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The research reported in this article contributes new understandings of systemic change by studying the form of system redesign known in England asacademisation. The data illuminate tensions within the neoliberal policy complex that are surfaced in a single secondary school. Although several studies have described academy conversions retrospectively, there has been little research that both analyses the complex month-by-month realities of decision-making and investigates the changing views of policy actors. Drawing on data from documents, observations and interviews, we argue foracademisationto be understood, not as a policy or a complex of policies, but as system redesign.Academisationis not simply a legal process: a school can beacademisedwithout officially becoming an academy. The new knowledge from this research speaks to a global audience, because the political, economic and cultural processes on which it reports are under scrutiny in other systems with experiments in school autonomy as a form of publicly funded but ‘independent’ schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this appreciative discussion paper I provide an overview of the reforms made to education in England, and engage with the politics of education through examining the simultaneous and inter-related processes of politicisation, depoliticisation and repoliticisation of educational matters. I engage in a discussion of the papers in this special issue through this framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The role and contribution of consultants and consultancy in public services has grown rapidly and the power of consultants suggests the emergence of a ‘consultocracy’. We draw on research evidence from the social sciences and critical education policy (CEP) studies to present an examination of the state of the field. We deploy a framework that examines functional, critical and socially critical research and theorising, and we identify the emerging interest in CEP studies. In particular, we identify the potential for consultocracy but acknowledge that there is a need for more detailed research where we argue for more attention to be given to the political sciences in theorising knowledge exchange processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our investigations into the politics of the Academies Programme in England have generated thinking that draws on data about the conversion process from two projects. We engage with an early City Academy that replaced two ‘failing’ schools, and a recent Academy that replaced a ‘successful’ high school. We deploy Hannah Arendt’s political tools of natality and pluralism to illuminate the depoliticisation of educational reform in England. We identify that, while claims are made about innovation and new opportunities, there is little evidence of natality due to the Academies Programme as a conservative and neoliberal restoration project. Integral to this is the urgency of reform based on deferential common sense notions that elite groups know best. The denial of a plurality of options, debates and interest groups in the conversion process is delivered by co-opted educational professionals as reform managers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (now the Department for Education) and the National College for School Leadership (now the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services) have been active participants in framing and shaping discourse in relation to leadership in schools in England. This paper is based upon findings from research funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-22-3610) as part of the Distributed Leadership and the Social Practices of School Organisation in England (SPSO) project. It examines how educational practitioners have engaged with these discursive framing and shaping activities. This is conducted through a particular focus upon how distributed leadership has been talked into being as part of a wider regime which seeks to manage the performance of educational practitioners and designated educational leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the hit BBC TV drama Life on Mars Sam Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Is he mad, in a coma or actually back in time? As the drama unfolds he experiences a world without performance audits but also one without the safeguards for arrest, detention and the interviewing of suspects mandated by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984). The acclaimed series has led to flights of nostalgia, not least for a world in which police could get on with 'real policing' without 'unnecessary' paperwork. In this article, we will metaphorically go back in time to contemporary and historical practices of headship in English schools. If a headteacher from 2009 were to wake up in 1973 what would they understand about their work, what would be the same, what would be different? What taken-for-granted current practices might get them into trouble, what might frustrate them - and what might delight them that they would bring back to the current job if they could? Mobilising Bourdieu's thinking tools, we will examine these questions through an analysis of published and unpublished texts produced by heads about their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author offers her opinion on the article "Towards Standards for the Publication of Performance Indicators in the Public Sector: The Case of Schools," by Sjoerd Karsten, Adrie J. Visscher, Anne Bert Dijkstra, and René Veenstra, published in the same issue. She expresses her disagreement with the authors that an international set of performance standards for education would contribute to improved educational outcomes. She suggests that all educational standards are politicized and considers the problems inhibiting educational success in England.

The author argues that leadership in the public sector operates within the belief of a historical and often mythical hierarchy, and that leadership as a term often is over-used and under-conceptualised. This 'leadership delusion' is located in a functional approach to leadership where the assumption is that removing dysfunctions from organisations through efficient and effective delivery will automatically bring about changes to standards. While organisational systems, structures and roles are important for quality and improvement, such an approach is not of itself socially critical. This viewpoint argues that we need approaches to leadership that engage with bigger issues such as class, gender and race in ways that are more than counting and measuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on data from the Knowledge Production and Educational Leadership Project (funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council RES-000-23-1192) where we investigated the relationship between the state and public policy and knowledge in England during the New Labor governments from 1997. The relationship between the state and civil society is one of institutionalized governance where the public institution in the form of the national ministry and the establishment of Non-Departmental Public Bodies remain important in policymaking but is increasingly inter dependent with networks of advisors and private consultants who “enter” government as policy designers and deliverers. We intend to develop this through using the National College for School Leadership as a case study based on primary documentation and interview data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current workforce reform, known as Remodelling the School Workforce, is part of an enduring policy process where there have been tensions between public and private sector structures and cultures. I show that the New Right and New Labour governments who have built and configured site based performance management over the past quarter of a century have been concerned to construct a workforce sufficient in numbers and trained in implementation to deliver various reform strategies. In particular, I examine the interplay between managerialism and leadership, as the means by which policy entrepreneurs have enabled a workforce delivery composition and disposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the drive to establish performance management systems in schools the experiences of teacher appraisal in the 1990s remain in people's biographies but have been officially silenced in recent policy texts. This article traces the development of teacher appraisal from the late 1980s through to the Green Paper teachers: meeting the challenge of change (DfEE 1998) and reports on a research project in one urban LEA in the north of England. Evidence shows how the LEA sought to establish and sustain a developmental model of teacher appraisal in an increasingly hostile climate, and while experiences showed the need for improvements many gains had been made. Developmental appraisal largely failed because it was starved of resources and was increasingly out of tune with the performance management strategy that came to dominate education policy by the turn of the century. It is argued that by telling the story through contemporary histories of teacher's work on appraisal then the experiences of developmental approaches, and the public sector values underpinning it, will not be lost. Furthermore, making this work visible is an important resource in supporting the production of alternative models to those being imposed from the centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizes the work of teacher appraisal research networks in England. Implementation of performance management; Endurance of the practice of networking; Prominence of headteachers reporting on experimental schemes within the schools.

The field of education management has grown rapidly in the past 30 years with members positioning themselves in all parts of the education system. The main claim for distinctiveness is working with and on behalf of the practitioner, and intellectual positioning is based on the nature of intervention with the practitioner such as empirical research, course provision, and consultancy. In undertaking an intellectual analysis of the field, Bourdieu's theory of practice, developed through and with Habitus and Field, is used to think with and to develop an understanding of the 'possibilities' and 'traps' for the professional practice of field members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the highlights of the "Critical Approaches to Educational Leadership and Policy" seminar held in the University of Manchester's School of Education in England on June 30, 2010. The seminar discussed various issues related to education, including the link between educational areas and educational reform, the role of researcher and research, and the participation of students and educational professionals in policymaking.

We examine the contemporary relationship between headship and leadership in England. This speaks to the current globalizing agenda promoting generic leadership within a modernizing agenda of restructuring and re-culturing in public education. Thinking based on several research studies is used to stimulate perspectives on a range of complex tensions between: first, labeling and the realities of work; second, training/credentialing as a leader; third, public accountability and the professional ethic of distributed leadership; and, fourth, centralized reforms and the realities of context. We construct an argument that the labeling of Headteachers as managing directors, chief executives, and more recently as school leaders, combined with training and a requirement to implement reforms, is central to a form of modernization that is reworking professionality as generic and business orientated. This current phase of reform is revealed as a centralized remodeling drive toward de-regulating qualified teacher status as a credential for school leaders. An educative ethic is identified as a counter-weight value-system providing evidence of lost stories and testimony to the relationship between professionality, leadership as a pedagogic process, and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]