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This paper builds on geographical understandings of scalar practices and illustrates how they can enrich studies of policymaking, in particular for the area of education policy. It achieves this by integrating a focus on ‘scalecraft’ with an approach to ‘policy as practice’ featuring in critical policy studies. The paper draws on one of the few empirical studies of England’s academy schools policy and analyses the work of actors tasked with implementing the policy in two local authority case studies. Analysis presents a new critical perspective on the academies policy by revealing how policy actors’ work is underpinned by scalecraft practices. The analysis also reveals how scalecraft intersects with marketisation politics to create scalar tensions which profoundly shape the work of policy actors. The paper uses its analytical findings to conceptually develop the relationship between scalar practices and the politics of the market, and to propose new conceptual dimensions for understanding the practice of scalecraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘System leadership’, as applied to the running of schools, refers to a form of leadership that extends beyond a single institution, where headteachers work with establishments other than their own. This approach is predicated on certain beliefs about the role and purpose of collaborative school leadership and management in a marketised system of state schooling and the benefits of a distributed and networked approach to school improvement. But what are the potential benefits and limitations of school system leadership? What normative interpretations of the system are best suited for purpose? This paper explores these issues with reference to the English school system, where system leadership is actively promoted by government through education policy and school reform. In order to do this, use is made of Gunter, H., D. Hall, and J. Bragg (2013. “Distributed Leadership: A Study in Knowledge Production.”Education Management, Administration and Leadership41 (4): 555–580.) framework of distributed leadership in schools. The framework identifies functionally normative, functionally descriptive, critical and socially critical positions in the school leadership literature. The paper concludes by putting forward potential alternatives to the largely functional policy narratives and solutions of recent decades, which are based on a broader understanding of ‘the system’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

School-to-school collaboration has been central to many improvement efforts over recent decades. In an attempt to promote both improvement and equity current developments in England have included changing formal governance arrangements to promote collaboration for improvement through ‘federations’ and ‘chains’ of schools. However, federations and school chains remain a relatively under-explored area and there is a noticeable absence of research exploring the impact of such arrangements on student outcomes. This paper draws on a programme of research including the national evaluation of federations, the first quantitative study of the impact of federations on student outcomes and a longitudinal qualitative study of the development of federations to consider two key questions: What is a federation? And do federations make a difference? In order to achieve this, the paper provides an overview of the key characteristics of federations and considers their contribution to improvement efforts. In conclusion the paper reflects on a number of issues and implications associated with developing a federated school system. [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]