Wither democracy? The rise of epistocracy and monopoly in school governance (original) (raw)
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In this paper I discuss the role of school governance in England with a particular focus on the changing responsibilities of school governors in relation to recent education policy. These issues are located through a much broader discussion of neoliberalism and its effects on public sector organisation. Here neoliberalism is defined as the incursion of market forces on public sector organisation, including the introduction of new regulatory tools (inspection, standardisation and accountabilities for example) to replace direct bureaucracy and state intervention and indirectly strengthen government control – what Bob Jessop calls ‘regulated self-regulation’. Drawing on these insights, I demonstrate how a neoliberal political rationality shapes school governance and the kinds of behaviour and orientations idealised and adopted by school governors seeking to make themselves and the schools they govern accountable. Finally, I show how school governance is wedded to mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion (a preference for ‘professionals’ over ‘amateurs’ or unskilled volunteers for example) as well as claims to expertise and specialist knowledge. This raises questions over who gets to influence school governance and what governance is for, as well as bringing into focus larger questions about the role of democratic principles of civic empowerment, participation and representation.
DEMOCRATIC OPTIMISM AND AUTHORITY IN AN INCREASINGLY DEPOLITICISED SCHOOLS ‘SYSTEM’ IN ENGLAND
2018
This paper reports initial outcomes from a short series of semi-structured interviews in 2017 with senior politicians from three parties elected to two contrasting English local authorities (LAs): an urban city authority and a largely rural shire county. These were complemented by continuing interviews with senior officers and head teachers, of both academies and maintained schools, some with positions in multi-academy trusts (MATs), and critical readings of LA strategic documents. Interviews focused on the nature of democratic authority in what is an increasingly privatised schools system in the sense that school governance and decision making have moved steadily away from the authority inherent in democratic representation of a local community towards a more technical (or technicist) conception that depends more on ‘people with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity’ (DfE, 2017: 10). This process has been described as ‘depoliticisation’ (Ball, 2007), or even ‘destalization’ (Jessop, 2002), whereby there is little public disagreement or debate about schools’ role in achieving national objectives (for example, social mobility). And the new technologies underpinning these changes have in turn engendered new governmentalities and discursive formations focused on little except better ‘outcomes’ (Wilkins, 2016). The principal policy in pursuit of these aims in English schools has been the process of academisation, whereby schools have been steadily removed from the purview of LAs, however etiolated, to be funded directly by central government on the basis of a contract with the minister. More recently, schools have been more progressively organised into Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) – voluntarily or involuntarily – in processes overseen by Regional Schools Commissioners, central government officials also responsible directly to the minister (Riddell, 2016). Politicians interviewed varied in their support for academisation - not always in ways that might be expected to reflect party affiliation – but all felt that schools had an important contribution to make to the realisation of their strategic aims, from economic development to lifelong learning. In addition, they were interested in what happened to the children of their constituents and all felt local authorities needed to engage with schools, reporting varying success in doing so. All acknowledged the difficulties inherent in a system increasingly organised de facto to exclude them, especially with MATs with wider regional or national roles with the attendant more remote offices and boards. According to some politicians (and officers), responses from MATs varied but having an elected mayor in the city authority was seen as one significant mechanism. Nearly all were optimistic for the future. The paper sets these initial findings in the context of what one interviewee described as a ‘stalled process’ (of economic reform), with central government not willing or able to respond to their concerns about the management of the system, especially since the 2017 general election. The reported absence of any space in the national legislative programme for schools because of the preparations for BREXIT means that even the much-discussed National Funding Formula (for school budgets) will be implemented via LAs for maintained schools, retaining some discretion, not the original intention (DfE, 2016: 68). Nor is the process of academisation by any means complete; nor, it is argued, is it ever likely to be. At the time of the first interviews, Regional Schools Commissioners were in the early stages of setting up ‘Sub-Regional Schools Improvement Boards’ involving senior LA representatives, that will most likely remain ‘strategic partners’. In addition, according to several interviewees, a paper setting out the proposed statutory roles of LAs to be amended by subsequent legislation had been drafted before the 2017 election, but not published since. Whereas it could be argued that the newer system based on school collaboration increasingly organised through MATs, overseen by Regional Schools Commissioners, might be more consistent and reliable in attaining greater equity in educational outcomes, a focus so limited leaves major moral (as opposed to technical) questions concerning the nature of ‘state’ schooling in England unanswered in policy: what democratic oversight will local and national communities have of their children’s education; how can and will parents be deeply involved.
Michael Gove's Heritage: School Governance Reform
Buckingham Journal of Education, 2021
This is a commissioned paper for a collection on the 'heritage' of Michael Gove in English Schooling. It sets out an argument about schools governance and how now it is incapable of renewing either itself or schooling.
This report analyses how schools in England have interpreted and begun to respond to the government's 'self-improving school-led system' (SISS) policy agenda, an overarching narrative for schools policy since 2010 that encompasses an ensemble of reforms including academies, multi-academy trusts (MATs) and Teaching School Alliances (TSAs). Based on a large-scale, four-year, mixed-methods study, the report asks whether or not the models of coordination and school support emerging locally since 2010 represent a genuine basis for an equitable and inclusive 'school-led' system. It explores the factors that support and hinder such developments as well as the implications for schools and school leadership. The analysis draws on governance theory to evaluate the reforms, which are conceived as an attempt to mix and re-balance three overlapping approaches to coordinating the school system: hierarchy, markets and networks. This shows that while one popular interpretation of the SISS agenda is that it requires inter-school partnerships to 'self-organize' their own 'school-led' improvement, this is in fact a partial account that underplays the dominant influences of hierarchical and market mechanisms on the thinking and actions of schools and school leaders and the networks they are developing. The report includes important new empirical findings, for example on the impact of MATs of different sizes and on the relationship between Ofsted inspection outcomes and levels of socioeconomic stratification between schools. It also combines the perspectives of multiple case study schools across four different localities to provide rich insights into leadership decision-making and agency in the context of local status hierarchies and rapid policy-driven change. As a result, while focusing on changes in England, it provides a unique set of insights into how different governance regimes interact across different local contexts to influence patterns of schooling and school-to-school collaboration – insights that will have relevance for research and practice on school system governance more widely.
The public good in English private school governance
There exist some rare private schools that attempt to mitigate the anti-democratic qualities of the private schooling sector in England. This article reports on a study of private schools that aim to promote equality and participation through some aspects of their operations. It considers to what extent the governance structures within the schools support their aspirations and what this means for the public good more generally. English private schools are accountable to the state under The Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014 (hereafter Independent School Standards, 2014), corporate law and the majority are accountable under the Charities Act, which requires them to demonstrate public benefit. The schools reported here have a commitment to the public good that extends beyond these limited accountabilities, demonstrating the weaknesses of the public good as it is presently defined by the state and also advancing understanding on the extent to which the schools can be regarded as Fraser's (1990) counterpublics.