. In particular, this combination is attuned to the complex, multi-​modal and becoming nature of policy. It also lends itself to a multi-​level analyses that encompasses wider

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discursive structures alongside the day-​to-​day practices and materialities of policy (Ball, 1997).

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Ethnography and Foucault’s thinking tools This section details the understanding of ethnography that was developed through this project, and draws out the key aspects of Foucault’s work that were influential. It is necessarily selective, glossing over many important nuances in Foucault’s substantial canon of work and developments in understandings of ethnography, in order to frame the arguments that follow.

Ethnography This discussion draws on a distinction between method and methodology (Harrison, 2018). While method describes the tools and practices that are used to do research, methodology refers to the theoretical underpinnings of the research, including embedded perspectives about the nature of the social world, how it can be known and what counts as data. This distinction is important given the proliferation of conceptualisations of what it is to do and write ethnography. For some researchers, ethnography is a set of methods applied flexibly to understand interaction and meaning within a particular setting (Mason, 2002). In this more instrumental approach (Hammersley, 2018), ethnographic methods are appropriately combined to address specific research questions. For other researchers, ethnography cannot be separated from a particular theoretical, ethical or political standpoint. Thus, to do ethnography is to do, for instance, feminist ethnography, or post-​structuralist ethnography (Cairns, 2013; Hammersley, 2018; Madison, 2012). For these researchers, ethnography cannot proceed outside of commitments to, for example, greater gender equality or a questioning of notions of truth or objectivity. Such commitments would transcend fieldwork and be present and important in the writing of ethnographic accounts. Despite this variety, social scientists continue to attempt to outline typical features of ethnography over which there is broad agreement. This tends to include: the relatively long-​term nature of fieldwork; that fieldwork takes place in naturally occurring settings and includes the documenting of a range of activities ‘from the spectacular and ceremonial to the everyday and mundane’ (Harrison, 2018: 15), of which extensive field notes are made; that participant observation is the core method used, albeit often in combination with other methods; and that the emphasis is on the meanings people ascribe to things in the course of their everyday lives (Hammersley, 2018; Harrison, 2018).

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Whether it is treated as a method or a methodology, ethnography has a history through which it is possible to trace a set of epistemological and ontological assumptions. Ethnography is rooted in modernism, and the enlightenment quest of pursuing progress through the accumulation of more complete knowledge (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003). This is a problematic past that has been connected with colonial desires and practices of ‘othering’, ‘civilising’, ‘redeeming’ and ‘improving’ cultures and groups through knowledge accumulation (Harrison, 2018). The history and methods of ethnography suggest some underpinning philosophical assumptions. In particular, social worlds can be known through extended, situated study of individuals and groups through observing what people do, and observation creates a data context that is less structured by researchers, whereby things that are not anticipated or explicitly spelled out can be uncovered. Embedded here is a suggestion that what people say they do may differ from what they actually do (Hammersley, 2018), and that getting at the latter is a way of understanding a truer, more natural or less performative self. The extent to which these historical positionings and philosophical underpinnings are acknowledged or challenged by ethnographers varies. However, across the twentieth century and into the twenty-​first century, there has been a move to trouble some of the foundational assumptions and approaches of ethnography, which connects with a wider questioning of the status of science and grand social theories (Clair, 2003). This troubling has been influenced by ‘the posts’ including post-​structuralism and post-​ modernism (Cairns, 2013). The historical and philosophical underpinnings of ethnography can be more or less conspicuous and critically interrogated depending on if and how ethnography is being theorised. This chapter offers one way ethnography can be undertaken, thought and written with theory, in this case drawing broadly on post-​structuralism, and specifically on Foucault’s theorisation of discourse. An ethnography that is post-​structurally informed would be marked by a more conspicuous troubling of taken-​for-​granted features, such as what constitutes ‘the field’ and ‘data’, and a wariness of pinning these down too neatly (Cairns, 2013). It would also draw on the multiple ways data can ‘speak’. Rather than centring on the speaking, reflective subject, a post-​structurally informed ethnography would give weight to practices, relationships, materiality and space (Bengtsson, 2014). It would question the representational logic of ethnography, recasting this as a relationship of power where the ethnographer writes and produces culture and place. In my ethnography of Eastbank this meant engaging with multi-​ modal data from within the school and –​since I viewed the boundaries of the school as porous –​its surrounding community, and my own role in producing this (Pennacchia, 2017). It meant a more conscious puzzling of

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what was framing the stories staff and students told, and how this connected to wider discursive relations. The inflection of post-​structuralism –​and particularly Foucault’s work –​can be read through my problematisation of the notion that observations of staff and students were sufficient to understand the production of the academy school. Foucault’s work underpinned this approach, with its set of conceptual tools for analysing discourse as a system of thought, truth and power, which I found particularly generative for theorising the production of the academy school.

Foucault’s theory of discourse Foucault’s body of work has been variously defined, and Foucault is often grouped with post-​structuralist thinkers although he refused this and other labels (Baker and Heyning, 2004). He was a prolific writer, and his theorisations, usage of words and topics of inquiry shifted across his lifetime. This creates opportunities for divergent and multiple readings and possibilities. I share, and find comfort in, Adams St Pierre’s assertion that we always work with a particular version of Foucault, and inevitably ‘make him groan and protest in some way’ (Adams St Pierre, 2004: 326). Foucault’s conceptualisation of discourse was particularly influential in my ethnography, and I focus on this in the discussion that follows. There is no strict Foucauldian method for discourse analysis (Baker and Heyning, 2004; Kendall and Wickham, 1999). Instead, I position Foucault’s work on discourse as a methodology, since it uses a set of theoretical and philosophical positionings to craft particular approaches to research. These include archival methods, which Foucault used extensively, and ethnographic study, which Foucault advocated but did not do. Foucault viewed discourse not as the words, ideas, opinions or actions that are present in society, but rather as what enables these to appear at one time rather than another: ‘the law of existence of statements, that which rendered them possible –​them and none other in their place, the conditions of their singular emergence’ (Foucault, 1991: 59). Foucault mapped the knowledges, technologies and relations of power that enabled certain truths to become pervasive in society. For instance, his study of sexuality explored the ways in which systems that appeared to repress discussions of sexuality –​such as the religious confession and the medical examination –​ actually served to ensure sexuality was spoken about prolifically, but only in particular, managed ways (Foucault, 1976). Foucault’s work on discourse provided a set of conceptual tools for questioning the conditions, social arrangements and technologies of power that produce the academy school, particularly in the case of an underperforming school in a context of deprivation, and the role that notions of

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transformation play in shaping these conditions. In part, the conditions for producing the academy school stem from a set of technologies and strategies that are used to categorise and manage schools. This includes performance tables, national benchmark standards, Ofsted inspections and judgements, and Regional Schools Commissioners. These are tools through which the very meaning of an ‘underperforming school’ is determined, and the movement towards academy status is legitimised. Academy status is therefore a way of adding to the existing order of schooling, through the production of additional school subcategories that are marked by powerful, disciplinary norms. In my study of Eastbank, being ‘somewhere in particular’ for an extended period of time was crucial for understanding the shaping of academy status through day-​to-​day interactions. Meanwhile, Foucault’s theorisation of discourse added to the locatedness of ethnography a sharpened focus on the wider institutional arrangements and conditions that produce the academy school. It introduced a conceptual framework for exploring a set of wider truths and power relations, illuminating the constraints of day-​to-​day life in Eastbank Academy and the reasons why particular activities and outcomes were being constructed as methods of educational improvement. Yet there are tensions in this methodological combination (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003) because in (re)thinking ethnography with and through Foucault’s work we cannot completely forgo the historical positioning and methodological assumptions of either. Rather, both must be thought together, which raises opportunities and incongruences. It is this task of ‘thinking together’ that I begin to do in the remainder of this chapter, drawing on data and analyses to explicate three relationships between ethnography and Foucault’s thinking tools, which were pivotal to addressing the question of how the academy school is produced.

Multi-​modal study First, ethnography and Foucault’s work facilitated the multi-​level and multi-​ modal analysis I required. Ethnography is long-​term-​situated study that enables an understanding of how academy status is related to any or all aspects of a school’s work. It brings the researcher into contact with the linguistic, material, spatial, relational and affective realms of the school. Ethnography enables researchers to interact with these different modalities so that they become data, and arguments are derived from the diverse textures of the school. Similarly, since Foucault used ‘discourse’ to refer to rules and conditions that make particular statements, ideas and subjectivities possible, discourse can be linguistic, material, spatial and relational. Foucault was interested in how people are managed through the material

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world, through institutional spaces and through technologies of governance (Foucault, 2003). Adopting a multi-​modal approach is important because academisation has some particular qualities as a policy. Rather than being about one or two specific areas of a school’s work, it is potentially all encompassing as it centres on the school’s identity. Thus, multiple aspects of the school might be chosen for the production of academy status, or very few might be. Academy status might be produced through any or all of the semiotic modes available in the school (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). How a school ‘does’ academy status is also necessarily entwined with its history and locality, and so becoming an academy is a process that unfolds differently in different schools. I captured this multi-​modality through a suite of methods across two academic years, including: interviews; document analysis; discourse analysis; field notes of practice, lessons, assemblies; mobile photo-​elicitation interviews with students; and visual analysis of photographs.

Analyses of power Foucault mapped the ways in which ‘states of domination do indeed exist’ in cases where ‘power relations are fixed in such a way that they are perpetually asymmetrical and allow an extremely limited margin of freedom’ (Foucault, 1996: 441). For instance, his genealogies documented how people are oppressed through being labelled as, for example, perverse, abnormal or insane (Foucault, 1976). However, in his later writing Foucault had moved towards a quite distinctive view of power. Instead of viewing power as a relationship between oppressor and oppressed, he positioned power as a set of unstable, shifting relationships that alter through individual encounters and interactions amongst people, and between people and the material world. Rather than viewing power as prohibitive, he viewed it as productive and reversible, and was interested in how individuals may resist the ways they are constituted (Ball, 2013). Although he highlighted the difficulty of thinking outside of discourse, he also argued that once something is present in discourse this provides a pivot point for discontent and resistance: ‘Discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy’ (Ball, 2010: 2). Rather than a concern with the ‘who’ of power –​with assigning intentionality and blame –​his focus was on the ‘how’ of power –​its techniques, strategies and functionality (Foucault, 1996). In early ethnographies power was viewed as sovereignty, and explored through the lens of oppression and domination (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003). This approach encourages an analysis of the tactics some groups

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use to push their truths onto others, and the lived experiences and effects of oppressive arrangements. This legacy of using ethnographic approaches to highlight power imbalances was important in my ethnography of Eastbank, as I encountered and sought to explore a range of oppressive arrangements. The extended situated study offered by ethnography also created opportunities for observing and unpicking relations of power and for putting to work Foucault’s notion of power as productive. It led me to explore staff counter narratives and the ways in which students pushed back on arrangements they did not find fulfilling. Meanwhile, ethnography’s legacy as a tool for capturing oppressive arrangements sensitised me to those occasions where there appeared to be little opportunity for staff and students to move beyond the limits of the situations in which they found themselves.

Projects of critique The final relationship I elucidate concerns the position of ethnography and Foucault’s work as projects of critique. Both are concerned with uncovering marginalised voices and accounts. In Foucault’s work, obscure and hidden stories were uncovered through extensive archival work. In ethnography, a project of critique is grounded in a commitment to seeing, hearing and interacting with lesser-​heard stories and experiences in situ. Due to his focus on the ‘how’ of power, and his illusiveness around citing blame or intentionality, Foucault’s work has been accused of a vague criticality (Sayer, 2012). Allan (1996) argues that, while Foucault was critical of the institutional practices around, for instance, the insane, his work does not ‘specify how these relations might be overturned’ (Allan, 1996: 228). A connected criticism is that, while Foucault presents seemingly ominous accounts of the effects of power relations –​e.g. surrounding mental illness –​he stops short of saying why and how this is so, and how things might be different, resulting in the claim that his work is ‘crypto-​normative’ (Sayer, 2012: 180). Ethnographic methods bring the researcher into close, protracted contact with individuals, and often mean that analysis contends with the existence and nature of seemingly unjust and inequitable situations and relationships. While there is variation across ethnographic traditions, ethnographic study does not foreclose opportunities to highlight injustices and their causes, as a strictly Foucauldian approach might. Instead, there are many examples of ethnographies where there is an explicit aim to uncover and address unfairness and injustice (Madison, 2012). In the section that follows, I draw on data from my ethnography of Eastbank Academy to elucidate the usefulness of thinking and doing ethnography with and through Foucault’s theorisation of discourse. I explore the combination of the two, with their different points of emphasis, highlighting the textures of policy production in the example of the

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underperforming academy. I draw out the potential opportunities and tensions at play in this combination for researchers of policy production.

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Change as a contradictory theme In this section I present data snapshots from an ethnography of Eastbank Academy, selected from a wider body of data to signal some of the ways academy status was being produced. I have selected these for the task of showing how the combination of ethnography and Foucault’s thinking tools enabled me to make sense of the contradictory ways that ‘change’ was present in Eastbank Academy. Data fragments are grouped under three ­headings –​the reluctant academy, the visual production of a high-​ performing, transformed academy and pedagogical shifts. I then move on to discuss these as related themes.

The reluctant academy A key aspect of my analysis of the linguistic production of Eastbank Academy centred on a set of stories that staff told and used. These were not staff, particularly at leadership level, who felt at home with the academies policy: There was this growing agenda around academies. I have to say you couldn’t have found anybody in the country politically or emotionally less supportive of that whole agenda … but we had no support. (Interview, Executive Head)

Senior staff sought academy status because they felt they had no support from the Local Authority. The Head and Executive Head both shaped academy status as a way of ‘taking charge of their destiny’, which in Eastbank meant improving student examination results while holding onto a long-​ standing inclusive, community-​oriented ethos. Becoming an academy was not described as a tool for change but as a tool for continuity, and Eastbank was linguistically shaped as a reluctant academy. Examples of this continuity narrative are illustrated in data extracts (1) below. Data extracts (1): Resisting change through language and narrative: 1 We got a new sign and a new uniform … it’s structural. Day to day in terms of teaching it hasn’t made a difference. (Interview, Teaching Staff) 2 There’s no massive change because it’s actually been quite a drawn-​out process and it’s all been planned for. (Fieldnotes, Teaching Staff) 3 They have probably given me a vision statement at some point but if I’m absolutely honest I don’t remember it. Unless I pull it out of a drawer, which I won’t because I’m not that good at filing, I’m not going to find it anywhere. (Field notes, Teaching Staff)

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4 [We] chose Walton College [pseudonym] [as our sponsor] because the governors thought they were a local provider, understood our context, were committed to working with the community. (Interview, Senior Leadership Team) There are a number of facets to this continuity narrative. First, academy status is talked about as disconnected from the ‘real work’ of schools. Academy status might change the school’s governing arrangements or require a new uniform, but this was viewed as being separate to the core, day-​to-​day activities of teaching and learning. Second, artefacts such as the sponsorship and governing trust’s vision statement are treated as unimportant; they are lost through so-​called ‘bad filing’, or contents are unremembered. Academy sponsors are expected to introduce a new academy brand, ethos and set of educational principles of the school, and this ‘vision’ is where these would be set out. This vision document therefore imagines the transformed academy. It being lost and unremembered dismisses the role of the sponsor as a change agent. Narrating academisation as a process of continuity rather than change also offers a different practice to other schools outlined in this collection. Third, although academy status had been actively sought, staff remained cynical about the policy. In order to produce academy status in a comfortable way, they had selected a small local sponsor who they considered to have a good understanding of, and commitment to, their local community. Senior staff said it was particularly important that this was not a large academy chain, operating outside of the area, with a corporate image. Finally, this continuity narrative was reinforced through a parallel storyline that any changes that had happened in Eastbank were already in the school’s strategic plan prior to academy status. The school was continuing as it would have. This story allows staff the freedom to talk about changes, without having to concede that they were the will or vision of those external to the school.

The visual production of a high-​performing, transformed academy The second set of data I draw on is illustrative of the shifting visual and spatial dimensions of Eastbank. This was an area where there was more ease with talking about change. Staff spoke of an, albeit often cynical, engagement with the idea of an ‘academy brand’ which could be marketed to parents locally and used to improve the intake of this historically undersubscribed school. The role of ‘Strategy Manager for Transitions’ had been created and there was now a designated marketing budget. Money had been spent on ‘subtle’ (Interview, Executive Head) material adjustments in the

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school, such as resurfacing the driveway. New noticeboards appeared, producing a narrative about outstanding teaching and learning (see Figure 6.1). Although change was diminished through verbal accounts, academy status was being performed to the outside world as a signifier of transformation and improvement. Data extracts (2): The visual production of academy status: 1 A lot of work now goes into selling the school. This is a big spend and they set aside part of the budget for marketing each year. They have paid for adverts on the back of buses. (Field notes, Administrative Staff) 2 We had to go out and present the school in a completely different way. We had to really think through what our transition was because superficially we were a poor choice … we used a marketing company, who were able to advise and support. (Interview, Senior Staff) 3 My job title is strategy manager … It isn’t ‘SENCO’ … SENCOs have always been the mother hen … kind of cluck around the little SEN kids, ‘ah are you okay, give me a hug and oh my nice comfy cardi’ type of things, you know. And it’s not so much that now. It’s more business suit than it is comfy cardi … I do think that is academy. (Interview, SENCO) 4 We got a certain amount of funding and we re-​tarmacked the drive and immediately, visually the impression, you know you didn’t come down the drive and hit a pot hole. You actually came down to this newly tarmacked drive with clear delineation of linings … all that stuff it just gives you the chance to show confidence. So it was very subtle. (Interview, Executive Head) 5 Round the back if you go towards the dance hall, round to the right, it’s all closed off now but you used to be able to go round it, it’s kind of the back of the school and canteen, and obviously that was where people used to go to smoke and stuff. People would just jump over the fence and stuff, but since I left they closed that off so you can’t go round there anymore. (Focus Group, former student) This marketing strategy connects with a wider shift towards a more corporate model of working within Eastbank. The Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) makes sense of this through the metaphorical shift from a ‘comfy cardi’ to a ‘business suit’, which is indicative of a shift in her role from working directly with young people with SEN to creating a strategy around students with SEN and managing packages of support. This is also reflective of some of the entrepreneurial ethos and practice in Morrin’s account of Milltown Academy (Chapter 7). Finally, modifications to the school building were described by former Eastbank students during a focus group. They described a tightening up of the school space, including locking gates and closing off corners where mischief used to happen. This enabled a greater oversight and

Figure 6.1  Performative noticeboards. Source: author.

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management of student bodies within the school space and was a precursor to the substantial change that would come with Eastbank’s proposed new school building, and echoes arguments of authoritarianism from Blood and Leaney (Chapters 4 and 5). This would take the school from a ‘small town’ (former student) layout of several low-​storey buildings, to a single school building with fewer corridors that could more easily be surveyed. In the final data section, I highlight how this shift to an environment that enabled greater surveillance of students was mirrored through pedagogical shifts.

Pedagogical shifts The third collection of data fragments I document here are those concerned with Eastbank’s changing pedagogical arrangements. These pedagogical shifts were developed in response to feedback from Ofsted that the school needed to plan for, and demonstrate, higher levels of student progress and achievement in relation to national benchmark standards. Data extracts (3): Pedagogical shifts The critical cohort (an excerpt from field notes) The critical cohort is a new grouping policy in the school. Through it, additional resources and support are given to approximately 80 Year 11 students perceived to be capable of getting the required 5A*–​C including English and Maths. Staff, including the senior leadership team, mentor individual students, who are closely and regularly tracked. Lengthy meetings are held, and pivot around a data chart detailing students’ current and expected grades across subjects. Ebbs and flows in achievement are monitored and staff are required to explain why particular students are not ‘on track’. One member of staff said that word had got out in Year 11 about ‘the critical cohort list’ and a girl had begged to be on it. After the meeting the Head of Academy reflected on the critical cohort: ‘I am turning the school into a bit of an exam factory, which is what the government want’. The critical cohort is an example of the type of rationing practice that is now well documented in the educational literature (Ball et al., 2012; Gillborn and Youdell, 2000). The comment from the Executive Head shows a wry awareness that such practices are narrowing the focus of Eastbank’s work onto examination results –​‘an exams factory’. My aim is therefore not to discover these practices, but rather to reflect on the conditions that have made them possible in Eastbank, a school where they are relatively new. Rationing is not an academy-​only practice; however, it was Eastbank’s categorisation as an underperforming academy that heightened the perceived necessity of such practices. Being an underperforming academy was a high-​stakes, risky position to be in, and staff were aware

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of the impending threat to put the school under new management with a new academy trust. Over a three-​year period Eastbank had received two visits from the Department for Education (DfE), had been called to the DfE in London on four occasions and had an Ofsted inspection. The scrutiny on the school was immense, which heightened the demand to illustrate a transformation in achievement. Accelerate (excerpt from field notes): I am observing a year 9 lesson designed to ‘accelerate’ the literacy of a group of 15 students. The lesson takes place in the library. The teacher works with two students at a table in the middle of the room, whilst the rest of the students work independently on computers dispersed around the edges. A group of female students sit in a row and regularly express their dissatisfaction with the work, telling me it is ‘boring’. One of them has already completed the programme and is therefore doing it for the second time. They keep exiting tasks without saving their work, so they have to complete the same tasks again. I explain this to them, as does the teacher, but they continue to do it.

The second was a policy called ‘Accelerate’, designed to demonstrate practices that were progressing student literacy, in response to feedback from Ofsted. In this lesson a group of students log into a computer package and work through a range of activities that are tailored to their ‘learning gaps’. They progress through levels and are prompted by the computer package to repeat those sections that they have not satisfactorily completed. The use of a computer package means that students’ progress can be easily turned into data and produced for external auditors. In this lesson students were constituted as individually performing and monitor-​ able units, which was part of a wider data-​fication process in Eastbank (Lupton, 2016). Student views on the Accelerate lesson were varied, with some enjoying the regular feedback and clear sense of progress, while others were bored and frustrated.

Discussion I have introduced these data fragments from across my ethnography of Eastbank Academy to hone in on how one pivotal aspect of academy ontology –​change and transformation –​results in contradictory data. ­ Successive governments have shaped academies as objects for thought through a narrative of transformation. Yet the data fragments presented highlight how this results in fraught and contradictory policy production. I make three arguments about what the methodological combination of ethnography and Foucault does here.

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Identifying the presence of this contradictory data First, this methodological combination enabled me to identify the existence of these contradictory data fragments. It is only through an approach that views policy as multi-​modal that this fraught academy ontology becomes apparent. If I had only listened to what staff told me I would have understood Eastbank to be a resistant academy where not much had changed. If I had not adopted Foucault’s conceptualisation of discourse, and sought to map the ways academies were being imagined in public and political discourse, I would not have understood how staff denials of change were being shaped in response to wider narratives of the transformational capacity of academy status. If I had observed pedagogical processes without speaking with staff, I would not have understood these in relation to a historical, school-​ based narrative about being an inclusive, community-​ oriented school, or understood the pressure the school was under to enact a transformation in standards. Photos enabled me to track subtle changes in the visual culture of the school, but without field notes and focus groups with ex-​students I would not have understood how students interacted with school buildings and spaces and how this had changed over time. In short, paying close attention to the multi-​modality of the school by striving to capture its linguistic, discursive, relational, spatial and visual domains became integral to this study of policy production. Most of all, without this methodological combination, I would not have understood how and why ‘change and transformation’ generated such contradiction in the school and resulted in conflicted staff subjectivities. This multi-​ modal approach is fruitful for understanding a policy that is about transforming the identity of a school. It brings to the fore the apparent disjoint between a discursive construction of academy status as a tool for change, a school-​level rejection of change in favour of continuity narratives, a wry embracing of the power of academy branding through visual changes, and shifting pedagogical arrangements to meet the demand to be a high-​ performing academy.

Accounting for the existence of contradiction: what made it possible? This methodological combination is a useful vantage point for understanding the discursive conditions that make Eastbank’s fraught academy ontology possible. Academisation has consolidated and sharpened a range of existing school interventions. Eastbank’s status as an underperforming academy means it is subject to a particular, disciplinary accountability trail, directly accountable to the Secretary of State for Education and at risk of

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being taken over by another academy trust (not of its own choosing) if its results do not improve. These conditions are also marked by a set of discursive rules that manage the limits of what academy status means, which pivots around the idea of transformation, and is conveyed through stories of celebrated academy schools. The contradiction present in Eastbank is produced as the discursive rules and limits of what academisation can mean, carved partly through the wider techniques of power that exist in education, meet the personal and historical relationships between staff, pupils and community in Eastbank. Particular power relations stem from this state of affairs. Staff are compelled to react to the accountability demands warranted by the school’s status as an underperforming academy, at the same time that they are reluctant to engage with the academy brand.

Accounting for the functionality of contradiction: what does it produce? This methodological combination proposes and helps to address a final analytical quandary, which is how this contradiction functions in Eastbank, what it produces and its ensuing effects. What is produced is a balance between the discursive limits of academy status and the possibilities for freedom that, Foucault argued, are a necessary effect of all discursive relations. The academies discourse, and the technologies of power that enable and sustain it, frame what is possible in Eastbank. An underperforming academy is high profile because it risks undermining government policy narratives. This means the demand to demonstrate a transformation in achievement is pressing, as illustrated by the way Eastbank staff were continually called, almost as penitents, to account for the school to DfE (Foucault, 2003). However, the academies discourse also frames what is available to resist or rearticulate (Foucault, 1976). Eastbank staff renegotiated the meaning of academy status, shifting the emphasis from transformation to continuity and community in order to attend to important narratives that were felt to be missing. What results is a patchwork of reactions to the demand to change, which constitute a fraught and contradictory academy ontology. Power relations in Eastbank are productive of this tension because existing at a point of tension is more comfortable than being committed to either dismantling the historical ethos of the school, or the risk of ‘underperforming’ and being taken over by an unknown academy sponsor. I conceptualise this tension and contradiction as survival. Survival is a subject position that is produced by the discursive relations surrounding the academy, as staff exist at a point of balance, attempting to be ‘just enough’ of an academy to keep auditors

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at bay while re-​narrativising academy status in ways they are comfortable with. Survival here, therefore, might also be thought of as a form of resistance, or dissent. The effects of this ontology of survival are complex. It is here that a return to the coupling of ethnography and Foucault’s thinking tools, in terms of their conceptualisations of power and criticality, is important. The combination of ethnography and Foucault’s work brings marginalised discourses into the centre to consider the different ways a school’s engagement with the academies policy might be read, and to consider who else produces the academy school, and the positions from which they speak and act. Foucault’s work introduces the notion that power is ubiquitous, haphazard and multi-​directional, with an ever-​present opportunity for reversing arrangements and practising freedom, while ethnographic methods offer opportunities to explore these power relations in action. The idea that once policy is presented there is something to rebel against captures the way Eastbank staff redefined academy status, practising freedom around what academy status means. It is also applicable to the actions of Eastbank students, where practices of freedom were evident in the Accelerate class. By not saving their work, and returning to begin at the same point each lesson, the students in the Accelerate class refused attempts to monitor and display their literacy progress to the outside world. They resisted attempts to produce them as data subjects (Lupton, 2016). In both examples, from staff and students, we see instances where resistance ‘is about continually interrogating the conditions of our lives, problematizing the stories we are told and those we tell … it is about disowning the ways in which we are spoken, about disidentification’ (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003: 9). However, it is here that Foucault’s presentation of ‘power as productive’ and the always present possibility for freedom appear to fall short of elucidating the student experiences that were captured through my ethnography of Eastbank. Foucault’s decentring of the subject and elusive criticality risk detracting from an engagement with the effects of new apparatuses for categorising, grouping and monitoring students, which were a consequence of attempts to transform Eastbank Academy. Ethnographic methods highlighted the existence of everyday, cumulative injustices for some students, who were being routinely timetabled into unsatisfactory learning situations. The students in the Accelerate lesson were bored, frustrated and had limited opportunities to escape their categorisation as underperforming. Meanwhile, the description of the student who is not in the critical cohort ‘begging to be on the list’ highlights the way students may buy into, and yet be excluded from, the new technologies of performance in Eastbank, in a move that renders some students ‘critically’ important, and others invisible or risky. I note that by offering an account that names particular arrangements as unjust

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I am introducing a tension with Foucault’s work by implying that there is a better, more liberated position people are being kept from: discourses that Foucault would trouble. My aim is not to reconcile this tension, but rather to position it as an opportunity to both name and explore injustices, while drawing on Foucault’s theorisation of power to explore these injustices as the product of haphazard and multi-​directional power relationships.

Conclusion This chapter has presented the combination of ethnography and Foucault’s thinking tools as a methodological approach to the study of policy production in the case of the academies policy. In particular, this combination has been used to interrogate the notion of change at the heart of the sponsored academies discourse, drawing on data from an ethnography of an ‘underperforming’ academy school. It has dealt with epistemological and ontological questions about what kind of entity the academy school is and how it can be known. It offers one way of knowing the academy school, which, like any other, has its benefits, tensions and limitations. My aim has been to open up possibilities for studying the academies policy that may be of wider use to policy-​sociology scholars. Combining ethnography with Foucault’s theory of discourse creates a useful methodology for the study of policy production because it is attuned to the complex, multi-​modal and becoming nature of policy. It also lends itself to multi-​level analyses, enabling a framework that encompasses wider discursive structures alongside the day-​to-​ day practices and materiality of policy (Ball, 1997). This is a methodology that moves beyond the seductive binaries (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003) of resistance and compliance to understand the complex relationships failing schools have with academy status. An awareness of the different traditions, tendencies and conceptual frameworks used in ethnographic and Foucauldian analyses is an important foundation for exploring and exploiting the opportunities of this combination. Foucault’s theorisation of power as productive and multi-​directional provides a useful conceptual framework for analysing how power operates in and through policy production, while ethnography provides opportunities to unpick such power relations in day-​to-​day encounters. However, Foucault’s potential for vague criticality can be unsatisfying, and after spending over a year as an ethnographer in Eastbank I felt compelled to describe the unjust circumstances I had observed. However, I drew from Foucault’s work the idea that assigning blame for these unjust arrangements is neither straightforward nor the only task worth accomplishing. The experiences and analyses I have presented in this chapter suggest the value of working

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with combinations of methods and theories, to craft methodologies that may be capable of capturing something of the ‘multifarious and complex ways in which things are happening around us in the “run-​away” world. This complexity defies the conceits and simplicities of singular perspectives’ (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003: 2). I have presented one such approach, and have found the coupling of ethnography with Foucault’s theory of discourse to be a useful way of rendering unfamiliar, and viewing afresh, the academies policy.

References Adams St. Pierre, E. (2004). Care of the self: the subject and freedom. In Baker, B.M. and Heyning, K.E. (Eds). Dangerous Coagulations? The Uses of Foucault in the Study of Education. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 325–​358. Allan, J. (1996). Foucault and special educational needs: a ‘box of tools’ for analysing children’s experiences of mainstreaming. Disability & Society. 11(2), pp. 219–​234. Baker, B. and Heyning, K. (2004). Introduction: dangerous coagulations? Research, education, and a traveling Foucault. In Baker, B.M. and Heyning, K.E. (Eds). Dangerous Coagulations? The Uses of Foucault in the Study of Education. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 1–​79. Ball, S.J. (1997). Policy sociology and critical social research. British Education Research Journal. 23(3), pp. 257–​274. Ball, S.J. (2010). Foucault and Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Ball, S.J. (2013). Foucault, Power and Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Ball, S.J., Maguire, M. and Braun, A. (2012). How Schools Do Policy: Policy Enactments in Secondary Schools. Abingdon: Routledge. Bengtsson, T. (2014). What are data? Ethnographic experiences with young offenders. Qualitative Research. 14(6), pp. 729–​744. Blunkett, D. (2000). Transforming Secondary Education: Speech to the Social Market Foundation. London: Department for Education. Cairns, K. (2013). Ethnographic locations: the geographies of feminist poststructural ethnography. Ethnography and Education. 5(3), pp. 323–​337. Clair, R. (2003). The changing story of ethnography. In Clair, R. (Ed.). Expressions of Ethnography: Novel Approaches to Qualitative Methods. New York: State University of New York Press. pp. 3–​9. Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). (2011). The English Indices of Deprivation 2010. London: DCLG. Department for Education (DfE). (2016). Multi-​academy Trusts: Good Practice Guidance and Expectations for Growth. New York: SUNY Press. Foucault, M. (1969). The Archaeology of Knowledge (Sheridan Smith, A.M., Trans. 1989 ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1976). The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1 (Hurley, R., Trans. 1978 ed.). London: Penguin Books.

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Foucault, M. (1991). Politics and the study of discourse. In Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (Eds). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 53–​72. Foucault, M. (1996). Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961–​1984. (Lotringer, S., Ed.). New York: Semiotext. Foucault, M. (2003). The Essential Foucault: Selections from The Essential Works of Foucault 1954–​1984. (Rainbow, P. and Nikolas, R., Eds). New York: The New Press. Francis, B. (2014). Impacting policy discourse? An analysis of discourses and rhetorical devices deployed in the case of the Academies Commission. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 35(3), pp. 437–​451. Gillborn, D. and Youdell, D. (2000). Rationing Education: Policy, Practice, Reform and Equity. Buckingham: Open University Press. Gove, M. (2012). Speech on Academies to Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College, www.gov.uk/​government/​speeches/​michael-​gove-​speech-​on-​academies (accessed 16 February 2019). Hammersley, M. (2018). What is ethnography? Can it survive? Should it? Ethno­ graphy and Education. 13(1), pp. 1–​17. Harrison, A.K. (2018). Ethnography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hinds, D. (2019). Labour is wrong to turn its back on academies, www.conservative home.com/​platform/​2019/​01/​damian-​hinds-​labour-​is-​wrong-​to-​turn-​its-​back-​on-​ academies.html (accessed 6 February 2019). Kendall, G. and Wickham, G. (1999). Using Foucault’s Methods. London: Sage. Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold. Kulz, C. (2017). Heroic heads, mobility mythologies and the power of ambiguity. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 38(2), pp. 85–​104. Lupton, D. (2016). Foreword: lively devices, lively data and lively leisure studies. Leisure Studies. 35(6), pp. 709–​711. Madison, D.S. (2012). Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics and Performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative Researching (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Morgan, N. (2015a). Press release: Up to 1,000 failing schools to be transformed under new measures, www.gov.uk/​government/​news/​up-​to-​1000-​failing-​schools-​ to-​be-​transformed-​under-​new-​measures (accessed 16 February 2019). Morgan, N. (2015b). Nicky Morgan: one nation education speech, www.gov.uk/​ government/​speeches/​nicky-​morgan-​one-​nation-​education) (accessed 16 February 2019). Pennacchia, J. (2017). Producing the Academy School: An Ethnographic Study of Failure, Transformation, and Survival in English Secondary Education. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Purcell, K. (2011). Discourses of aspiration, opportunity and attainment: promoting and contesting the Academy schools programme. Children’s Geographies. 9(1), pp. 49–​61.

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Sayer, A. (2012). Power, causality and normativity: a critical realist critique of Foucault. Journal of Political Power. 5(2), pp. 179–​194. Tamboukou, M. and Ball, S.J. (2003). Dangerous Encounters: Genealogy and Ethnography. New York: Peter Lang. West, A. and Bailey, E. (2013). The development of the academies programme: ‘privatising’ school-​ based education in England 1986–​ 2013. British Journal of Educational Studies. 61(2), pp. 137–​159. West, A. and Wolfe, D. (2018). Academies, the School System in England and a Vision for the Future. Education Research Group. London: London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The ‘contradictory space’ of the entrepreneurial academy: critical ethnography, entrepreneurship education and inequalities Kirsty Morrin Introduction This chapter unpacks and critically considers the role and potential of critical ethnographic methodology in researching an academy school. It offers reflections and analyses on year-​ long fieldwork conducted in Milltown Community Academy and its surrounding town.1 Milltown Academy houses an ‘entrepreneurship specialism’ which is embedded across both its ethos and curriculum. In the context of Milltown, ‘entrepreneurship’ is not just about having good business sense, it is a cultural object, one that can be taught and learned; in Milltown Academy, entrepreneurship is a way to be. Throughout the chapter I discuss how ‘entrepreneurship’ manifests in the school, how this is negotiated by individuals who work and learn in the school, and how processes of inequality are (re)produced through the entrepreneurial agenda. Furthermore, I make the case for ethnographic work that is critically centred (on issues of inequality), historically and politically connected, and sensitive to the complex and contradictory nature of academy life, society more generally and people’s positions within them. Methodologically, the fieldwork and focus of this chapter follow in the critical tradition and are established through the use and interrogation of critical ethnography, and critical social theory. As has been discussed throughout this collection, the critical ethnographic tradition has at its heart a concern with exposing, and tackling, issues of inequality (Anderson, 1989). Generally, this critical approach was born of a number of tensions, particularly in education research, that claimed that research being produced was either too theoretical (it missed out the accounts of people), too focused on explaining action (it missed out accounts of structural inequality) or was apolitical (Anderson, 1989). Through my research I argue that my particular ethnographic approach allows a critical situatedness within and through the site of Milltown Academy that: gives account of multiple forms (and the multiplicity of) power, process and positionality (Nagdee,

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2019); is inseparable from critical social theory but is not led by it; and offers a politically connected study of inequality. Theoretically, this chapter draws upon a number of critical social and cultural theories that are connected ontologically through the conceptualisation and application of ‘contradiction’ (Meiksins Wood, 2016; Ollman, 2015). Bringing together method and theory here (and noting their inseparable nature generally), it has been said that ‘contradiction’ is often not thought of or written about as methodologically pertinent, although it ‘is an important part of the background assumptions of all case study researchers’ (Porter, 2012: 235). In this chapter I understand ‘contradiction’ as an ontology of tension and struggle, and an epistemology of flux and simultaneity. Taking inspiration from a wealth of critical sociological and educational studies, and Williams’ ‘Keywords’ ([1976], 1983), I operationalise a set of what I term ‘keyoxymorons’ to analyse some of the key sites of ‘contradictory’ and simultaneous ‘struggle’ in and beyond Milltown Community Academy.

Methods of the interstices: Milltown Academy, critical ethnography and analyses In this opening section of the chapter I do two things. First, I consider the site of Milltown Academy; how the school came to be, its main agendas and the ‘official’ narratives attached to it. Second, I outline my epistemological and methodological approaches to critical ethnography; the value of historically and socio-​politically connected ethnographic work (Bhambra, 2016), and the value of centring ‘contradiction’ in analyses.

Between failure and success: Milltown Community Academy Milltown Community Academy opened its doors in 2008, under the New Labour academies initiative. This initial period of the academies programme (2000–​2010) focused on the regeneration of ‘failing’ schools in areas of statistical disadvantage. Milltown Academy replaced a school put in ‘special measures’2 in 2003 where only 22% of its pupils achieved five A*–​C General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) grades.3 The school now has a capacity of 1,600 and with conversion came the attachment of a new sixth form provision, the first of its kind in the town. In 2004, the Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) in which the high school stood was identified as being in the top 7% of ‘most deprived’ areas in England (Office for National Statistics), marking the high school out as a prime candidate for academy conversion. At the core of this New

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Labour schooling reform was a focus on the cultural conversion of pupils (and parents), in which it was claimed that it was necessary for schools to challenge traditional ways of thinking and to break with cultures of ‘low aspiration’ in the communities that housed them (Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF], 2009). As part of these conversions, schools were also taken over by a sponsoring body. Sponsors were appointed with the task of ‘reversing the cycle of failing schools’ and ‘helping articulate a clear educational vision that champions the ability of all children to achieve their potential’ with sponsors including charities and philanthropists, faith communities, businesses and entrepreneurs, universities and educational foundations (DfE, 2012: 2). In the case of Milltown Community Academy, sponsorship came from the educational organisation, the Day Foundation.4 This Foundation is named after its founder the businessman Sir Raymond Day who, documenting his own successes in the business world, not only sees ‘learning as central to the regeneration of the local economy and community’ but also states the virtues of an ‘entrepreneurial education’ in leading such regeneration (Sponsor expression of interest document, 2004). The Day Foundation claim their impact and vision as transformative: Our Foundation harnesses entrepreneurship as a catalyst for social change. Our vision is a more successful society where young people, irrespective of their background, have the essential skills and entrepreneurial qualities they need to take control of their own lives and contribute to the community around them … by developing key attributes of entrepreneurship, we believe that we can foster creativity, resilience, determination, and self-​reliance. These characteristics of successful entrepreneurs are vital skills for adult life. (The Day Foundation website)

As a consequence, Milltown Academy houses an ‘entrepreneurship specialism’ which is embedded across both its ethos and curriculum. Entrepreneurship education at the academy is mainly operationalised through three key initiatives. The first is through a badge scheme, which rewards pupils who display any of a set of predefined ‘entrepreneurial behaviours’ or qualities (including determination, passion, creativity, risk-​taking, teamwork and problem solving). The second is through the compulsory curriculum where, for the first two years of school life, lessons in entrepreneurship are compulsory. The third initiative is the ‘entrepreneurship in the community’ scheme, run by the ‘Milltown Creates Futures’ project. The main component of this scheme was the Enterprise Bridge, a physical bridge built inside the school that houses 11 offices –​or ‘entrepreneurial incubators’ –​for student or local start-​up businesses to operate from.5 Overall then, in the context of Milltown Community Academy, ‘entrepreneurship’ is not just about having good business sense, it is a cultural imperative, it an ethos, or –​as academy officials describe it –​a ‘mindset’.

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At the time of my research, Milltown Community Academy was widely positioned as a ‘success story’, with much of this success attributed to its switch to an academy with an entrepreneurship specialism. The academy is classified as ‘improved’, ‘good’ and ‘successful’ through a number of measures and outputs. School league tables6 show there has been a steady increase from a pre-​conversion rate of 22% of pupils achieving the gold standard five A*–​C at GCSE grades, to a peak of 64% of pupils attaining these results in 2013. Although grades dropped significantly in 2014, as I will go on to talk about later in the chapter, the school was also graded ‘good’ (or grade 2) in a 2013 Ofsted report. This report cited the academy as ‘making a difference to students’ aspirations and life chances’, and saw at the centre of this change the influence of the academy’s new entrepreneurial specialism: The Academy is increasingly effective in making a difference to students’ aspirations and life chances. The strong principles located in the Academy’s main specialism entrepreneurship influences the provision of teaching and learning well. Consequently, the majority of students develop positive attitudes towards their studies and future outlooks, and many take part in the vast range of cultural activities and entrepreneurial resources on offer. (Milltown Community Academy Ofsted Report, 2013)

Similarly, articles in both local and national newspapers frame the academy’s success in terms of its entrepreneurial specialism, as indicated in headlines like ‘Student Success Through Entrepreneurship’ (National Newspaper, 2013) and ‘Milltown Community Academy Receives International Recognition for Entrepreneurship’ (Local Newspaper, 2012). Again, in these publications it was often implied, or even explicitly stated, that there are causal links between the academy’s entrepreneurial education and improvements at the school. Notably in these same articles, the new building of the academy, and the £49,000,000 investment in the school,7 were often not mentioned. If they were, the building (and investment) was seen as either a secondary influence to the entrepreneurship specialism –​‘an appropriate physical space to house the entrepreneurship specialism’ –​or the focus of the publication was on the ‘success’ and impact of specific spaces within the academy building, such as the Enterprise Bridge. All of these documents position the entrepreneurial initiative at Milltown Academy as equitable, necessary and progressive.

Critical situatedness: ethnography and positionality My coming to, and knowledge of, Milltown Academy is manifold. The school stands in my hometown, and both at the time of research and in the present day I have siblings in attendance at the school. I was also for a short time a pupil at the school pre-​conversion. Before gaining access to

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the school site for research, I held (and still hold) wider political concerns about the academies programme, and its place in the reproduction (rather than reform) of a multitude of inequalities (see for example, Courtney and McGinity, 2020; Gunter, 2018; Kulz, 2014; McGinity, 2014; Morrin, 2015 and other chapters in this book). I am also a sociologist whose thinking and practice is situated within a long history of critical social and cultural theory; from theories of historical and socio-​cultural reproduction (in the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall, Beverley Skeggs and Gurminder Bhambra) to accounts of ‘resistance’ (Hartman, 2019; Scott, 1985; Valverde, 2011), as well as theories of the everyday, practical and affective lived experience of individuals (e.g. Bottero, 2019; Paton, forthcoming; Reay, 2017).8 My approach to the research, and critical ethnography more generally then, is as Wells et al. (2012: 112) suggest, to openly incorporate these political concerns and personal prescriptors into research, with the purpose to ‘question the ideologies that present themselves as natural’. My methodological strategy links the ethnographic analysis of lived experience to the analysis of wider historical and spatial structures (across time and through places) and power relationships. It does so by exploring the power structures and assumptions that underpin social discourses and practices, examining the external constraints on social practices and understandings, as well as exploring the possibilities for subversive or ‘resistant’ practices within imposed systems and constraints. In English education research specifically, and as outlined throughout this book, there is a long tradition and wealth of educational critical ethnographic work. From the pivotal study, Learning to Labour (Willis, 1977), to Beachside Comprehensive (Ball, 1981), to the contemporary example of Dreamfields Academy, in Kulz’s (2017) Factories for Learning, each study engages with a methodology grounded in the critical ethnographic approach, one that is centred on studying inequalities in schooling. The culturally anchored ‘entrepreneurial’ initiative embedded at Milltown was the central site for exploration and analyses. Like those critical ethnographic educational studies listed above, my research foregrounded school culture(s) as a main topic of inquiry and included analyses of this through multiple levels and permeations of school culture. From Milltown’s ‘official’ modus operandi (in theory and practice) to teacher practices (in their singular and plural forms), and in pupil agency (as a force for the reproduction of inequality and in their capacity to resist). Similarly, I also considered the spatiality of the academy, through building and classroom spaces. Importantly, I linked these experiences, processes and spaces of schooling to wider phenomena and peoples; to the current and past political landscapes, to the history and present of the town in which the school stands, as well as to families and friends of those associated with Milltown Academy.

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My access to the site and my methodological choices were ­emergent. I spent around a year from 2013–​ 149 within and around Milltown Community Academy. For ten months I had my own ID card that allowed me anytime access to the academy, and my own private office inside the building.10 My fieldwork included: collecting and analysing official documents on Milltown Community Academy and the academies programme more generally (e.g. websites, brochures, newsletters, reports and architectural design statements); looking at media coverage of the academy; conducting interviews (40) and focus groups (5) with students, parents, teachers and others who worked in the school; undertaking everyday observations, and participant observations of taught lessons, school assemblies and events; taking photographs of the school building and its contents (e.g. classroom displays and school posters); and conducting walking tours (3) around the school with people who worked there. Such a multi-​ method approach underlies ethnographic work. Epistemologically speaking the benefits of combining a range of methods are well documented, and the use of triangulation well-​evidenced (Burke Johnson et al., 2007; Olsen, 2004). Where strategies of triangulated or mixed-​methods are usually based on notions of ‘fit’ or ‘corroboration’, for example considering how can similar themes or narratives be located in both observations and interviews (Mason, 2011: 81), instead my critical approach is based in the iterative, and reflexive, application and critique of multiple methodological perspectives, in both data collection and analysis. This centres the search for continuity and corroboration but also complexity and contradiction and paints a picture of Milltown Academy that is ‘faithful’ to the complexities of everyday life (Atkinson et al., 2008). Moreover, adopting different methods alone is not enough, for as Becker (1996: 64) reminds: Even when we set up a video camera, it sits in one place at a time, and some things cannot be seen from that vantage point; adding more cameras does not alter the argument. Even such a small technical matter as the focal length of the camera’s lens makes a big difference: a long lens provides close up detail, but loses the context a wide angle lens provides.

Where traditional anthological ethnographic works aim for ‘thick ­description’ (Geertz, 1973) of a given context or culture of interest, I argue that a ‘better goal than thickness is breadth’ (Becker, 1996: 65). In my study the ‘breadth’ of my approach included linking detailed individual accounts to different structures and discourse. As outlined previously, it meant extending the research beyond the academy walls, as I looked at newspaper articles on the academy and Milltown itself; as well as this I asked participants about their perceptions of the town and how they felt the new school building

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‘fitted in’ or ‘stood out’ in the town. I did so to get a ‘broader’ sense of how both the academy and participants were situated and positioned in local and national discourse. As part of this process of ‘broadening’, I also considered the connections, continuities and discontinuities of the history of Milltown Community Academy, as well as the ‘place’ of Milltown, noting the importance of a critical and historical reading of ethnographic sites (Bhambra, 2014; Kulz, 2017). Here I have unpacked the methodological ‘lenses’ through which I gathered data at the academy, and beyond. There remain then questions about how I interpret, analyse and articulate what I saw, heard and felt during my research. In other words, in addition to how, where and why I did research in the way I outline, there are also the same questions to be asked of the interpretive and analytical process. As the critical ethnographic method demands a reflexive approach to both methodological and theoretical concerns, next I shall outline my use of theory and modes of analysis.

Keyoxymorons: histories of contradiction and sites of struggle Willis and Trondman (2000) claim critical ethnography is where critical theory finds its method; it is where we ‘do’ critical theory, or question critical theory ‘in action’. In my research theory is understood and applied in a range of ways. There are theories that offer a foundation to my critical researcher ontology, theories that underlay my methodological positions and practices, and theories that offer guidance in analysis. As with critical ethnographic methods these critical theories are often emergent and overlapping. In particular, my research practice, thinking and writing are centred on the theories and materialities of ‘contradiction’. Contradiction here is identified and explored in three ways; in theories of inequality and the reproduction of inequality, as identified in ‘difference’, and in the importance of simultaneous thinking. To bring forward these theories and thoughts of contradiction into writing, in this chapter I unpack a series of what I call ‘keyoxymorons’ related to the research site. These linguistic-​heuristic devices invite the reader to think about the site of Milltown Academy in critical, broad, contradictory and flexible terms. I shall unpack this framework below. There is a prevalence of the use of Bourdieusian and Foucauldian theories in education research, most notably the use of ‘habitus’ or ‘subjectivities’ (e.g. Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Bourdieu and Zanotti-​Karp 1968; Foucault, 1980), theories of symbolic domination (misrecognition) and governmentality (e.g. James, 2015; Wilkins, 2016) and (post)panoptic accounts of ‘space’ (Courtney, 2016). As shown throughout this edited collection these theories offer a range of powerful and useful conceptual

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tools that enable us to read sites of research for modes of socio-​cultural reproduction, forms of ‘struggle’, as well as forms of everyday ‘resistance’. Notwithstanding the generative, unsettled or interactive nature of these theories and terms, critics have also outlined the way in which (at times) agency has been underplayed or folded into overarching dominance (Skeggs, 2014). They have also highlighted problems in how agency is often only recorded in moments of so-​called ‘resistance’, ‘refusal’ or ‘crises’ (Hartman, 2019). Ball (1995) also warns us of the use of theory in research that offers ‘no more than a mantric reaffirmation of belief rather than a tool for exploration and for thinking otherwise’ (Ball, 1995: 268). Looking to interpret accounts solely through a lens of ‘misrecognition’ for example, we are likely to find it in the whole or in part (Telling, 2020). On the other hand, a focus on ‘contradiction’ as inherent in ideologies, theories, places and people offers a foundation upon which to do research that does not search or pledge for ontological purity (or security), but allows for thinking that is ‘flexible … and fragile’ (Valverde, 2011: 277). Again (not to misrecognise misrecognition (James, 2015), it does not invite the thinker/​reader to search for a single thing or phenomena, but immediately acknowledges the situated and multiple nature of the site. It also linguistically foregrounds the research in the critical notion that it is conducted on a site of ongoing tension, or ‘struggle’. In this chapter I analyse and write about the site of Milltown Academy through three keyoxymorons; the successful-​failure, constant-​variables, and centred-​‘margins’. These conceptual devices have been developed through a number of key thinkers; through the ‘keywords’ of Williams (1983), and the long and effective use of oxymorons in the world of theory (see in particular, Hall with Schwartz, 2017; Latour, 2015; Puwar, 2008). More broadly, oxymorons are ‘not true opposites’ but ‘heterogenous orders’, and ‘the combination of the two terms is substituted for the existence of a third. It makes a hole in language’ (de Certeau 1992: 143). In my thinking and writing these keyoxymorons are first an invitation to the ‘broadened’ site of analysis, in order to situate it in multiple, contradictory and historical contexts. Second, the oxymoronic contradiction is simultaneous but also flexible in that ‘dualisms are not immutable givens within the world, but achievements brought about through forms of ordering that entail particular social practices’ (Yarrow, 2008: 429). In this way the use of keyoxymorons in writing doesn’t resolve or absolve reflexivity but centres it. This is not an undoing of existing concepts, but rather a re-​emphasis of the processual and oscillatory qualities of power, practice, thinking and action. Taking habitus as an example here, I acknowledge this as a generative thinking tool in its inception and connection to other concepts (also see concepts of field and practice, and for problems see Reay, 2004); the ‘keyoxymoron’ invites us to take a step back in to the process of the subjective-​objective, the external-​internal, to

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think about the oscillatory qualities of each as we move through analysis and writing. In this way these oxymorons are heuristic ‘thinking tools’, not applicatory concepts. In writing these keyoxymorons, in part it ‘brings to the surface the gap between the heterogeneity of the world and its closure in written text’ (Ashutosh, 2018: 35).

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The successful-​failure Contradictions are inherent to the political economies of education. There has been increased promotion of enterprise culture within educational policy and reform, where it seems to have become a ‘common sense’ to incorporate private-​sector principles in schooling (Gorard, 1997; Lord Young, 2014). Although not a new phenomenon but one regenerated in discourses of ‘entrepreneurship’, such enterprising initiatives have been positioned as dominant political and ideological framings in which it is claimed that ‘solutions’ to the ‘failure’ of schools in areas of disadvantage are to be found (Morrin, 2020). In what follows I outline how Milltown Community Academy and its entrepreneurial ethos and curriculum are an ‘expression of the social-​reproductive contradictions of financialized capitalism’ (Fraser, 2016: 99). I do so through highlighting a number of initiatives at the school that have, on some level, ‘objectively’ failed. Starting with the Enterprise Bridge, I show how the academy is not only able to continue, but to repackage these failures as ‘successes’, ignore the failures altogether, deflect failures as to be found in individuals or other structures/​institutions rather than the initiatives themselves, and disconnect or document the failures as evidence for the need to re-​entrench rather than reform or abolish the entrepreneurial programme. Overall, I argue that entrepreneurship at Milltown is a site of such a contradiction as it can simultaneously take on all the successes of individuals and deflect all potential ‘failures’.

The Enterprise Bridge: a means to no end? ‘Nobody wants to be a wantrepreneur.’ (Milltown Creates Futures website) The Enterprise Bridge is a centre for ‘real world learning’ inside the ­academy. At the time of research it was a set of offices or ‘entrepreneur pods’ that were available at ‘low rates’ (£150 per month) for local start-​up businesses who wanted to ‘set up shop’, and free for 16 to 25 year olds with the same ambitions. Students at the academy were also allowed to apply for an office space free of charge. Non-​student Bridge tenants had roles in the academy beyond their business duties, including volunteering their time to students, offering work experience and taking part in enterprising day events. It was the only one of its kind in England. Officially, the Bridge scheme was:

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Originally the vision of Sir Raymond Day, Chairman of The Day Foundation and one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the UK, our aim is to provide local people the opportunity to start a business … By providing the support and space needed to develop your ideas, we help you unlock your potential and successfully start your own business. We believe the more people we help to establish businesses in the local area, the better economic growth, increased employment and social improvements. (Milltown Creates Futures Website)

The Bridge’s entrepreneurial pods were also said to be a ‘bold statement of the academy’s main specialism of entrepreneurship and to provide a facility for community and business involvement within the Academy’ (Milltown Community Academy recruitment brochure). Where ‘futurity’, ‘flexibility’, ‘creativity’ and (the entrepreneurial) ‘opportunity’ meet in the academy, claims of ‘innovation’ are also found. The academy won Innovative Academy of the Year 2012, where the awarding body assessed both the building layout and entrepreneurial ethos as underpinning a transformation in educational outcome, local economic regeneration and innovative community engagement, resulting in ‘truly successful innovation’.11 The Enterprise Bridge ‘pod’ tenants ranged from student start-​ups to ex-​ students returning to try their hand at setting up a business, but the majority of tenants were members of the local community who had come to the academy with start-​up business plans. The main tenants on the Bridge throughout my fieldwork were: a business that offers creative speech therapy services to schools, three graphic design businesses, a web page designer, a company that sold innovative educational resources, a money-​saving enterprise that recommends the cheapest ‘green’ energy, a business that designs uniforms for corporations, a start-​up selling specialised sailing equipment, a student business designing and selling t-​shirts and hats, a student business selling cupcakes, and a student business selling chocolate-​coated marshmallows. The Bridge played a significant role in my research; my office during the research was on the Enterprise Bridge. I spent these months in everyday interaction with other pod tenants and the Milltown Creates Futures Team. As well as undertaking four formal interviews with the start-​up business owners on the Bridge, I also sat in on business meetings, and took part in ‘market research’ for student businesses. I sat with pod tenants while they designed logos, webpages or clothing lines and on a day-​to-​day basis chatted to people who flowed on and off the Bridge. I also observed a number of student–​Enterprise Bridge interactions as part of lessons in entrepreneurship. While I was invited into the school as a researcher, and my position as an ex-​student and Milltown resident had been considered as part of this, I had no formal engagement beyond agreeing this access with the school Principal. On the odd occasion we crossed paths he either mistook me for a sixth form student or passed by my office without pause. One time he popped his head in the office and said, ‘I’m not too sure what’s going on in

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there’ and carried on showing suited guests the rest of the Enterprise Bridge. In some ways I was a young person, who had been a student and resident and could be said to be embedded in the entrepreneurial vision I am critiquing. In other ways the space of the Enterprise Bridge was just a room the school had ‘free’ at the time. As I show throughout this chapter, it is in this very ambiguity that narratives can be made, remade and repackaged by various actors at different times. The following field note was written shortly before I left the academy: Day in school 02.04.14: The Winter of Discontent: For a while now, the pod tenants have been expressing concern and disaffection with the way they were being treated as part of the school … they feel they have given time and volunteered their services over the years for the school, and that now, that counts for nothing when they’re struggling … businesses have expressed concern about financial difficulty, and whilst they acknowledge that this is part and parcel of being self-​employed, they did not envisage having to move office space or “move house” as one tenant put it … on top of their other difficulties. Other tenants have complained about the disconnected way in which the head [Academy Principal] now talks to them … In a tenants meeting yesterday the question was finally asked “why is there this sudden change in attitude towards us?” … The main change on the Bridge is the new divide … of the ‘old’ pod tenants and the ‘new’ pod tenants. The ‘old’ tenants are looking for new offices and actively being forced out … Tenant meetings are also now split into two, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. Old tenants were told yesterday that if a student needed a pod, that they would be moved … Not just creating, but sustaining and excelling business is what the Bridge is said to offer, but this is seen to be questioned in practice time and time again … the shifting and changing nature even in my short time here is very apparent. Pod tenants were initially signed up to stay in their pods for two years. However, some of the current tenants have been here for at least three years. Their overrunning tenancy was allowed (or at least it was sold to be) because of their value to the Academy, their experience, knowledge, voluntary work and work placements for students I was told by all tenants previously outweighed a piece of paper that said ‘two years’. However, this attitude … has most definitely changed. The tenants are being pushed out: a couple of them are really struggling financially … these aren’t big corporate businesses, these are folk who got made redundant and took a chance, they’re people who would be sat at a desk in their kitchen at home, isolated from networks both in terms of friendship and business, the bridge has been a lifeline, and whether they are ready or not, it’s about to be cut…

Despite being intended as a ‘flagship’ scheme setting out the entrepreneurial vision of the academy, the practical realisation of the Bridge initiative was rather more complicated. At the time of my fieldwork, the pod tenants on the Bridge were becoming increasingly unsettled and lacked certainty about

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their positions on the Bridge and in the academy. Eventually, as I left the fieldsite, all of the ‘old’ tenants were made to leave. Although it was never formally announced as a youth-​only project, and the prize for innovation still stands, the only tenants that remained were ex-​students or current student businesses, and tenants under the age of 25. While there was one ‘old’ start-​ up that continued to offer a distanced mentoring role to student businesses, the stories and experiences of the pod tenants who were made to leave the academy show some of the contradictions of the Bridge initiative, and their abrupt exit highlights the problematic nature of such an overtly commercial venture being run within an educational institution. After leaving, some of the businesses folded, and one tenant entered such financial hardship they eventually lost their home. We might also see what happened to the Bridge tenants as a predictor of the inherent precarity for those who undertake start-​up ventures in Milltown. There was of course the very immediate and human cost of this project failing. There is a contradiction here in the way precarity is not extended to the academy’s ethos or practice itself. The Day Foundation is fostering a discourse of ‘enterprise’ through which conditions are precarious given the local context. Contrarily, the Day Foundation’s overall vision and ethos, on paper, remain intact. To extend this further, the Day Foundation was set up by an entrepreneur whose main business venture relied on the procurement of government contracts, where on several occasions it failed to adhere to these contracts. This recycling of state funding into the Day Foundation founder’s previous business, and now academies ‘enterprise’, is effective at both personal and capital accumulation, and the creation of more institutions which are beyond some forms of precarity. No formal announcements were made about a shift in the initiative, nor any explanation as to why the contracts were drawn out and then cut so abruptly. There could be assumptions made about the differences between ‘young and promising’ businesses, and ‘older and established’ start-​ups. Where the former is about potential futures and can be experimental, the latter is based in the ‘real world’ where there is not much room to hide monetary difficulties or signs of ‘failure’. In its inception, the model for the Bridge was not formally researched or evidenced as practicable in a school setting prior to it being built in Milltown. It was only embodied in ‘the vision of Sir Raymond Day’, who might be ‘one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the UK’ but held no recognisable credentials for such an educational initiative. The notion that one man’s ‘successes’ can be replicated regardless of context or conditions is of course at the heart of the entrepreneurial vision, but claims to its successes here are weak, and in some ways failed. The Bridge initiative is just one part of the overall landscape of entrepreneurial agendas at Milltown Academy, and its change in some ways reflects the problematic nature of the academy’s entrepreneurial initiative

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in its inception, and in practice. The power that is wielded by sponsorship, however, to implement these kinds of risky strategies is most readily realised in the formal curriculum, not least as academies do not have to follow the national curriculum in England (Roberts, 2019). In the next section I move on to consider the formal measurement surrounding the ‘success’ of the curriculum at Milltown Academy.

Constant-​variables The assumptions that underpin how the measurements of ‘failure’ and ‘success’ are attributed to Milltown Academy are contradictory. ‘Objective criteria’ used by Ofsted that were necessary to convert Milltown to academy status were (and are) never entirely objective, accurate or useful (Woods and Jefferey, 1998). In this segment I illustrate how the continued inconsistency of ‘objective criteria’ by central government is not only ideological, but verges on the agnotological. I contend that not only does the ambiguity of the entrepreneurial project help its claims to ‘success’ (Kulz, 2017), but this is in conjunction with culturally productive, wilful ignorance and selectiveness when it comes to how to define schools as ‘failed’. Here I highlight the systematically selective interpretations and impositions of ‘consultation’ and conversion by governing bodies on Milltown Academy (Procter and Schiebinger, 2008). I do so to show how the same measurements that were used to justify the necessity of Milltown’s (and other schools’) conversion to ‘entrepreneurial academy’ status would now see them as ‘failed’ again, but this fact remains largely ignored. The opportunistic use of data can be seen beyond Milltown and throughout the academies initiative. While there is a constant conversion on all those maintained schools that have ‘failed’, once they become academies, those very same forms of ‘failure’ are considered variable.

A tale of two (three, four…) academies Milltown Community Academy was established under the New Labour academies scheme (2000–​10), which saw 203 ‘failing’ schools in areas of statistical disadvantage converted to academy status, and put under the governance of an accredited sponsor.12 This government had committed to open around 400 academies, but ‘Ministers stressed that academisation could not be the solution for all secondary schools’ (Long, 2015: 4). Since the Coalition government’s 2010 Academies Act, there has been rapid expansion of the academies programme in English schooling, and latest figures show that there are 9,887 total academies in England as of March 2022; this now includes primary and other free schools (studio schools and

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university technology colleges), and over three quarters (79.9%) of all secondary schools (DfE, 2022). The main shift in this later instantiation of the academies programme is that schools can now choose to convert whether they are ‘failing’ or not. Since 2010 there have been numerous iterations of, and also resistances to, the Conservative-​led13 academies policy frameworks, and an attempt by the then Education Minister Nicky Morgan to convert all schools to academy status by 2022. This was resisted by various publics to such an extent that the plans were quashed. This does not mean there have not been more measures in place to try and ensure conversion of the vast majority of schools, most notably the inclusion of the now defunct ‘coasting measures’ (2017–​2019), and addition to Ofsted ‘cultural capital’ in schools (ongoing). Both of these interventions shifted the criteria on how to measure a school as failed, or increased conditionality on maintained schools to remain as such. Both interventions were and are ill-​defined and rest on negligent assumptions. How does one measure whether a student has reached their potential (as per coasting measure definitions)? What is cultural capital? On whose terms are these defined and why? Nevertheless, schools continue to be coerced into conversion on the basis of ever-​shifting measures. The evidence that academisation per se improves schools is varied, but the will to academise is constant, and ideological. In 2013, Ofsted graded the only other mainstream high school in Milltown as one that ‘requires improvement’. Although historically the school had made substantial and progressive improvements in the years that preceded this, the school entered a process of ‘consultation’, whereby it was deemed necessary to convert the institution to academy status. The Day Foundation was put forward as a possible sponsor upon conversion. Eighty-​eight per cent of parents, staff and local councillors involved in a local consultation on the issue said ‘No’ to academy conversation of this second school, and a further ‘No’ to Day Foundation sponsors taking over (Academy conversion and sponsorship consultation document). These consultations were not democratic (and are not so more generally) and the Day Foundation took over the governance of the school. From 2008 to 2013, Milltown Community Academy showed a steady increase in the number of students gaining the then ‘satisfactory’ standard of five A*–​C grades at GCSE level. In 2013 the government changed how they calculated league table scores, taking the first-​time results of GCSE students only; 330 (up from 154) schools fell below the government’s ‘floor target’ as a result (DfE, 2015). In a local newspaper article, the then academy Principal (and later MAT Executive Principal) wrote that ‘the Department of Education have revised criteria for performance tables and these didn’t reflect the actual set of results of students’ (Academy Principal in local newspaper, 2015).

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He and his team later went on to produce an ‘alternative’ and more favourable league table and publish it on the academy’s website. Nevertheless in 2016 the Day Foundation was established as a Multi-​Academy Trust (or MAT). Currently the Day Foundation MAT chain oversees ten institutions: six secondary schools, one primary school, one studio school, one university technology college (UTC) and one digital skills college. The foundation opened a second UTC in 2015 but that has since closed down. Each institution has the same ‘entrepreneurship specialism’. Within this MAT the Day Foundation sponsors and governs all the secondary education provision in Milltown (two mainstream secondary institutions and a studio school) as well as one primary institution in the town. Despite the failure of the UTC, and the unfounded evidence that the entrepreneurial initiatives work, the MAT continues to grow. Now no matter where you send your child for secondary education in Milltown, they will get an entrepreneurial one. In 2018 all three schools included in league tables failed to meet ­standards. This includes both Milltown Community Academy, Milltown High and a Milltown primary school. While the Milltown Community Principal here acknowledged the unfair or inaccurate nature of the league tables and their indicators, there is no reflection on the inaccuracy of measurements more generally. This ‘ignorance’ was and is ideologically useful and (re)productive to be selective about data, measurement and outcome (Slater, 2019). In the final section of this chapter I show how this ignorance is extended to, and historically embedded in, the broader entrepreneurial ‘vision’ or ethos of Milltown Academy. I consider some of the disconnects and contradictions in the definitions, interpretations and purposes of ‘being entrepreneurial’ as defined in ‘official’ and individual narratives at the school.

Centred-​‘margins’ What it means to ‘be’ entrepreneurial in the academy is a site of c­ ontradiction. Day Foundation sponsorship claims that through their entrepreneurial interventions they are ‘building entrepreneurial, self-​ reliant and socially responsible citizens’ (Milltown Community Academy website and promotional brochure). On the one hand, being an entrepreneur here is connected to wider market-​led concerns around the necessity of ‘innovative’ skill sets needed in a changed and increasingly deindustrialised market. On the other hand, and as I shall show in this final section, the embodied notion of entrepreneurship at Milltown is disconnected from wider structural and material realities, and responsibilises communities and people for potential future hardship (Strong, 2020). I contend that students are not being sold an entrepreneurial opportunity but a ‘thin air thesis’ where such opportunities are

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based on the potential, ability or willingness of an individual, and material resources are secondary or scarce (Wright, 2008). This is a contradiction because it both centres and marginalises material realities at Milltown, and official entrepreneurial narratives both deploy and ignore these realities in different contexts, and at different times.

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The invisible Badges of Entrepreneurship The Badges of Entrepreneurship scheme at Milltown identifies a set of predefined ‘entrepreneurial’ behaviours or characteristics to be learned and rewarded in the school: being determined, passionate, creative, risk-​taking, taking part in teamwork and problem solving. In developing these entrepreneurial characteristics, the academy claims students can develop their own ‘entrepreneurial mindset’, which they see as a mindset that strives to take action, solve problems and reject the status quo (Milltown Community Academy sixth form brochure). The ‘status quo’ here is taken to mean past ‘failures’ in Milltown’s education and employment outcomes. As the Milltown Community Academy founding sponsor clearly outlines in this quote: The attributes of an entrepreneur can encourage the mindset that there is no need to go on accepting the status quo, which for many families in these communities is a life on benefits. (Sir Raymond Day, local newspaper article, 2013)

This so-​called ‘status quo’ is entirely unfounded in both statistical measures and cultural narratives, but the academy goes on to suggest that through the development of such a mindset students can ‘realise their potential’ and be ‘successful’ in their education and working life (Day Foundation ­website). Importantly, the assumptions underpinning the badges scheme at the academy (and this initiative more generally) are based on the notion that there is a prior deficit of these qualities and that ‘the entrepreneur’ is both an accessible and ‘ideal everyman’ (Sennett, 1998). What counts as ‘risk-​ taking’ or ‘creative’ is centred on ‘legitimised’ and official narratives of powerful incomers such as the academy sponsorship, where a ‘problem-​solving’ task such as claiming benefits in a context of increased forms of under and unemployment is noted as ‘illegitimate’. Additionally, initiatives embedded within the curriculum of the school are focused on the ‘mindset’ or ‘character’ of students to embrace ‘entrepreneurship’, which deemphasises their material conditions and overemphasises the capacity of students to ‘think their way out of structural inequality’ (Allen and Bull, 2018; Morrin, 2018). Moreover, past and potential future failures are deflected as the fault of the student, parents or those associated with the academy for not working hard enough or taking enough ‘entrepreneurial opportunities’ or risks.

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In practice, interpretations and applications of the badges scheme are varied. There are standardised posters about the scheme in every classroom, although the omnipresence of the badges posters also did not standardise student responses. Associations between the scheme and ‘good behaviour’ were mentioned by all students I spoke to, however. For example, Michael (13) told me ‘you just have to be good to get one [a badge]’; Sarah (12) said, ‘if we’ve been good we can get a little badge’; Amy (13) said that ‘if you work hard and be good, then you get one at the end of the lesson’; and finally, Emily (12) told me a badge is awarded on the basis of ‘how good you’ve been and like when you’ve worked hard’. Thinking in particular about the marginal qualities of ‘risk-​taking’ behaviours is interesting when considering the centrality of ‘good behaviour’ and rule following at the school. Again, this returns us to the idea that it is only the ‘legitimated’ forms of ‘risk-​taking’ that are condoned, which is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. Teacher responses about the purpose and use of the badges ranged from: ignoring the scheme where they could, to a light touch application, to embedding the badges in all their teaching. Focusing in here on the more ‘positive’ responses by teachers I highlight how these were often the most contradictory spaces; this is not to undermine agency but to restate the disconnected way in which the scheme came about, continues and projects itself into the future. Teacher Fahim saw entrepreneurship as central to his teaching, as he told me: I use it [entrepreneurship] in everything that I do; whenever we have a task I always make the students relate it to a professional environment or think about how we might approach the task in creative ways. I think it’s really important to make their education relevant to them.

Milltown Academy is a place he can practise entrepreneurship, although it was not the place he credits with instilling his entrepreneurial credentials. As he went on to tell me: I was seven year old and these boys came after me at school, only seven at the time but it was a White versus Asian thing … they really did me over, punching ‘n kicking me in the head, really nasty … and then they just left me in the snow. Luckily my brothers came and got me but imagine that, seven year old and being left basically for dead … but I think social entrepreneurship is something I’ve been part of that all my life, I’ve been through that all my life, struggling, defending myself, I’ve been part of that all my life, it’s all about survival really in’t it, that’s the underlying factor it’s all about survival. (Fahim, 40, teacher)

Fahim attributed being entrepreneurial as a learned tool through struggle, and for survival, seeing ‘entrepreneurship’ in his survival tactics to some of the violent racist encounters he faced as a child. Necessity and survival

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underlie his associations with entrepreneurship, and although he is drawn in by the space to practise this in his professional life, he also historicises the way in which individuals at the school were not ‘in deficit’ of these qualities before the academy came about. Thinking through the inherently contradictory nature of social life here, antagonistically attachments to neoliberalised entrepreneurial agendas such as that in the school have also been seen in other contexts to perpetuate these very racisms (Kulz, 2014). This account is also important as it irrefutably interconnects structural conditions of ‘race’ and class. This final point is particularly salient in a school such as Milltown, which is over 90% white British (inclusive of both the student and teaching body). It also brings us back to questions of ethnography, and the wheres and hows of research. Even within studies of a majority white and working-​class population, issues of ‘race’ are neither removed from this process, nor marginal; they are a central ‘modality through which class is lived’ (Brah, 1996; Hall et al., 1978: 394). Focusing on the processes through which racialised ‘differences’ are produced, and reproduced and negotiated (West and Fenstermaker, 1995), gives us an account of how problematic notions of ‘deficit’ are produced for classed subjects in the academy. More generally, whether that is through analysing experiences of racism or the privileges of whiteness, ‘It is possible to use [or centre] race as an analytical tool without regressing to the separatist margins…’ (Letin, 2020: 180 [brackets added]). This in turn positions the majority white working-​class lives at the academy as a group that must be considered through a further useful keyoxymoron, that is, the ‘privileged-​ disadvantaged’ subject. A subject that is both positioned and positioning in their proximity to, or distance from, whiteness.

Conclusion In this chapter I have outlined the purpose and value of the critical ethnographic method. Through a critical situatedness both within and outside Milltown Academy, I have highlighted the values of a critical approach that engages with multiple forms of power, process and positionality in research. Documenting my own approach, I have considered the methodological usefulness of a socio-​historically ‘broad’ ethnographic analysis, which centres ‘contradiction’ in thinking, analysis and writing. In particular I devised a series of ‘keyoxymorons’ to reflect on sites of ‘struggle’ and ‘difference’ at the academy, in reflexive and simultaneous ways. Notably, I have shown how oxymorons, although seemingly ‘true opposites’, are in fact generative sites for research, thinking and writing. This extends de Certeau’s (1992) notion that oxymorons make ‘a hole in language’ into a methodological

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tool where we can also find space to be reflexive in data collection, analyses and writing. Working through the three main entrepreneurial initiatives at Milltown Community Academy, I have given details of the history-​as-​present contexts that brought about academy conversion, and also saw the sponsor’s continued and rapid expansion of their entrepreneurial programme. I have shown how this has come about despite the ‘failure’ of the schemes, which have been ignored, mismeasured or mislocated as ‘successes’. In the context of Milltown, narratives and measurements of ‘failure’ have the capacity to be constantly tied to the individual, and variably ignored by the institution. In addition, I highlighted how official definitions, interpretations and associations of ‘entrepreneurship’ at the academy claim to offer a new and opportune break from past failures, disadvantage and proximity to necessity, but are disconnected from structural and material conditions of Milltown students and the wider space of the town. Moreover, these official definitions become legitimised and reified as part of the process, which centralises value on the largely unfounded concerns of sponsorship and marginalises accounts and experiences of those who are subject to the changes. Importantly, this reproduces rather than reforms inequalities. I suggest these issues go beyond inherent ambiguity founded in institutions and are part of a process of wilful ambiguity and ignorance. There are political, ideological and agnotological assumptions underpinning the entrepreneurial agenda, ones that will see it continually reformed, rather than abolished. This cannot and should not be the basis of our public education system.

Notes 1 The academy, related sponsorship and all participants in this study have been anonymised and given pseudonyms. In addition, all ‘quotes’ from academy documentation (e.g. website) have been adapted to make them non-​traceable sources. The context and words used are as similar as possible to avoid a change in meaning or emphasis. 2 An unsatisfactory rating given by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), a regulatory body in English schooling. 3 This is five A*–​C grades including Maths and English and was held as the benchmark of the expected standard across secondary education. This system is no longer in use and was replaced by a 1–​9 GCSE grading system in 2018. 4 Pseudonym used. 5 This initiative was in place at the time of research; since then there have been adaptations to the Enterprise Bridge, and it now operates for student-​led businesses only. I will outline details about this later in the chapter.

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6 As released by the government and includes GCSE and A-​level results for more than 5,000 secondary schools and sixth forms in the country. 7 The costs of the school building were made up of actual costs for materials and labour, and the legal costs of two-​year proceedings between the academy sponsor and local residents over the site of the new school building (see Morrin, 2015 for details). 8 There is notable overlap between these categories, and many writers mentioned span more than one of the areas of thought outlined. 9 Ten months of an initial study and a further two more months revisiting and carrying out final aspects of the research. 10 I was given an office on the Enterprise Bridge. 11 The company running these awards is one of the ‘Big Four’ auditors in the UK. They also acted as judges. The quote here was given as a statement from the company. 12 Prior to this, it had been identified as both an Educational Action Zone (E.A.Z.), which attempted to raise educational standards in ‘disadvantaged’ areas, (DfEE, 1998) and the Excellence in Cities Scheme (E.I.C.) that was specifically aimed at improving inner city education (DfEE, 2001). 13 Conservative–​Liberal Democrat Coalition (2010–​15), Conservative–​DUP partnership (2017–​19) and Conservative majority government (2015–​17 and 2019 onwards).

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Conclusion Embedding an educational settlement: coercion, contestation and localised struggles Christy Kulz, Kirsty Morrin and Ruth McGinity This collection has made a key contribution to knowledge by developing a greater understanding of how the policy of academisation comes to shape and be shaped by everyday practices and localities. By examining the everyday impact of academisation through daily practices spanning a range of geographical sites and social contexts, this collection has illuminated the valuable role that qualitative and ethnographic methods and methodologies play in understanding how inequalities become manifest and rooted within and through routine practice. Two phenomena –​that of the current form of the contemporary English state education system and methodological innovation –​are examined and applied throughout this collection across a diverse range of policy contexts, academy school types, conversion stories, school locations, participant samples, and student and local demographics. Within this, authors in this collection have drawn on empirical research and data from single academy schools –​both primary (Leaney) and secondary institutions (Blood, Morrin, Pennacchia), a free school (Jørgenson and Allan), and Multi-​Academy Trusts (MATs) (Ryan-​Atkin and Rowley, Wilkins). Chapters by Leaney and Morrin also collected data from sites connected to educational institutions –​a community centre, and local business start-​ups operating in an academy, respectively –​highlighting the importance of a broader and connected approach to understanding educational initiatives. Geographically the work in this collection is spread across a number of locations throughout the South-​East (Leaney, Wilkins), Midlands (Blood, Pennacchia), and North-​West (Morrin, Ryan-​Atkin and Rowley) of England. The ethnographic and qualitative methods used within situated localities have highlighted how there are different discursive approaches to academisation in accordance with the local context and the site’s historical framework; however, academisation’s fundamental ordering structures remain similar. In a persuasive call for a more coherent critical geographies of education subfield, Nyugen and her colleagues (2017) describe how racialised

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school closures in ethnic minorities areas of the urban United States are co-​ constitutive of wider trends in neoliberal governance. In the English context, rather than closures we can speak of ‘conversions’ within not only ethnically diverse and poor urban areas, but also within rural areas or seaside towns. This ‘conversion’ process skirts around the reality that conversion often embeds a closure or discontinuity within it, as the institutional ethos and staff often shift. Yet regardless of whether it is a closure or conversion, critical geographers of education (Gulson, 2011; Waters, 2016) are right to argue that schools are not bounded containers but deeply tied to the circulation of capital, people, ideas and the making of urban space. While scholars have shown how education policy works in relationship with displacement, gentrification and the accrual of raced and classed advantage in London (Butler et al., 2013; Reay et al., 2011), more specific engagement with how academy policy and MATs are deployed across different geographical areas of England remains a research area ripe for further development. The collection has emphasised a lack of critical work on academies by social scientists using qualitative and ethnographic methods. Data was collected through a plethora of qualitative methodologies including critical and ethnographic approaches, and in-​depth and intimate interviewing. Actors in each study outlined in the book ranged from students, teachers, other staff and parents at academy schools, to school governors and trustees, as well as local community workers and business people. Each chapter has also explored a specific set of practices and processes associated with their given sites, offering critical commentary on emerging forms of governance and gaps between policy and practice (Pennacchia, Ryan-​Atkin and Rowley, Wilkins), special educational needs agendas (Jørgenson and Allan), school ‘choice’ (Leaney), ‘raising aspirations’ policies (Blood), and entrepreneurship agendas (Morrin). Through drawing on such a diversity of research techniques, actors and initiatives, the collection has highlighted how inequitable structures are lived, and reproduced or resisted, in the academies programme. This research works to unpick the potential disjuncture between policy proclamations and what is unfolding on the ground, exploring the relationship between macro and micro, rhetoric and practice, structure and agency and blurry ambiguities in-​between. Here rich qualitative work can function as a way to question instead of reproducing the status quo. Held together by the critical tradition, a number of critical qualitative methods, and social theories, a vital contribution of this collection is examining, and illuminating, the importance of critical social theory to methodology. In particular, the thinking and writing of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Beverley Skeggs and Stuart Hall have been applied through a range of associated critical concepts to authors’ methodological design, analytical approaches and writing techniques. The chapters have critically engaged

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with, utilised and pushed forward theories of governance (Ryan-​Atkin and Rowley, Wilkins), habitus (Leaney and Blood), discursive technologies (Pennacchia), and the centring of ‘contradiction’ through ‘keyoxymorons’ (Morrin), while interrogating the boundaries of inclusion within free schools (Jørgenson and Allan). Importantly, the different approaches applied in the collection have produced different kinds of data that allow for different understandings of the social world. They cover the similarities, differences, complexities and contractions inherent in academies, and do not interrogate the academies programme on its own terms of quantification and acceleration. In turn, they provide new resources or ways of thinking about this educational juncture and possible futures. Three substantive themes of privatisation, practice and reflexivity organised the contributions; however, the chapter content –​much like the academies programme itself –​is often overlapping, complex and contradictory in nature. The chapters from Wilkins, and Ryan-​Atkin and Rowley for example, have evidenced how privatisation manifests through the growing ‘professionalisation’ of governing bodies within academy and MAT sites. These initial chapters unpacked how this everyday professionalisation can lead to both parents and those with ‘insider knowledge’ being excluded from participating in education. Wilkins shows how highly regulated or conditioned forms of participation in education are necessary to maintain hegemony in a post-​authoritarian context. Privatisation works through the establishment of large MATs that create powerful new bureaucracies and work as a shadow state; however, these new formations are not wholly private, but link the daily operations within the school ever more closely with the requirements of a centralised state. Ryan-​Atkin and Rowley also highlight how private and public interests have been blurred and reconstituted through academisation, where MAT schools must depend on the integrity of individual, powerful MAT CEOs. Both chapters show the contradiction between the promises of academy school policies which claim democratic and accountable governing practices, and the lived reality of these processes where narrow, standards-​ focused agendas look to reaffirm rather than critically engage with centralised policy. Although their data highlighted similar issues, the chapters show a diversity of approaches when using in-​depth and qualitative methodologies which simultaneously highlight the value of both a critical distance from and an intimate closeness to their respective research sites. The collection examines disciplinary regimes, and focuses on how institutions ‘school’ bodies within the second part of the book, by exploring practices, strategies and formations of the everyday within academy schools. Countering the primary focus of the collection, through considering the structure of free schools, Jørgenson and Allan’s contribution instead points to the daily practices of a free school as it seeks to mobilise what freedoms

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it has been bestowed to build students’ social capital. Through interrogating everyday practices within the school, the authors conclude the school’s unusual approach is achieving some of its institutional aims by fostering diverse social relationships. However, Jørgenson and Allan also highlight the methodological challenges of attempting to assess the value of relationships; recognising interpersonal relationships as a key dimension of learning stands in direct contrast to the individualistic rhetoric promoted by academisation. In Blood’s chapter, a new modern physical environment and regime of uniform requirements professes to address a localised lack of aspiration. These two chapters hone in on narratives and practices of ‘social justice’ in their respective schools, each laying out how their institution claims to promote and tackle issues of inequality. Blood has centred attention on agendas to ‘raise aspirations’, and outlines how the academy has failed to deliver on these promises. Importantly, Blood argues that for working-​class students aspirations are not lacking, rather that they are difficult to enact. Jørgenson and Allan have instead focused on the relative ‘freedoms’ their actors encountered to implement a more just model of special educational needs learning. Moreover, both Blood and Leaney’s chapters examine how the body is regulated through school life, with Leaney asserting that the practices within her research site reified the body as the site of learning, enabling a heightened focus on corporeal discipline through the structuring of consent. In Leaney’s chapter, national educational discourses become mediated through localised constructs of ‘community needs’. Additionally, the localised construct of these ‘needs’ and how they should be addressed by academisation are also explored by Blood, Pennacchia and Morrin, in particular, the uses and misuses of ‘place’-​based narratives in their academy sites. Overall, they argue that problematic class-​based, deficit models are attached to locales and people that reinforce the idea that academy conversion is needed, and cultural intervention necessary. In turn, this serves to ignore material conditions, and re-​entrenches existing inequalities. Moreover, the ethnographic approaches in Leaney, Pennacchia and Morrin’s work have highlighted the importance of critical, historical and reflective understandings of the field, an approach that allows for multifaceted, and ‘broad’ understandings of even single academy sites. Practices of reflexivity in the research process form the focal point of Pennacchia and Morrin’s chapters. Pennacchia interrogates the notion of change resting at the heart of the sponsored academies discourse, describing how her approach offers one limited, albeit illuminating, way of knowing the academy school that moves between seductive binaries of resistance and compliance to understand the complex relationships at hand. While Pennacchia describes how Foucault’s mode of criticality can be a stumbling block, she also describes how it helpfully highlights that locating where

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to lodge blame for unjust structures and practices is a complex issue and perhaps not the most valuable task for the researcher to pursue. Morrin also refutes easy binaries in her chapter by centring the generative sites of contradiction in research through the concept of ‘keyoxymorons’. Official definitions and interpretations of entrepreneurship claim a new break from past failures and disadvantages, but, as in Blood’s chapter, these claims are disconnected from the structural and material conditions of Milltown. Yet Morrin also argues in her analysis that this disconnect oversteps the ambiguities of institutions to function as a process of wilful ignorance. While the collection evidences how the academies programme entrenches rather than reforms inequalities in contrast to its rhetorical promises of social justice, this diagnosis has also been queried within the collection by showing the capacity of specific contexts to mobilise and tailor these reforms to promote less hierarchical educational structures (Jørgenson and Allan). Yet there are paradoxical limits to the freedom afforded by academisation; even though alternative visions may be championed through mobilising the slice of autonomy on offer through academisation, webs of high-​stake accountability, performativity regimes and resource shortages provoked by a climate of austerity continue to negate the efficacy of institutional intentions. Centrally, the collection shows that the effect of these policies is not monolithic or wholly predictable, but mediated by local structures and actors, as well as specific historical contexts. However, it is important to emphasise that the policy architecture of academisation with its focus on high-​stakes testing, individual achievement and inherent democratic deficits, inherently cultivates particular value systems that actively shape our orientations towards ourselves and others that can be broadly described as neoliberal in nature. In rounding out the collection, the conclusion will now examine how academisation has been normalised and embedded over the past decade as the singular, future educational format in England. By making a short detour through contrasting political and cultural milieus and spaces, we examine the continuing hold of marketisation and casualisation on English education policy and practice and how these forms of schooling connect to practices of racialisation and classification, nationalism and authoritarianism; yet we also explore how grassroots, oppositional forms of knowing are reflexively speaking back to power and privilege.

‘Education, education, education’ gives way to academisation, academisation, academisation Blair’s much-​cited mantra has had a new ring to it since 2010, with a focus on education tilting into a focus on the academisation of education.

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While academies overall have routinely failed to meet the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) own self-​professed goals and quality measures, these deficiencies have not deterred academisation from being education’s future direction. The great rollout continues with little political opposition from within Westminster, as the institution of academisation has become normalised and embedded over the past decade. In 2014 the goal of complete system academisation was not publicly acknowledged, with the DfE’s schools commissioner Frank Green remarking in an education select committee meeting that moving towards a full academy system ‘is certainly not the current policy of the department’ (Parliament TV, 2014). Yet one month prior at the Academies Show at London’s Excel Centre, Dominic Herrington, Director of the DfE’s Academies Delivery Group, announced that academies marked ‘an irreversible change in the school system’ (Kulz, 2014). In an ethnographic account, Kulz (2014) described: ‘One civil servant I spoke with said the speed of the changes was not problematic. The civil servant said the department’s attitude was “4,000 down, 20,000 to go”, in a sweep that included free schools, studio schools, and university technical colleges’. As of winter 2021, the number now stands 9,773 down; however, the 365 schools en route to academisation will take that number over the 10,000 mark (DfE, 2021), leaving less than 10,000 conversions to go. This gives a clear indication from the Conservative Party that total academisation is the single, future model. In 2016, then Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan announced she would introduce legislation calling for the blanket conversion of all schools into academies by 2022. Morgan had to back down on this proclamation after a cross-​party outcry; however, she asserted that the goal of full academisation remained, albeit through a different route (Adams, 2016). While the challenges of Brexit followed by a global pandemic pushed full academisation off the political stage for the last several years, it resumed centrality with Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson’s speech at the 2021 Confederation of School Trusts conference. Williamson announced: ‘I want to see us break away from our current “pick and mix” structure of a school system and move towards a single model, one that is built on a foundation of strong Multi-​Academy Trusts, and I’m actively looking at how we can make that happen.’ Teaching leaders were quick to criticise his focus on structure, regarding funding issues and attainment gaps as far more pressing in the wake of a pandemic. Through Williamson’s proclamation we can see further changing rationales employed to argue for academisation: first, there was not enough differentiation and choice within the system, while now a ‘pick and mix’ system contains too much ­differentiation. Multiple lines of contradictory reasoning are pragmatically adopted to justify this intervention, yet the values and premise of academisation have not

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been fundamentally contested by any major political party. Angela Rayner announced in 2018 as shadow education secretary that Labour would scrap free schools and provide more democratic oversight for academies by the Local Authority (Sabbagh, 2018); however, she did not call for a stop to academisation or a return of academies to Local Authority oversight. Academies continue to enjoy a broad cross-​party consensus, with few visions offered of an alternative educational future outside of a marketised educational settlement’s logic. The political ideologies promoted by the academies programme and the DfE’s policies over the past 11 years approach rising poverty as something to be remedied through aspiration and social mobility dreams. Yet the ideologies promoted by those in power are being actively contested at the grassroots level. Despite a lack of formal political opposition to academisation, opposition has been taking place through networks of parents, teachers, youth workers, students and concerned citizens (or what would be derogatorily referenced as ‘the Blob’). Groups like the Anti-​Academies Alliance, the Local Schools Network and numerous education unions have been consistent and vocal critics of academisation as a concept. What political ideologies are deemed unacceptable by the DfE can be seen in sharp relief through the recent controversial statutory curriculum guidance published in September 2020. The government banned schools from using literature from any organisations taking an ‘extreme political stance’, including those that expressed the desire to end capitalism (Merrick, 2020). Calls for a curriculum that includes Black history by movements like Black Lives Matter have fallen on deaf ears; while Black history will be mandatory in Welsh schools from 2022 and Scottish schools have developed anti-​racism resources for staff, no such similar progress has been made in England (see Purdy-​Moore, 2021; Scottish Government, 2021). Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman, founding member of ARK schools management team, pushed back against implementing a more diverse curriculum, calling efforts to do so an attempt to ‘commandeer’ schools (Weale, 2020). In response to the DfE’s September 2020 curriculum guidance directing schools to not draw on either anti-​capitalist messages or materials from groups that contain ‘victim narratives that are harmful to British society’ (Mohdin, 2020), the Coalition of Anti-​Racist Education and Black Educators Alliance threatened legal action due to the limits this places on the teaching of anti-​racism in schools. Rather than waiting for positive change to come from the government, grassroots education groups like the Black Curriculum are creating their own schemes to change the English school curriculum (Batty et al., 2021). To conclude this volume, we would now like to reflect on how a site of institutional power and a recent site of political protest highlights how academisation functions not only as a policy structure, but as a social and

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cultural intervention. This concern is central to the collection’s contribution and remains a research area ripe for further exploration and analysis. While the push towards total academisation could be read as a straightforward fixation on structures, these structures connect to what forms of content are being enabled, sidelined or promoted. By reflecting on the promotion and contestation of this educational settlement, we can also potentially highlight how fundamental contradictions inherent to neoliberalism may surface through academisation.

Private interests: marketisation, casualisation and authoritarianism Evidence of the ‘privatisation’ of education through the academies programme is documented in this collection, and by scholars more generally (see for example, Mansell, 2017; McGinity, 2017; Morrin, 2020). Here ‘privatisation’ is not seen as a ‘for-​profit’ venture, but rather in the narrowing of democratic structures, decision-​making power, and the installation of private investments and interests in the public education system. From business professionals in governing bodies to entrepreneurial curricula in schools, throughout the book there is engagement with, and evidence of, the everyday ways in which private interests come about and sustain themselves in academy institutions. In order to more closely reflect on some of the private ventures embedded within the academies programmes’ approach, let us take a short trip back to the Academies Show at London’s Excel Centre in 2017. Taking place each year since 2010, the Academies Show brings together a range of educational, business and political actors to discuss themes ranging from governance to leadership to MATs, with the central focus on promoting academisation and the formation of MATs. The following field notes are taken from Kulz’s attendance of the 2017 show: At the entrance of the cavernous main hall there were a legion of people with PS Financials T-​shirts milling around with scanners. I was directed to a desk where they printed me out a lanyard, complete with a whistle (I am not certain what the intended purpose of this whistle was). PS Financials was the registration sponsor as well as the business, finance and benchmarking zone sponsor of the show. With the strap line, ‘Powering better business decisions’, they make award-​winning financial management software and provide accounting, purchasing, budgeting and reporting solutions to over 3,100 organisations in 58 countries. Their website described how the ‘academy market’ continued to grow with cross-​party political support. Myriad stands selling everything from playground furniture to data management systems to electronic whiteboards lined the entrance to the central theatre, attesting to the scope of this market. In the theatre Tom Clark, then head of Freedom and Autonomy for Schools National Association, was already giving his presentation to a

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packed audience; unable to find a seat, I stood at the back. The message ‘if you think you are a victim, you will be’ illuminated the large screens showing his PowerPoint presentation. Clark urged schools to take control of their situation and destiny by proactively responding to the educational landscape. It felt like a palpable climate of fear was being created amongst teachers and school management staff in the wake of austerity politics and chronic underfunding. This fear of victimhood could only be alleviated by successfully beating your competitor for scarce resources, and stood in stark opposition to any notion of collegiality amongst schools.

Sir Andrew Carter, CEO at South Farnham School Educational Trust, took the stage next and offered what were perhaps the most obviously controversial comments of the morning session. He suggested that, due to the financial restrictions on schools, we would have to look to parents for additional funding. Murmurs rippled across the audience and people shifted on their plastic chairs. A headteacher from Thanet in Kent spoke up, demanding to understand how this would work; he works in an impoverished part of the country where parents could not afford to fund education and this would be a disaster for his school. Carter said that he did not want to go down this route, but that we were in uncharted times and in this sort of setting you had to dare to ‘think the unthinkable’. To back up his assertion, he cited the NHS as an example. Carter was born in the year that it started and it was meant to cover him from cradle to grave. But at some point eye care had come out of this coverage, and later dental care had come out and now we all expected to pay for prescriptions at the end of our GP visit. We needed to get to grips with ‘the real world’ that we are living in. Another teacher stood up and asserted that this sort of attitude meant that we should just accept budget cuts to education rather than fighting them. This was conceding defeat, and, as educationalists, we should not accept this and we should remember what we are meant to be doing. Carter half-​heartedly said he thought it was good that teachers were ‘passionate’ and ‘well-​meaning’ and they should ‘keep up the fight’, but they also needed to live in the real world and deal with the present realities. Debbie Clinton, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Diverse Academies Learning Partnership, chimed in on a similar note in her presentation. Clinton commented that we have to ‘revisit the roots of the welfare state’ and consider how other European states do not pay for everything. I am not sure which European states she was referencing, as no other European countries charge parents for compulsory education. Clinton’s suggestion that we revisit the roots of the welfare state suggests that this formation was either originally questionable or at least outdated and now illegitimate. Instead, Clinton urged schools to use the MAT structure to achieve economies of scale (thereby recreating a non-​democratic form of the LEA), describing how her

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chain was performing better than ever despite being poorer than ever. She deduced that therefore there was no correlation between money and results, emphasising how it was all about governance, repeating the often-​used mantra that ‘it was all about getting the right people around the table’. Clinton gave another presentation later that afternoon on the topic of what joined-​up school leadership looked like. She put up a slide about securing efficiencies within her MAT: number four on the slide was ‘employment contract flexibility’ and number five was ‘staff reduction programme’. A woman sitting next to me joked to her colleague that that would be their jobs gone then. After talking in the first session about how money did not matter, Clinton was making savings through creating precarious labour conditions or firing staff. At the end of the morning roundtable, Clark added that teachers needed to be prepared to ‘think the unthinkable’ and ‘we must ask why about everything’. Yet his asking of ‘why’ did not pertain to structural issues, but instead referred to more narrow matters –​did you need this staff member or service? This questioning is presented as brave and radical, rather than a deeply conservative concession to the status quo where budget cuts are perceived as natural inevitabilities rather than political decisions. This promotion of a faux criticality positions teachers as unrealistically idealistic and out of touch with reality. In this climate of anxiety, top-​down decisions are not worth contesting; accommodation is the only realistic option and the onus is placed on individual teachers and schools to avoid becoming victims. Academisation, or most particularly the MAT structure, is featured as the way to avoid demise. Despite the claims that academisation and MATs provide more economical forms of education, the enormous cost of the academies programme contradicts this claim. The expanding layers of highly paid senior management at MATs, the cost of conversion and the expense of re-​brokering ‘failing’ schools to new MATs is immense. Over £31 million pounds was spent re-​brokering schools between MATs over a five-​year period (Bousted, 2019), while NASUWT national president Phil Kemp described the high salaries being paid to MAT CEOs as ‘verging on criminality’ (Weale, 2021). Despite the DfE writing to MAT trusts asking them to justify their high rates of pay to executives and headteachers, this measure has not curtailed the emergence of a ‘super league’ of highly paid CEOs (Belger, 2021). The question remains here, how are these private investments continuing to be framed as in the public interest?

Grassroots practice: speaking back to power and privilege ‘Practice’ has been a central feature of this collection, in theory, method and data collected. In particular, there was a focus on the ways in which the

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everyday practice of academy ‘visions’ and ethos’ embedded bodily regimes, through instilling new forms of disciplinary practice. These regimes have been shown to be targeted at specific communities, such as working-​class and ethnic minority groups through different forms of so-​called ‘necessary’ cultural intervention. Another key component of academisation is the frequent use of hard discipline and instatement of rigid codes of conduct and student uniform regulations. The historical regulation of populations as closely tied to racialisation, classification and nationalism are evident in the authoritarian educational approaches taken by many academies that seek to reform urban populations through punitive rules, regulations and character-​building (Kulz, 2017; Morrin, 2018). Detailed lists of rules surrounding the school uniform work to define how the body can be presented; this rigid attention to uniform requirements and physical comportment comes up numerous times in the collection (see for example, Blood and Leaney). Most notably, there is a relationship between academisation and the increased institution of detailed, rigid uniforms and punitive measures for infractions. While uniforms were not an anomaly in the English system prior to academisation, the trend towards ever-​stricter uniform policies appears to have been accelerated through this process. This highlights the closely intertwined and dependent relationship between neoliberal policy interventions and the development of a populist authoritarianism. There is no shortage of examples of children being placed in isolation or sent home for small details of their uniform being incorrect. Recently, an autistic boy was placed into isolation at Marine Academy Plymouth for wearing black trainers to school; his low-​income mother cited the expense of new shoes in the wake of the pandemic (Eve, 2021). The rebranding exercise prompted by academisation has meant that new and expensive branded uniforms are often required; MPs have noted how poorer parents have avoided certain schools due to uniform costs of £340 per year (Pidd, 2019). In a notable contrast to England, many European countries including Germany, Italy, France and Sweden do not require students to wear school uniforms; in fact, the Swedish school inspectorate ruled in 2017 that requiring students to wear a uniform is a human rights violation (Hofverberg, 2018). The increase of practices like off-​rolling and exclusion have also been related to the process of academisation. Academies have been shown to have higher rates of fixed-​term and permanent exclusions (Speck, 2021), while fixed-​term exclusions reached a 13-​year high in 2018–​19 and permanent exclusions were up 60% from five years before (Harris, 2021). Outwood Grange Academies, a large trust that runs 32 schools, had some of the highest fixed exclusion rates in England (Staufenberg, 2018); Outwood Academy in Ormesby, Middlesborough excluded 41% of its students in one year. Notably, Outwood Grange’s CEO Martyn Oliver was chosen by Boris

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Johnson to be a member of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities that released a controversial report in 2021. This choice of Oliver signals the ideological orientations of Johnson’s government, given the well-​known links between race, class, special educational needs and the likelihood of school exclusion. The use of ‘consequences rooms’ or ‘isolation booths’ where a child sits alone in silence for numerous hours facing forward and motionless has become a widely used form of ‘internal exclusion’, which is currently being investigated by the Children’s Commissioner. This practice, used with children as young as five, has been called ‘barbaric’ by parents and condemned by educational psychologists as a mental health hazard (Perraudin, 2018). While this is not to infer a strictly causal relationship between the rise of punitive, authoritarian practices and academisation, these trends are certainly related phenomena that form part of a wider attitude and orientation towards young people that requires deeper research scrutiny. Now we will travel west across London from the Excel Centre where Kulz attended the 2017 Academies Show to the borough of Westminster. Here at Pimlico Academy some four years later students and teachers have taken a very different approach to getting to grips with the ‘real world’ –​ albeit perhaps not from the angle that either Clark or Carter had envisioned. The faux radical musings of the Academies Show stand in productive contrast to the recent happenings at Pimlico Academy where students have been daring to ‘think the unthinkable’ by openly protesting against how their school is being run and the values it promotes (Parveen and Thomas, 2021). The happenings at Pimlico Academy show how academisation, nationalism, race and class are converging within this urban space. In September 2020, Oxford graduate Daniel Smith was appointed headteacher of Pimlico Academy after working at Quest Academy in South Croydon and Ebbsfleet Academy in Kent; under Smith’s leadership, Ebbsfleet Academy became known for its confrontational approach. Last July, Smith sent an introductory note to parents and students which read: Through both the formal and informal curriculum, students will accumulate cultural capital and develop good character. They will become thoughtful and polite young people, interested in the world around them, in the arts, in culture, in travel and in politics … they will leave ready and eager to lead their lives as effective, well-​rounded and responsible citizens. (Read, 2021)

Smith employs a familiar rhetoric whereby the overwhelmingly working-​ class and ethnic minority student body of Pimlico Academy will be transformed through education into something better; they are in need of cultural capital and character that is inferred as sorely lacking from their lives. Smith introduced a new uniform policy upon arrival that stated hijabs should not be ‘too colourful’ and cover all the girls’ hair, while hairstyles ‘that block the

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view of others’ are not permitted. Pupils argued that these racially discriminatory rules more heavily targeted Muslim students and black hairstyles. A student-​created petition against the school’s new uniform code was signed by 1,500 students, teachers and parents against a backdrop of growing teacher and student discontent at the head of Pimlico’s management style. Students and teachers have also critiqued the cancelling of Black History Month and rewriting of the history curriculum, with references to ethnic minority communities removed, a lack of attention to sexual harassment cases, and the sudden and prominent placement of the British flag in front of the school. Smith was also resoundingly unpopular with his staff: 32 staff members left at the end of the 2021 school year, while 98% of staff voted that they had no confidence in his leadership and went on strike shortly after the student sit-​in due to being ‘ignored and disrespected’ by senior management (Sheppard, 2021). Smith’s ‘tough love’ management style is hardly new (see Kulz, 2015b), yet organised student petitions, sit-​down protests and the burning of the Union Jack have made national headlines. This notoriety also ties to the school’s connectivity to Westminster’s halls of power; Pimlico Academy is part of Lord Nash’s Future Academies chain. Despite their lack of educational experience, the chain was founded by Nash and his wife Caroline in 2005. Lord Nash’s role as Conservative Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and CEO of Future Academies drew attention as a conflict of interest, yet he continued in both posts from 2013 to 2017. Pimlico students’ questioning of the parameters and values of their education comes from a radically different standpoint than that promoted by the Academies Show’s rhetoric; it comes from knowledge of daily, inequitable power dynamics and an understanding of the growing disconnect between educational forms and curriculums promoted and the lives of young people in twenty-​first-​century Britain.

The Union Jack: connecting nationalism, race and authoritarian educational forms The Union Jack’s sudden placement in front of Pimlico Academy acted as a provocative symbol asserting what form of British values would be recognised by the new headteacher. Curtailing Black History Month and instating a whitewashed curriculum simultaneously arrived with the flag’s erection; this simultaneous erasure and assertion came to comprise a unified gesture. In late September 2020, children from Pimlico took down the newly installed flag, carried it to the Churchill Gardens housing estate nearby and burned it (Parveen, 2021). Churchill Gardens is a post-​war housing estate built on the River Thames and where many Pimlico Academy students

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live; it borders Chelsea, Westminster and Belgravia –​home to some of the wealthiest residents on the planet (Burrows et al., 2016). Future Academies says the union flag was a ‘symbol of the school’s commitment to fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs’. Yet Tomlinson points out that ‘No amount of teaching questionable “British values” will prevent scepticism about whose values are being promoted’ (2019: 223). Tomlinson cites the problematic issue of telling of stories that could reflect British traditions and values as many of them are ‘highly questionable in terms of democracy, tolerance and justice, with imperial contacts largely taking the forms of military conquest, appropriation of land and wealth, slavery, forced labour and denial of human rights’ (2019: 32). Despite the confluence between British values, the flag and empire’s cruelties, Daily Express commentator Cronin asked ‘what causes a school student to protest about a school’s policy on clothing and hair, but then to burn the Union Flag, a symbol of our country which has little to do with school rules?’ (Cronin, 2021). Clearly the deep connections between nationalism and race symbolised through the Union Jack are lost on this commentator. Gilroy asserts how the embeddedness of the flag in colonial and imperial history is something that must be taken seriously (2002: xxxi). Yet for some, these embedded histories are not to be reckoned with; instead, critical histories of the empire should be eradicated and a revisionist Rule Britannia tale of domination should be reinstated –​as with Gove’s uncritical promotion of our ‘island story’. These issues woven into the flag have a lot to do with schools in terms of the curriculum they present, their orientation to students, the way that bodies are regulated, and who is acceptable and who is seen to require transformation or exclusion. The nationalism embodied with the Union Jack infers exclusions, as ‘Nationalism is always, in the final instance, about its own exclusionary racisms –​anything else is simply a convenient bedfellow rallied to make its appeal more likely’ (James and Valluvan, 2018: 7). We see the confluence between nationalism, race and education recognised in campaigns like the Impact of Omission, Rhodes Must Fall, and decolonise the curriculum. These confluences have not been lost on Pimlico pupils, with graffiti reading ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack’ (Inside Croydon, 2021) scrawled outside of Pimlico Academy’s gates. Perhaps the students are referencing Gilroy’s seminal text, perhaps the old racist football chant, but regardless of their citation source, the feeling and experience of racism’s endurance and its deep intersections with class in Britain is clear some 34 years after Gilroy’s writing. The academy head’s confrontational mobilisation of this symbol speaks to how nationalism is working in Britain in this twenty-​ first-​ century

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post-​Brexit moment. Daily Express commentator Cronin also fondly recalls the empire as giving the British freedom and power, representing a time when the people of the UK realised ‘why you need commerce to build a great nation and great people to run and defend it’ and that these historical figures are now ‘sneered at by an increasingly vocal group of liberalists’. Unlike Cronin, the students –​many of whom are from ethnic minority backgrounds –​are far less likely to have warm memories of imperial conquest on their minds. They occupy a very different positionality within Britain (Virdee, 2019). They may have been galvanised by the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of police violence or by movements to decolonise the curriculum. Perhaps the tragedy of Grenfell Tower five miles northwest of Pimlico in 2017 that killed 72 Londoners mainly from ethnic minority and working-​class backgrounds is still fresh in their minds. Or perhaps the shameful deportation of Windrush migrant-​citizens or the disproportionate effect of Covid-​19 on ethnic minority and economically vulnerable Britons form part of the frame of their action. In fact, in listening to an interview with two articulate young female students from Pimlico Academy who were instrumental in organising the sit-​in, we can see a common-​sense awareness of how raced, classed and gendered power dynamics coalesce in and through their everyday lives and through their struggle at the school (LRSH, 2021). In the words of Desha, one of the protesting students interviewed: ‘The protest itself was really, it was kind of like a symbol of look, this is not okay we really need to do something especially ‘cos the protest happened around the time when there was a report by the government saying that there’s no institutional racism’ (LRSH, 2021). Desha is speaking to the then recently published Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report (Sewell, 2021), which we shall return to in the final section of this chapter.

(De)mobilising the thoughtful, responsible and interested citizen? The importance of ‘reflexivity’ in qualitative and ethnographic approaches has been explored within this collection. Methodologically the chapters work against a metricised and quantified model of determining the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of an academy school, and instead they offer another way to examine, unpack and illuminate the everyday ways in which academy schools operate. Specifically, the qualitative methods applied here ask questions about why and how inequalities are sustained, as well as speaking to the dynamism and changeability of research sites and participants’ narratives. The book also acknowledges the political importance of critically engaging with so-​called ‘objective’ methodological tools, so that we might gain a better understanding of how and why schools succeed or not.

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Critical approaches that centre inequality note some of the ideologically driven ways in which the academies programme has come about, sustained and entrenched inequality. Critical methodologies applied across a lot of this collection are also useful for anticipating a different foundation and purpose for doing research, mainly in exposing these often-​invisible ideological structures. Inequalities explored ranged from class, to ‘race’, to gender and disability, and intersectional accounts of inequalities such as ‘race’ and class were also discussed by Morrin. Here we extend our reflexivity beyond the realms of the chapters to focus on some of the limitations of our approaches. Rigorous qualitative research acknowledges that our own positionalities impact on how we ‘do’ reflexivity, what we think is important to research, where, how we gain access, who takes part in the study, how data are collected and subsequently analysed. Many of the data and analyses outlined in the collection, for example, are reflections of such pre-​ existing relationships to academy institutions and local sites. While this is a useful methodological tool, it is important to note that all the authors in this collection are themselves white. Noting the limited work done on academy schools, this therefore raises questions as to how and why white scholars come to gain research funding and time, and are able to access school sites in the first place (see Williams et al., 2019). The centrality of ‘race’ in this conclusive account therefore is purposeful. Thinking back to the case of Pimlico Academy here, as part of their collective actions, students organised a peaceful sit-​down protest against the issues outlined earlier in this chapter. This took place before the Easter holidays. While there was substantial police presence around the school, there was no violence or disorder. Still, the protest was met with stern condemnation from Future Academies, with Nash initially threatening the student organisers with permanent exclusion. Arguably, the student response could be described as highlighting the very qualities that headteacher Smith hoped to cultivate –​namely the production of ‘thoughtful’, ‘interested’ and ‘responsible citizens’. Future Academies’ punitive response was countered by a group of MPs who wrote a letter defending the students’ right to peacefully protest and asserting that they should not be punished for exercising their democratic rights. The involvement of the national government in issues of student protest is a new development, yet the continual suppression of student opinion –​in particular that of ethnic minority or working-​class students –​has become a centrepiece of many academy schools’ focus on authoritarian discipline. Back in 2010, one student organised a peaceful protest at Dreamfields Academy (cited in Kulz, 2017) against the raising of student tuition fees (see Cunningham and Lavalette, 2016 for a history of school strikes dating from 1889). While a large group of students assembled at the school gates, Dreamfields’ student Lorna described how no one was

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quite brave enough to sit down and the protest was dispersed. Despite the short-​lived cracks in Dreamfields’ rigid routine and the protest not being directed at Dreamfields itself, the student organiser was excluded for one week. This harsh treatment highlighted not only the punitive climate of fear created at this institution, but the constrictive nature of structures the school advertised as ‘liberatory’ (Kulz, 2017). Neoliberalism certainly works to negate activism and create an atmosphere of compliance (Bondi and Laurie, 2005), yet these modes of governance and their production of consensus may be breaking down some ten years later. MPs’ defence of these young people and their democratic right to organise themselves and open support by the vast majority of teachers could indicate the fragility of this compliant consensus as long-​standing issues around race, class and inequality –​often exacerbated through academisation –​are being foregrounded. Still, the DfE and Lord Nash’s response was to offer more of the same solutions. While Future Academies backed down on the exclusion threats after the MP letters, it promptly brought in Sir Michael Wilshaw to advise Pimlico’s headteacher. Wilshaw is known for employing rigid discipline for students and an authoritarian management style with staff, indicating the desire to continue silencing debate by imposing consensus. Yet at some point, these contradictions could break apart or become too difficult to sustain as the struggle for space for other ways of knowing as real, valid and important continues. Valluvan describes how ‘core nationalist anxieties’ tend to ‘hinge on certain iconic figures of non-​belonging’. One focal point of these anxieties is the black subject and the black male in particular as they conjure up ‘anxieties associated with the nihilist materialism attributed to the black inner city’ (2017: 233–​4). Yet this organised petition and protest are clearly not born out of nihilistic impulses, but come from questioning the validity of the practices emanating from institutional power structures. This sort of organised and orderly approach that we see at Pimlico is hard to misconstrue as nihilist, which arguably makes it more threatening to power. These organised children are also recognised and legitimised by opposition MPs. A renewed climate of politicisation via alternative and de-​legitimised ways of being could threaten that the docility promoted by the neoliberal academies settlement of the past decades is coming to a close. Despite Wilshaw’s support, Smith resigned from his headteacher post several weeks later. Even after this resignation, in June 2021 staff at Pimlico followed in the students’ footsteps, as the National Education Union called for members to walk out for safety and poor management concerns. As has been at the heart of this collection, regardless of strict, and seemingly undefeatable, structures, there is pushback and resistance from those subject to punitive conditions. Over 40 years ago, Stuart Hall was pointing out how calls for heightened classroom discipline and an ‘assault’ on progressive methods were

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authoritarian state practices imposed in the face of an ideologically constructed crisis (1978: 34). This turn towards authoritarian state practices in education is part of a long trajectory reaching beyond academisation to the New Right’s attack on local education authorities as well as anti-​racist and progressive approaches in the late 1960s and 70s by evoking the wishes of a ‘silent majority’ (Cox and Dyson, 1969), while Tomlinson (1997) maps the creation of the notion of the now-​familiar category of ‘failing school’ in the 1990s. This turn has intensified in the wake of the banking crisis of 2008, as the English left has failed to provide a compelling alternative and assume advantage in the wake of growing poverty, inequality and recession (Crouch, 2011). Drawing on Hall and Poulantzas, Bruff (2014: 115) describes how this authoritarianism is not just about the exercise of force; it also entails ‘the reconfiguring of the state and institutional power in an attempt to insulate certain policies and institutional practices from social and political dissent’. Insulation from dissent connects to academisation’s removal of schools from local governance structures and the creation of an increasingly complex and impenetrable system removed from the social and political intervention of families, students or teachers. We can see this in the sidelining of any meaningful debate or consultation with local areas prior to academy conversion, conversions taking place despite a majority opposition, and the rejection of governors unless they are ‘professionals’. The turn towards the ‘professional’ as the valued participant in educational structures enacts raced and classed barriers, while appealing to the valuable professional insidiously works to enact whiteness (Rollock, 2014). These procedural changes push out voices that are not in ideological agreement; they stifle collective teacher or student action, while the retraction of legal aid for exclusion cases and changes to the appeal process takes agency away from populations that are already disempowered (Kulz, 2015a). Bruff terms this reshaping of the state’s purpose through increasingly non-​democratic features authoritarian neoliberalism (2014: 116), as we can see an increased turn to the use of constitutional and legal mechanisms that circumvent the need to seek ‘consent for hegemonic projects’ and more explicitly exclude marginalised groups without any effort to ‘neutralise opponents’ (2014: 117). We can see this circumvention of consent or negotiation of any sort through the structural and legal changes permitted by academisation (Wolfe, 2013). Democracy is no longer desirable, as democratic practices are positioned as regressive, inefficient and actively eroded through the policy of academisation. Power becomes less accessible and exclusion becomes a necessary and even desirable feature of system improvement (Kulz, 2021: 73). In his 2002 preface to There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, Gilroy writes about how racism shapes ‘these institutions of containment’ (2002: xxviii). While he speaks of prisons, this could also apply to many of

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England’s educational institutions with their deployment of police officers, isolation units and permanent anxiety born out of surveillance and competition that prompts burn-​out and rebellion from both teachers and students. Gilroy feels the racism of the containing institution does not hinge so much on criminalisation as it did in the 1980s, but instead on the development of populist authoritarianism in the wake of an eroded welfare state and neoliberalism. The populist authoritarianism rooted in Dreamfields or Pimlico Academy or numerous others is born out of these very conditions, uniting neoliberal structures with populist nationalist orientations. Yet while Gilroy lamented the emptying out of anti-​racist action in the 1990s and 2000s in favour of vapid statements on equal opportunities or a staged ‘theatrical inclusiveness’ (2002: xxx), we could be seeing here a re-​politicisation of anti-​racist action as the knowledges of the powerful are being actively contested on the ground and within daily spaces of life. Most worryingly are some of the specific impacts of the introduction of ‘secure schools’, proposed in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021. Not only would this bill allow for increased police powers to close down protests, but it also outlines proposals for ‘secure schools’, an extension of prison sites for young offenders, which are brought in to, and brought about through, the academies programme. Yet while local campaigns connected to wider movements point out racial injustices and social inequality, there is a stubborn refusal to recognise these issues and to engage with the real, valid local concerns raised by teachers, students and parents. Lentin has described how European societies continue to be defined by race, with silence around racism allowing European states to position themselves as non or even anti-​racist (2008: 487); this refusal to see race is exemplified by the recent report issued by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2021) that declared Britain is not institutionally racist. This controversial report has been renounced by UN human rights experts as ‘repackaging racist tropes, distorting history and normalizing white supremacy’ (Pylas, 2021). As Lentin (2021) described in regard to the report, ‘every factor can be used to explain racism but race itself’. Notably, the commission was headed by Tony Sewell, a black British educationalist who runs an educational charity called Generating Genius; he also cites helping set up a flagship London academy on the Policy Exchange website. The commission panel was populated by numerous ethnic minority British citizens, which highlights the deep intersectionality of these power relations mentioned above. Questions of power, class and gender also come into play here that complicate the picture. This extends to issues of class and how we cannot adopt a colour-​coded set of assumptions regarding what knowledges are valued by who; an easy line of correspondence cannot be drawn between political and social positionalities, whether raced, classed or gendered in

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nature. This is exemplified through the political position of black British Tory politician Kemi Badenoch, whose proclamation that Britain was one of the best places in the world to be black was meant to eradicate the need for critical race studies. Rather than highlighting power imbalances, omissions and leading to greater equality, Badenoch positions critical race studies and Black Lives Matter as the ‘real’ problem through their supposed promotion of victimhood and segregation (Nelson, 2020). The working classes are continually positioned as culturally deficient and lacking appropriate character (Tyler, 2008). Yet the proactive creativity shown by Pimlico students defies any notion of passive victimhood that Badenoch suggests critical race theory instils. Instead, as Hall (1988: 282) wrote, these students are trying to ‘become the subjects of a new conception of society’; it is only through the struggle of these students and their allies that new ways of being and living can be imagined and materialise. Their actions are certainly in line with the Academy Show’s dare to think out of the box and show resilience in the face of adversity, but it would seem that students peacefully protesting against racism and mismanagement at their academy are the wrong people to be asking radical questions. Their questions could provoke answers that few MAT CEOs, politicians or DfE policy-​makers want to hear and –​even less so –​want to give. Asking ‘why’ is only permitted and encouraged when the correct, government-​sanctioned, preconceived answer is given in response –​and when power and its social manifestations remain undisturbed.

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Afterword Polyvalent and incoherent: the academies programme and the English educational apparatus Stephen J. Ball As I have written before, the English academies programme is a policy condensate (Ball, 2007). That is to say, the programme, as first conceived in 2000 and through its various subsequent iterations, ‘carries’ and brings together a set of diverse policy goals and discourses. The 2000 Learning and Skills Act introduced what was called the City Academies programme. Initially part funded by a private sponsor, academies were intended ‘to improve pupil performance and break the cycle of low expectations’ (David Blunkett). For New Labour it also served as an experiment in and a symbol of education policy beyond the welfare state and is an example and indicator of more general shifts taking place in governance and regulatory structures. Innovation, inclusion and regeneration were tied together in the initial academies rhetoric and, to some extent, at least, were realised in practice. The programmes were intended to address local social problems and inequalities and histories of ‘underachievement’. These first academies were also meant to enact a new set of potential relations between education and the economy, within which schools were required to take much more responsibility for fostering ‘knowledge cultures’ as part of economic regeneration programmes in ‘entrepreneurial localities’ and in relation to the requirements of the digital workplace. In a later version of the programme, it was intended that the schools should become the hubs of local school networks geared to relevant sectors of the local economy. They were also to stand in open relation to their communities and provide community facilities of various kinds. Finally, they were intended to blur welfare state demarcations between state and market, public and private, government and business, and introduce and validate new agents and new voices within policy itself and into processes of governance; they were indicative of a ‘re-​agenting’ (Jones, 2003) of education policy. Specifically, the first set of academies drew in and on the ‘energies’ of entrepreneurial and policy ‘heroes’ and social entrepreneurs and mobilised business philanthropy –​with ARK being the most prominent example.

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In various ways through the academies programme, specialist schools, Teach First and other means philanthropy became reincorporated into state policy as a way of avoiding both bureaucratic and market difficulties in bringing about change, and facilitating ‘faster’, less durable and often very personal policy action. However, the academies programme is also a polyvalent policy. Much of the initial New Labour modernisation agenda has ‘worn away’ over time –​ and is perhaps now more focused on studio schools and UTCs, and academies have provided Conservative secretaries of state with a vehicle for a restorationist agenda. The programme has even become a haven for private schools struggling to survive in difficult economic circumstances and most grammar schools (140 of 163) are now academies. The programme has put philanthropy, voluntarism and faith schooling very much back on the education policy agenda (see below). The concomitant sidelining of Local Authorities arguably signals the break-​up of the ‘national system of education locally administered’, alongside a steady increase in powers held and used centrally. The geographies of power within which education policy is constructed have shifted. The places that matter for policy are both more focused and more dispersed –​focused in the powers held by the Secretary of State but also dispersed, locally, nationally and internationally, to different kinds of people; like parent groups and academy chains, edubusinesses and EdTech companies, philanthropies, faith groups, contractors and consultants. Boundary-​spanning policy gurus, ‘thought-​leaders’ and policy entrepreneurs move between national systems carrying with them policy solutions and stories of ‘what works’. All of this constitutes a move towards a ‘polycentric state’ and a ‘bloated market state’ (Gray, 2010). These new actors are the state and are doing statework. What is going on here in terms of new governance cannot be reduced to a matter of party politics or ideology. These changes and moves are part of a generic global shift in public service policy discourses –​in language, ideas, organisation, technologies, practices and experience. The education experience is remade as part of this shift. Keast et al. (2006: 27) argue that: ‘This situation leads to governance complexity and what is contended to be a “crowded” policy domain in which differing governance arrangements, policy prescriptions, participants and processes bump up against and even compete with each other to cause overlap and confusion…’. However, it is important not to misrecognise what is happening here. This is not a ‘hollowing out’ of the state; rather, it is a new modality of state power, agency and social action –​a form of metagovernance (Jessop, 2002: 242). Public services are increasingly delivered through a mix of ‘strategic alliances, joint working arrangements, networks, partnerships and many other forms of collaboration across sectoral and organizational boundaries’ (Williams, 2002: 103)

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based upon relations involving mutuality and interdependence as opposed to hierarchy and independence. The programme is one example amongst many of a developing alternative infrastructure of policy and provision in education, what Wolch (1990) calls a ‘shadow state’; that is, a space in which hierarchical and bureaucratic relations are being replaced by complex and opaque heterarchical relations. These changes are not simply about who does what; they are also changing the forms, purposes and values of public service and the form and modalities of the state itself. One indication of value changes is the proliferation of cases of ‘corruption and corrupt practices’ in these schools (Thomson, 2020). Thomson’s book School Scandals carefully documents ‘the ways in which systemic and systematic changes in the cultures and structures of schools, and the education bureaucracy, have led to an ongoing series of ‘unpublic’ practices which produce and reproduce a highly uneven socio-​ economic playing field’ (2020: 5). Overall, the polyvalency and diversity of the programme in some ways mirrors the Local Authority system it has been replacing. In his speech to the Social Market Foundation in 2002, David Blunkett, then Secretary of State, asserted: Far too many schools are under-​performing in terms of the outcomes for their pupils. Many of these schools are working very hard and doing good things in difficult circumstances. But that is not enough if the outcomes for the young people do not fit them for further education and the world of work. No single approach will solve all problems, but radical innovation in the creation of new schools is one option. City academies will provide for this.

However, research evidence on the performance of academies is confusing and contradictory. For example: New research released today by the Department for Education shows the staggering impact of academy status on some of the poorest schools in the country. It shows that, between 2005/​6 and 2010/​11 results for Sponsored Academies improved by 27.7 percentage points –​a faster rate than in other state-​funded schools (14.2%) and at a faster rate than in a group of similar schools (21.3%). (Michael Gove, speech, 26 June 2012) The Annual Report of 2015/​16 by Ofsted commented that: ‘inspection evidence, research and analysis continues to find that, while becoming an academy can be beneficial for some schools, there is not a clear or substantial difference between the performance of academies and schools maintained by local authorities.’1 Education company SchoolDash found that most primary academies are ‘converter’ academies, which tended to be high-​achieving before becoming academies. The research found ‘no evidence’ that academy status brought

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improvements to these schools or that such schools were any better than their local authority counterparts. The smaller number of ‘sponsored’ academies, more likely to have been previously under-​achieving, made more progress when they became academies.2

Significant differences in terms of exam performance, progress improvement and inspection gradings are not simply apparent between academies and non-​ academy schools but also between academies, between trusts and between academies in the same trust. Furthermore, a Datalab study found that nine Multi-​Academy Trusts closed or had all of their schools re-​ brokered in 2017–​18. This includes Bright Tribe, Wakefield City Academies Trust and Perry Beeches the Academy Trust. Wakefield City Academies Trust (WCAT), which was paused between 2012–​ 13 and 2013–​14 took on 11 more schools, only to announce in September 2017 that it was going to give up all its academies. Since 2011–​12, the government has formally paused the growth of 58 academy trusts, with the expansion of 13 still officially blocked. TES has identified a number of trusts that received official warning or pre-​ warning notices about standards, or financial notices to improve, after having their pause lifted –​or that were never formally paused in the first place.3

A 2018 National Audit Office Report also concludes with some comments that gesture towards a recognition of the systemic disarray that the academies programme has brought about. There is substantial variation across the country, in the relative proportions of maintained schools and academies and in the availability and capacity of sponsors to support schools most in need. This complicated position means that it is incumbent on the Department to clarify its policy and make sure that the school system is coherent with all of its parts working effectively together. This will be crucial to secure value for money and provide children with access to good end-​to-​end schooling.4

In the current system of education in England, the sort of school your child may attend and their experience of education depends on where you live. Regional and local variations in access to schools of different types are stark. Over and against all of this, by far the greater part of variance in student performance is explained by factors not related to school but to social background.5 Poor performance is strongly related to the conditions of family life and problems of poverty,6 nutrition, homelessness and unemployment but also to parental education and aspiration and support. In this sense it would be reasonable to argue that education policy is looking at and working on the wrong place and is bound to fail if the socio-​economic conditions of students’ home lives remain dramatically unequal.

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Bearing this in mind, and looking across the enormous variety of very basic reforms in the ways in which education is governed, structured and organised that have been introduced over the past 25 years, it is possible to see the contemporary traces, and re-​emergence, of social patterns and organisational forms and political preoccupations within education policy that have been inherent in the English education system since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. In particular, the social differentiations that were part of the basic building blocks of state education in the nineteenth century, especially those involving social class, continue as significant features of the policies and politics of education. Over and against the rhetorics of meritocracy and social mobility, selection and segregation are an insistent sub-​text of post-​1988 education policies. This sub-​text is evident now in the increasing diversity of types of schools and diversity of schools of the same type, in the re-​establishing of separate vocational and non-​school-​based curriculum routes for some students post-​14, in the defence and celebration of grammar schooling, in schemes for gifted and talented children, in setting by ability, in the continuing regional disparities in school performance and university entrance, and in the processes of educational ‘triage’ which have been brought into play by competitive performance requirements and benchmarking. Alongside this, the increased ‘fuzziness’ of the system as a whole creates new possibilities for relational choosing and opportunity hoarding for some social groups who are able to navigate the systems using their particular class capitals. The variations in provision and performance are difficult for many parents to navigate, which calls up tactical behaviour, and on occasion deception and bad faith –​on both sides (choice on the one hand and recruitment on the other –​as suggested earlier). The education market is rife with gaming (Foley and Goldstein, 2012), and allows agile and well-​resourced middle-​class parents to seek out and maintain social advantage in educational settings where there are others ‘like them’ (Ball and Vincent, 1998). Differences between schools in terms of both intake and relatedly performance are maintained and exacerbated by an economy of student worth that gives high value to those from homes with supportive and informed parents and with high prior attainment, and where they are able schools will seek to recruit such students. And low value is given to others, with special educational needs or histories of behavioural difficulty, low prior performance or English as a second language,7 who are avoided if possible. In all of this, rather than a system, we have and have had since its inception a rickety, divided, unstable and often ineffective but nonetheless overbearing educational apparatus currently held tenuously together by a regime of testing and league table reporting that puts pressure on schools. English education remains mired in its history. The current educational apparatus bears more than a passing resemblance to the system pre-​1870,

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inasmuch that there are costs (direct and indirect)8 to parents, issues of uneven attendance (or exclusion), marked regional variations and a diversity of providers working within a system of ‘payment by results’. This is a new ‘patchwork’ full of gaps but with churches and philanthropists as major providers. All that being said, there are always ‘gaps’ between policy and practice, between policy fantasies and quoditian enactments. The diversities noted above suggest some aspects of those gaps. Policies are conceived in policy-​ makers’ heads in relation to schools and circumstances that rarely exist in the real world. Enactments vary by context, commitments, resource availability and chance factors. The questions raised by the realities of enactment, and the gaps between policy and practice, formed a point of entry into the sociology of education for me and several of my peers. For myself, my PhD thesis, later published as Beachside Comprehensive (1981), was an attempt to understand the practice of comprehensive education in one school, a school that took the idea of comprehensive education seriously. Many schools and many Local Authorities did not take comprehensive education seriously and submitted plans to government (in response to the Department of Education Circular 10/​65) that were merely satisficing. But even at Beachside the enactment of comprehensivism varied between departments in relation to differences in subject cultures and their attendant ‘philosophies’ of education. Beachside was intended to ‘get inside’ the comprehensive ideal, to understand its possibilities ‘on the ground’ within the everyday demands of school life –​rather than within the fantastical imaginings inside the heads of government ministers. Other researchers undertook similar case study investigations in other comprehensive schools, like Bob Burgess (1983), Phil Carspecken (1991) and John Abraham (1995), all of us building on Colin Lacey’s (1970) grammar school study, and David Hargreaves’ (1967) and Peter Woods’ (1979) secondary modern school case studies. More recently, in the same ethnographic tradition, Christy Kulz (2017) offers a close-​up view of how one academy school ‘works’. Working at a different level Ehren and Godfrey (2017) and Salokangas and Chapman (2014) have done case studies of academy trusts. And there are many, many other examples. The value of such research is its ‘otherness’ to policy, that is, ethnographic insight into the messy, contested, difficult and cluttered world of teaching and learning and school organisation as experienced by ordinary children in ordinary schools. One recurring theme of these accounts is the inequities and exclusions that abound within the differentiation of subject possibilities and social intelligibility that school offers to learners, and how those possibilities make up students from different backgrounds with different capitals available to them, in different ways. In a sense, the more things change the more they stay the same. From Hightown Grammar, to Beachside, to Dreamfields Academy, we

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see the unchanging institutional and disciplinary epistemology of s­ chooling. The school is a particular site, a point of concatenation, at which the subject is concentrated and enacted, through patterns, clusters and m ­ odels –​we call them levels, sets, streams, bands, specialisms, withdrawal units, etc. The school hails and labels the learner as a social fact (of competence, level, qualification, score, achievement). In sum, the school is a ‘bundle of relations which tie … power, the truth, and the subject’ (Schmidt, 1996: 37) together. The origins and rationale of modern schooling and its pastoral disciplinary procedures are the production of nation-​state subjects, productive and useful workers and moral and responsible learners –​a ‘moral orthopaedics’ as Deacon calls it: ‘Schooling taught not only punctuation, but also punctuality, and not only reading, but also hygiene; it taught that learning should not only entail gratification but also requires chastisement’ (Deacon, 2005: 89). We misread the school if we attempt to reconcile it with socially radical concepts like inclusion, equality, critical thinking, solidarity or self-​ flourishment. And in particular the school experience for those deemed as failing or underperforming: those ‘with behavioural difficulties’, who are ‘hard to reach’, who lack character or resilience or aspiration, who have special needs, is the experience of not being truly and properly human. The dark side of the school experience –​punishment, exclusion, abuse, assimilation, shame, civilisation, etc. –​are related to this moral displacement and the failure to fit within the school universal (see Ball and Collet-​Sabé, 2021). In a sense then, ethnographies of schooling tell us things we do not want to know, things policy-​makers do not want to hear. They make schooling intolerable.

Notes 1 See: https://​ass​ets.pub​lish​ing.serv​ice.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​uplo​ads/​sys​tem/​uplo​ads/​ atta​chme​nt_​d​ata/​file/​574​186/​Ofsted_​annual_​report_​educ​atio​n_​an​d_​sk​ills​_​201​ 516_​web-​ready.pdf#page=​122 (accessed 1 December 2021). 2 See: www.bbc.com/​news/​education-​36196665 (accessed 1 December 2021). 3 See: www.tes.com/​n ews/​s chool-​n ews/​b reaking-​n ews/​i nconsistent-​a pproach-​ academy-​growth-​shows-​a-​system-​out-​control (accessed 1 December 2021). 4 See: www.nao.org.uk/​report/​converting-​maintained-​schools-​to-​academies/​ (accessed 1 December 2021). 5 http://​risetr​ust.org.uk/​pdfs/​ERev​iew-​4.pdf (accessed 1 December 2021). 6 There were 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2016–​17. That’s 30% of children, or nine in a classroom of thirty www.cpag.org.uk/​child-​poverty-​ facts-​and-​figures (accessed 1 December 2021). 7 This may be changing; data released (18 January 2018) by the Department for Education (DfE) shows that children who grow up speaking a language other

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than English now have a higher attainment score than their native-​speaking peers by the time they are 16. 8 A NASUWT survey conducted in 2017 based on almost 4,000 responses found that almost one in five parents in the UK is being asked to set up payments to their children’s schools; 18% of parents have been asked to sign up for direct debits or standing orders for their children’s school, typically of about £50 per year; more than one in 20 parents with children in state schools were paying £400 or above; a further 13% of parents had been asked to make donations in cash or cheques, see: www.nasuwt.org.uk/​article-​listing/​access-​education-​increasingly-​parents-​ability​pay.html (accessed 1 December 2021).

References Abraham, J. (1995). Divide and School: Gender and Class Dynamics in Comprehensive Education. Lewes: Falmer Press. Ball, S.J. (1981). Beachside Comprehensive: A Case-​Study of Secondary Schooling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ball, S.J. (2007). Education Plc: Understanding Private Sector Participation in Public Sector Education. London: Routledge. Ball, S. and Collet-​ Sabé, J. (2021). Against school: an epistemological critique. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 01596306.2021.1947780 Ball, S.J. and Vincent, C. (1998). ‘I Heard It on the Grapevine’: ‘hot’ knowledge and school choice. British Journal of Sociology of Education. 19(3), pp. 377–​400. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​0142569980190307 Burgess, R. (1983). Experiencing Comprehensive Education: A Study of Bishop McGregor School. London: Routledge. Carspecken, P.F. (1991). Community Schooling and the Nature of Power: The Battle for Croxteth Comprehensive. London: Routledge. Deacon, R. (2005). Moral orthopedics: a Foucauldian account of schooling as discipline. Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary. 130, pp. 84–​102. Ehren, M.C.M. and Godfrey, D. (2017). External accountability of collaborative arrangements; a case study of a Multi Academy Trust in England. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability. 29, pp. 339–​362. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1007/​s11092-​017-​9267-​z Foley, B. and Goldstein, H. (2012). Measuring Success: League Tables in the Public Sector. London: British Academy, www.britac.ac.uk/​policy/​Measuring-​success. cfm (accessed July 2021). Gray, J. (2010). The Neoliberal State: book review, New Statesman, 7 January. Hargreaves, D. (1967). Social Relations in a Secondary School. New York: Humanities Press. Jessop, B. (2003). Governance and meta-​governance: on reflexivity, requisite variety, and requisite irony. In Bang, H.P. (Ed.). Governance as Social and Political Communication. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 101–​116. Jones, K. (2003). Education in Britain. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Keast, R.L., Mandell, M. and Brown, K.A. (2006). Mixing state, market and network governance modes: the role of government in “crowded” policy domains. International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior. 9(1), pp. 27–​50. Kulz, C. (2017). Factories for Learning. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Lacey, C. (1971). Hightown Grammar: the school as a social system. British Journal of Educational Studies, 19(1), pp. 99–​100. Salokangas, M. and Chapman, C. (2014). Exploring governance in two chains of academy schools: a comparative case study. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 42(3), pp. 372–​386. Schmidt, J. (Ed.). (1996). What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-​century Answers and Twentieth-​century Questions (Vol. 7). Los Angeles: University of California Press. Thomson, P. (2020). School Scandals: Blowing the Whistle on the Corruption of Our Education System. Bristol: Policy Press. Williams, P. (2002). The competent boundary spanner. Public Administration. 80(1), pp. 103–​124. Wolch, J. (1990). The Shadow State: Government and Voluntary Sector in Transition. New York: The Foundation Center. Woods, P. (1979). The Divided School. London: Routledge.

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Index

Page numbers in bold refer to figures. academic critique 24 academies xii, 110–​112 controversial status 155–​156 governance xiii numbers 2, 42, 130, 188–​189, 205 performance 226–​227 proliferation 111 Academies Act, 2010 62–​63, 188 Academies Delivery Group 205 academies programme 130, 224–​230 academies project xii, 1 Academies Show, 2017 205, 207–​209, 211–​212 academisation xii, 13, 18, 20, 35–​55, 130, 132, 169, 200–​201, 204–​207, 209 acceleration of 4–​6 commitment to 25n4 critical ethnography methodology 36–​42 and discipline 210–​211 ethnographic study 48, 48–​55, 109, 113–​126 ethnographic tensions 38–​42 failing schools 109–​126 god trick 23 and internationalism 10–​11 introduction of 35–​36 and neoliberalism 6–​8 opposition xiii, 206 pick and mix system 205–​206 and public space 22 risks and vulnerabilities 42–​43 school governors 43–​46 and social justice 8–​10

Academisation Policy Complex 5 academy status contradictory data on 169–​172 conversion to 39, 154–​156, 163–​165, 166, 167–​173 fast tracking 25n6 limits of 170 linguistic production 163–​164 multi-​modal study 160–​161 pedagogical shifts 167–​168, 169 visual production 164–​165, 166, 167 academy trusts 44 Accelerate policy 168 accountability 1, 2, 7–​8, 9, 11, 36, 42, 45, 55, 62–​65, 64, 102–​103, 155 blurring 80–​82 free schools 103 Multi-​Academy Trusts 60, 64 Achieving Educational Excellence Everywhere (white paper) 9–​10 Adams St. Pierre, E. 159 admission policies 89, 99 Adonis, Lord 4 Allan, J. 19, 162, 200, 201, 202–​203, 204 Allen, K. 191 Allen, R. 91 Alvesson, M. 109 Andrews, J. 91 Anti-​Academies Alliance xiii, 206 anti-​racist education 3, 4 Apple, M. 16, 63, 66, 78, 82, 120–​123

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Index

Arendt, H. 6, 65 ARK 224–​225 Armstrong, P. 66 Ashurst, F. xiv Association of School and College Leaders 5 Atkinson, P. 40, 69 attainment 111, 189 attraction 45 auditable truths 19 austerity policies 4–​6 authoritarian state practices, turn towards 216–​217 authoritarianism 207–​209, 215–​219 autonomy 1, 5, 9, 45, 120–​123 Badenoch, K. 219 Badges of Entrepreneurship scheme 14, 191–​193 Ball, S.J. 1, 3, 12, 13, 15, 16, 35–​36, 40–​41, 55, 63, 70, 118, 122, 126, 160, 183, 229 Barber, M. 11 bearing witness 66–​67, 80, 82 Becker, H.S. 181 Bevir, M. 47 Bhabha, H.K. 136 Black Lives Matter 3, 206, 214, 219 Black Papers, the 3 Blair, T. 1, 11 Blood, K. xiv, 22–​23, 24, 132, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204 Blunkett, D. 224, 226 Bottero, W. 140 Bottery, M. 61, 66, 82 Bourdieu, P. 109, 110, 111, 112–​113, 114–​115, 116, 123, 126, 133, 138–​140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 182, 201 Brewer, J.D. 109 Brexit 10, 13, 205 British values 213 Brown, W. 6, 17 Bruff, I. 217 Building Schools for the Future funds 114 Bull, A. 191 Buras, K. 16 bureaucracy, privatised 17

Burke, P.J. 132 business model 75–​76, 83, 120–​121 business skills 79 Cameron, D. 111 Canada 11 Carter, A. 208 casualisation 204, 207–​209 Catts, R. 93 centralisation 5, 76–​81 Centre for Cultural Studies 16 CEO 70 CEO succession planning 72–​76 change 154, 155, 163–​165, 166, 167–​168 character, teaching of 124–​125 charitable status 2 charities 45–​46 chief executives, pay 43 children, best interests 81 Children’s Commissioner 211 Cirin, R. 93 citizen participation 36 City Academies 62, 224 City Technology Colleges 1, 62 Clarke, J. 40, 77 class 193, 228 class consciousness 143 Clinton, D. 208–​209 co-​governance 36 Coard, B. 16 Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, 2021 214, 218 community classification 136–​138 competition xii, xiv, 3, 6, 11 competitive-​comparative frameworks 52 comprehensivism 229 conduct of others 47–​48 Confederation of School Trusts 205 Connell, R.W. 123 constructive tension 53–​54 contradiction 177, 182, 184, 202 control apparatus see discipline corporate interests xiii corruption and corrupt practices 226 councillors 76–​77 Covid-​19 pandemic 214 critical bifocality 18–​19, 136

532

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Index critical ethnography 18, 36–​42, 215 breadth 181–​182 centred-​‘margins’ 190–​193 constant-​variables 188–​190 and entrepreneurship education 176–​194 ethnographic study 176, 177–​194 keyoxymorons 182–​184, 193–​194 methodological strategy 179–​182 successful-​failure 184–​188 critical geographies 200–​201 critical qualitative research 15 critical race theory 3, 219 critique 162–​163 Cronin, P. 213, 214 Crozier, G. 132 cultural capital 4, 121, 123, 140, 189, 211 cultural decline 3 curriculum diversity 206 Daily Express 213, 214 Das, V. 23 data production 11–​13 quantitative 12 selective recognition of 12–​13 selective use of 10 tyranny of 12 Davies, J. 37, 47 Davies, W. 17 De Certeau, M. 183, 193–​194 De Lissovoy, N. 7, 9 Deacon 230 decentralisation 47 decision-​making 64, 71, 76–​77, 115 deficit discourse 78 deficit towns 118–​119 delegated powers 77 democratic deficit 63 democratic governance 55, 61 democratic oversight xiii, 76–​81, 81–​82, 206 ‘democratic void’ 44 Department for Education 5, 6–​7, 12, 42, 44, 111, 168, 170, 205, 206 deprivation 22–​23, 111, 118–​119, 154, 159–​160, 206, 227

235

de-​regulation 2, 47 disadvantage 91, 111, 118–​119, 136–​138, 155, 194, 206 disciplinary gaze 55 discipline xiv, 111, 122–​123, 126, 130–​146, 202–​203, 210–​212, 230 community classification 136–​138 ethnographic study 133–​146 and misrecognition 142–​143, 146 private-​sector 51 resistance 143–​145, 146, 215–​219 strategies 141 working class pathologisation 141 discourse 155, 156, 157–​162, 169 disintermediation 44 Diverse Academies Learning Partnership 208–​209 diversification 132–​133, 146 docility, as resistance xiii, 143–​145 dominant narratives, destabilising 18–​19 Donnelly M. 119 Dowling, E. 124 Dreamfields Academy 215–​216, 218 Education and Employers 45–​46 Education and Health Care (EHC) plans 92 Education Excellence Everywhere white paper 63 education expertise, lack of 70–​72 Education Reform Act, 1988 1, 3, 4, 16–​17 education spending, cuts 5 educational conditions 7 effective differentiation 100 effective governance 36, 39, 45–​46, 52–​53, 54 EHC plans see Education and Health Care (EHC) plans Ehren, M. 81 embodied learning 141 embodied practice 133, 138 endogenous privatisation 42 enrichment programme 101–​102 Enterprise Bridge initiative, the 184, 184–​188 enterprise culture 184

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entrepreneurship education 23, 176–​194 badge scheme 178, 191–​193 centred-​‘margins’ 190–​193 compulsory curriculum 178 constant-​variables 188–​190 the Enterprise Bridge initiative 184–​188 ethnographic study 176, 177–​194 keyoxymorons 182–​184, 193–​194 methodological strategy 179–​182 risk-​taking behaviours 191–​192 successful-​failure 184–​188 equality 3, 98, 230 ethnographic analysis 136 ethnographic approaches 15 ethnographic intent 95 ethnographic methods 13, 157–​159, 162, 172–​173 ethnographic representations 133–​136 ethnographic responsibility 24 ethnographic tensions 38–​42 ethnographic works 15–​16 ethnography 95, 135–​136 analyses of power 161–​162 features of 157–​159 Foucault’s thinking tools 157–​163, 171–​173 multi-​modal study 160–​161, 169, 172–​173 and positionality 179–​182 projects of critique 162–​163 representational logic 158 exam factories 167–​168 exclusion xiv, 92, 210–​211, 229–​230 exogenous privatisation 35–​36 expectations 110 failing schools 8, 13, 177–​178, 188 academisation 109–​126 ethnographic study 109, 113–​126 regeneration 110 school environment 120–​123 student aspirations 115–​119, 121–​122, 126 failure–​success binary 4 faith schooling 225 fear, climate of 21 feminist post-​structuralists 23 Fetterman, D.M. 39

field 140, 143–​144 Field, J. 104 financial mismanagement 43 Finn, K. 119 Foucault, M. 17, 40, 41, 47–​48, 53, 78, 145, 153, 154, 156, 162–​163, 170, 182, 201, 203 analyses of power 161–​162 and ethnography 157–​163, 171–​173 multi-​modal study 160–​161 theory of discourse 158, 159–​160, 169 Fox, P. 145 framings 65–​66 Fraser, N. 184 free school meals 91, 130–​131 free schools 89–​105, 202–​203 accountability 103 challenges 102–​103, 104 ethnographic study 94–​105 freedom 103–​105 headteachers survey 92–​93 impact 91 and inclusion 90, 91–​93, 98–​105 numbers 91, 130, 188–​189 freedom 202–​203, 204 funding cuts 5 Future Academies 212, 213, 215, 216 Gadamer, H.G. 24 Gane, N. 6–​7, 47 general election, 2010 1 Gewirtz, S. 5 Gilroy, P. 217–​218 Glatter, R. 60–​61 Gove, M. 8, 12, 103, 213 governance xiii, 2, 7, 37, 201, 202, 225 academies xiii corporate 52 democratic 55, 61 democratic oversight 76​–​82 ethnographic approach 68–​69 ethnographic study 67–​81, 68 and lack of education expertise 70–​72 lack of transparency 79–​80 legitimacy 60–​83 MATs and 46, 60–​83 oversight mechanisms 51

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Index philanthropic ventures in 50–​51 post-​panopticism 47–​48, 55 professionalisation 64, 69–​76 public/​private boundaries 62–​65 governance capital 52 governance failure 44–​45 governance meetings 19 governmentality perspective 55 grammar schools 3 grassroots practice 209–​212 Greany, T. 63, 72 Green, F. 205 Grek, S. 45 Gunter, H. 63, 65, 78 habitus 109, 112–​113, 114–​115, 123, 125, 126, 133, 138–​140, 142, 143–​145, 146, 183, 202 Hall, S. 201, 216–​217, 219 Hammersley, M. 40, 69, 95 Hargreaves, D.H. 15 Harvie, D. 124 Hatcher, R. 15, 52 headteachers 52–​53, 73, 141, 145–​146 hegemonic projects 217 Herrington, D. 205 heterarchical relations 226 Higham, R. 63, 72, 91 Hinds, D. 124 Hockings, C. 132 Hogan, A. 51 Holland, D. 40 Hollingworth, S. 133, 146 Holton, M. 119 hospital trusts 43 Hughes, B.C. 6 human capital 6, 125 identity, stable 19 identity formation 40 immersion 20 immersion fieldwork 38, 39 inclusion xiv, 132, 202, 230 challenges 102–​103 definition 90 ethnographic study 94–​105 and free schools 91–​93, 98–​105 outcomes 104–​105

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school strategies 99–​102, 104 SEND children 91–​92, 98 and social capital 99 understandings of 98–​99 Independent Academies Association 45 individualism 15 inequality 4, 9, 10, 13, 15, 91, 117, 124, 132, 146, 204, 215, 229–​230 and entrepreneurship education 176–​194 ethnographic study 176, 177–​194 keyoxymorons 182–​184, 193–​194 methodological strategy 179–​182 quantitative analyses 14 Information, Advice and Guidance provision 115 insider/​outsider distinction 66–​67 Inspiring Governance campaign 45–​46 institutional habitus 109, 112, 113, 114–​115, 126 institutional orientations 20–​21 integrity 75 internal exclusion 211 internationalism 10–​11 interviews group 96 intimate 19–​20, 61, 79–​80 participatory group 90 power asymmetry 73–​74 semi-​structured 90, 96 isolation 210 James, D. 142 Jensen, T. 141 Johnes, R. 91 Johnson, B. 211 Jørgenson, C.R. 19, 200, 201, 202–​203, 204 Junemann, C. 16, 70 Keast, R.L. 225 keyoxymorons 182–​184, 193–​194, 202, 204 centred-​‘margins’ 190–​193 constant-​variables 188–​190 successful-​failure 184–​188 Klijn, E. 61 knowledge cultures 224

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knowledge production 16–​18, 23–​25, 61, 65–​66 research orientations 19–​23 Kulz, C. xiv, 21–​22, 110, 112, 119, 121, 123, 205, 207–​209, 229 Lacey, C. 15 Lawler, S. 126, 145 leaders and leadership 52–​53 league tables 179, 189–​190 Leaney, S. xiii, 14–​15, 18, 20–​21, 22, 200, 201, 202, 203 learning, narrowing of 138 Learning and Skills Act, 2000 224 left behind discourses 116 legitimacy governance 60–​83 and lack of education expertise 70–​72 literature 60, 63–​64 Lemke, T. 55 Lentin, A. 218 Letin, A. 193 Lewis, S.J. 38 Li, T.M. 47 Lipman, P. 16 Littler, J. 123–​124 lived experiences 18, 69 Local Academy Boards 63 Local Authorities councillors 76–​77 democratic oversight 206 erosion of 1, 2–​4, 21, 36, 44, 62–​63, 225 marginalisation 76–​81 local values and views, marginalisation 77–​79 loony left, the 3 Loveday, V. 139, 143, 146 low aspiration 109 Lucey, H. 118 Mac an Ghaill, M. 15 MacBride, G. 99 Madden, D.J. 22 Madison, D.S. 37–​38, 41, 54 managerial skills 73 managerialism 4 Mansell, W. 7 marginalised populations 14

Index Marine Academy Plymouth 210 market-​based reform processes 11 market ideology 89 market logics 17, 63 marketing 164–​165 marketisation xii, 130, 131, 204, 207–​209 Mayer, R.C. 61 Mazenod, A. 36, 39 meritocracy xiv, 109, 112, 113, 123–​125, 228 Merrick, R. 206 metagovernance 225 Miller, P. 79 Mirza, H.S. 4, 15 (mis)recognition 133 misrecognition 141, 142–​143, 146, 183 mixed-​ability classes 99–​103 Mohdin, A. 206 moral hazard, culture of 42–​43 Morgan, N. 189, 205 Morrin, K. xiii, 14, 18, 22–​23, 24, 110–​112, 124, 132, 200, 202, 203, 204, 215 Morris, R. 91 Multi-​Academy Trusts xii, 2, 5, 6–​8, 9, 12, 17, 20–​21, 46, 50–​51, 55, 121, 155, 190, 202, 205, 208–​209, 227 accountability 60, 64 board expertise 69–​70 board of directors 63 business model 75–​76, 83 CEO 70 CEO succession planning 72–​76 credibility 75 democratic oversight 76–​82 ethnographic approach 68–​69 ethnographic study 60, 67–​81, 68 impact 60–​83 introduction of 62–​65 and lack of education expertise 70–​72 lack of transparency 79–​80 legitimacy 60–​83 shared expertise 75 stakeholders 80 trustees 70–​72 multi-​modal study 160–​161, 169, 172–​173

932

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Index Nash, Lord 45, 212, 215, 216 NASUWT 5 National Audit Office Report, 2018 227 National Governance Association 45–​46 National Pupil Database 2011–​2014 91 nationalism 212–​214, 216 neoliberal agenda 89 neoliberal policy interventions xiv neoliberalisation 120–​3 neoliberalism 6–​8, 24, 47, 111, 112, 119, 123–​125, 126 New Labour 1, 4, 12, 62, 177–​178, 224–​225 New Public Management 12, 15 New Right 3, 217 Newman, J. 35 Nguyen, N. 200–​201 non-​policy system redesign 6 not-​for-​profit private trusts 7 objectification 136 off-​rolling 210–​211 Ofsted 2, 21, 46, 92, 131, 154, 160, 168, 189 Oliver, M. 210–​211 opportunity hoarding 228 Ormesby, Middlesborough 210–​211 othering 140, 158 Outwood Grange Academies 210–​211 oversight mechanisms 51 governance 51, 76–​78, 81–​82 democratic 76–​78, 81–​82, 206 Local Authorities 206 Multi-​Academy Trusts 76–​78, 81–​82 Ozga, J. 11, 12, 17, 93 parental choice 8 parental positioning 3 parents, responsibilisation of 131 participant observations 96, 114 participation xiv participatory action research 38 Peck, J. 47 pedagogical shifts 167–​168, 169 Pennacchia, J. xiii, 18, 23, 200, 201, 202, 203–​204

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Performance Based Learning 14–​15, 132–​133, 138, 141, 146 performance-​related data 52 performance trends 11 philanthropy 50–​51, 224–​225 Pimlico Academy 211–​214, 215, 216, 218 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, 2021 218 policy expectations 110 policy production 153–​173 contradictory data 169–​172 ethnographic study 154–​157, 166, 167–​173 and Foucault’s thinking tool 157–​163 linguistic 163–​164 multi-​modal study 160–​161, 169 ontological questions 154–​157 pedagogical shifts 167–​168, 169 power relations 161–​162, 170–​171, 172–​173 visual 164–​165, 166, 167 political ideologies 206 populist authoritarianism xiv, 210, 218 positionality 61, 95, 214 researcher 24, 65–​67, 71, 82, 122, 176–​177, 179–​182, 193 structural 136–​138 post-​panopticism 55 post-​structuralism 158 post-​welfarist education policy complex 5 poverty 227 power 21, 40–​41, 54 power asymmetry, interviews 73–​74 power relations xiii, 18, 135–​136, 137, 145–​146, 161–​162, 170–​171, 172–​173, 180 private interests xiii private–​public partnership 62 privatisation 8, 21, 35–​36, 42–​43, 202, 207–​209 creep 7 professionalisation 202 public participation 9 public space, end of 22

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public/​private boundaries, blurring 60, 62–​65, 69–​70, 81–​82 public–​private finance 1 pupil premium funding 154 qualitative knowledge, representation 23–​25 qualitative methodologies 13–​15, 17–​18, 201–​202, 214–​215 qualitative research 17 quantitative data 12, 24 race and racism 193, 213–​214, 215–​219 rationing practices xiv, 167–​168 Rayner, A. 206 Rayner, S. 5 re-​agenting 224 Reay, D. 16, 118, 131 re-​brokering costs 209 reflexive approach 182 reflexivity 65, 202, 203–​204, 214–​215 regeneration 110, 224 Regional Schools Commissioners 17, 160 relational choosing 228 research, re-​definition of 134 research orientations 19–​23 research relationships 20–​21 researcher positionality 24, 65–​67, 71, 82, 122, 176–​177, 179–​182, 193 resistance xiii, 143–​145, 215–​219 restorationist agenda 225 role trust 66, 74 Rollock, N. 16 Rose, N. 47, 79 Rousseau, D. 61, 71 Rowley, H. xiii, 19–​20, 65, 66, 82, 121, 200, 201, 202 Russell, A.J. 38 Ryan-​Atkin, H. xiii, 19–​20, 65–​66, 82, 121, 200, 201, 202 Schmidt, J. 230 school effect 109 school environment 120–​123 school ethos 94

school governors 40, 41–​42, 47, 52–​54, 202 business people 45–​46 diminished roles 79–​80 LA 76–​77 parent governors 46 role and responsibilities 43–​46 support organisations 45 seating plans 100 self-​evaluation 55 self-​organisation 42 Sennett, R. 191 Sewell, T. 218 shadow state, the 54–​55 shareholders 70 Simkins, T. 63 site access 21–​22 Skeggs, B. 138, 139, 146, 201 Skoldberg, K. 109 Smith, D. 211–​212, 216 Smith, R. 120–​123 social capital 19, 89–​105, 90, 93–​94, 112–​113, 125–​126, 203 ethnographic study 94–​105 and family 115–​118 and inclusion 99 measuring 93 and school performance 93 school strategies 99–​102 understandings of 99 social control xiv social justice 4, 8–​10, 114, 155, 203 Social Markey Foundation 226 social mobility xiv, 10, 126, 228 Social Mobility & Child Poverty Commission’s Social Mobility Index 115–​116 South Farnham School Educational Trust 208 space 22–​23 Special Educational Needs and Disabilities 201 disproportionate exclusion 92 ethnographic study 94–​105 inclusion 91–​92, 98 social capital 90 school strategies 99–​102 Special Educational Needs Coordinator 96

142

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Index specialisation 131–​132 Spielman, A. 206 sponsorship 1, 164, 178, 194, 203 stakeholders 64, 80–​81 standards 7 and competition 3 objective criteria 188–​190 state-​maintained schools xii state power 45 Steedman, C. 138 Stoker, G. 64 Strategy Manager for Transitions 164–​165 structural positioning 136–​138 struggle, sites of 183 student aspirations 115–​116, 117–​119, 121–​122, 126, 132, 201, 203 student resistance xiii, 143–​145, 146, 215–​219 student worth, economy of 228 Sutton Trust 111, 119 Swann Report 2–​3 Sweden 11 symbolic violence 142–​143 Talburt, S. 23–​24 Tamboukou, M. 40–​41, 160 teacher-​student relationships 100–​102 teaching practices 94 teaching quality 4 teaching strategies 99–​101 technocratic approaches 11 technocratic rationalism 37 Thatcher, M. 1, 13 thick description 181 Tholen, G. 125 Thomson, P. 226 Tinker, R. 60–​61, 64 Tomlinson, S. 3, 13, 213, 217 transparency 126 lack of 79–​80 transposable dispositions 114–​115 Trondman, M. 182 Troyna, B. 15 trust 43, 61, 66, 69, 74, 80, 81, 82 truth 54 Tyler, I. 141

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underperforming schools 153–​173 contradictory data 169–​172 ethnographic study 154–​157, 163–​165, 166, 167–​173 and Foucault’s thinking tool 157–​163 multi-​modal study 160–​161, 169 ontological questions 154–​157 power relations 161–​162, 170–​171, 172–​173 uniform policy 121, 123, 210, 211–​212 Union Jack, the 212–​214 United States of America 11, 16, 201 Valluvan, S. 216 Valverde, M. 183 Venn, C. xiv Verran H. 24 vision 164 voluntarism 225 Wacquant, L.J. 140 Wakefield City Academies Trust 43, 227 Walford, G. 1 whiteness 193, 217 wholly owned subsidiaries 43 Wiborg, S. 93, 102–​103, 104 Wilkins, A. xiii, 18, 19, 20, 64, 78, 200, 201, 202 Williams, P. 225 Williams, R. 177, 183 Williamson, G. 205 Willis, P. 15, 182 Wilshaw, M. 216 Wolch, J. 226 Wolfe, D. 111 working-​class culture 109 and family 115–​118 working class pathologisation 141 Youdell, D. 35–​36 Zirkel, S. 140 Žižek, S. xiii, 42–​43