PUBLIC BATTLES AND PRIVATE TAKEOVERS: ACADEMIES AND THE POLITICS OF EDUCATIONAL GOVERNANCE

• Authors: Andrew Wilkins
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Introduced to the British education system under the Education Act 2002 and later enshrined in the New Labour government White Paper Higher Standards, Better Schools for All (DfES, 2005), the Academies policy was set up to enable designated under-performing schools to ‘opt out’ from the financial and managerial remit of Local Authorities (LAs) and enter into partnerships with outside sponsors. A radical piece of policy legislation, it captured New Labour’s commitment to (further) private sector involvement in public sector organisation – what might be termed a neoliberal or advanced liberal approach to education reform. A consequence of this has been the expansion of school-based definitions of ‘public accountability’ to encompass political, business, and other interest groups, together with the enlargement of the language of accountability itself. In this paper the author address the importance of rethinking conventional public/private, political/commercial divides in light of these developments and foreground the changing nature of state power in the generation and assembly of different publics.

Keywords

EN

BRITISH EDUCATION; PUBLICS; POWER; ACCOUNTABILITY; LANGUAGE; SCHOOLS; ENGLAND

• Publisher: Faculty of Education, Trnava University
• Journal: Pedagogický časopis (Journal of Pedagogy)
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 11 – 29

Contributors

author

Andrew Wilkins

• Roehampton University, Department of Education, Roehampton Lane, London, SW15 5PU, UK