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This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first ‘folly’ in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of ‘employability initiatives’ and opens up a further series of ‘follies’ in the day-to-day practices of academics and students’ responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics’ reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final ‘folly’ associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students’ focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers – when interviewed – say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then innotpreparing students for the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper establishes and explains the important role of the Conservative Government of 1959–1964 in supporting the raising of the school leaving age in Britain from the age of 15 to 16. This was a significant and high-profile national issue that generated much educational, social and political debate around conflicting priorities during this period, and was emphasized in both the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newsom Report of 1963. The Treasury was strongly opposed to the proposal due to its high financial cost. There was a large element of electoral opportunism involved in the Conservative Government’s approval of raising the school leaving age (ROSLA), announced in January 1964, but it also highlighted deeper complexities and reservations in Conservative attitudes to ROSLA as well as a long-term ambition to consolidate education as a Conservative issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the discursive shifts of emphasis of school headship since the 1980s in England, and the ways in which the repositioning of head teachers has gradually transformed professional work and relationships in schools via a discourse of management. Specifically, the paper identifies a ‘trilogy of school headship in England’ to indicate a process by which school headship has been repositioned – from head teacher, to manager, and to leader from the Education Reform Act of 1988 onwards. Drawing primarily on policy texts, the construction, within policy, of a head teacher endowed with power, responsibility and freedom will be detailed. Informed by both Fairclough and Foucault’s conceptions of discourse, this paper concludes that as a policy technology management subjects head teachers to ‘a twin process of autonomization plus responsibilization’ within which they become the linchpin of the delivery chain of policy and play a key role in the formation of ‘performative professionalism’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children's rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is flawed. The inclusion of young people's voices in decision-making is context dependent, and influenced by individual relationships, both positive and negative. It is framed by policies that subjugate children within disciplinary technologies that determine a regime of 'truth' about effective and appropriate participation. Drawing on data gathered as part of a wider study on the relationships between services users and services providers in special educational needs, this paper demonstrates that active inclusion of the voice of the child can be illustrated to be at least variable, and at worst prejudiced. It is suggested that the notion of participation produces tacit forms of 'government' that further classify and divide young people, magnifying their marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al's. (Braun, A., S. Ball, M. Maguire, and K. Hoskins. 2011. "Taking Context Seriously: Towards Explaining Policy Enactments in the Secondary School." Discourse: Studies in the Politics of Education 32 (4): 585 -596) heuristic device for thinking about the 'situated', 'professional' and 'external' dimensions of context at the school. This device supports an analysis of the school's intake (in particular the high cultural and class related aspirations of parents and students) and its values (namely the school's traditional ethos of academic and behavioural excellence). The central argument of the paper is that these contextual dimensions contribute significantly to the school's capacity to forge a worthy school identity within the current hyperaccountable and competitive environment where academic achievement (along increasingly narrow and conservative lines) and maintaining standards in relation to this achievement are utmost priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two key themes of recent UK education policy texts have been a focus on 'quality' in public sector performance, and on 'equality' in the form of New Labour's stated commitment to equality of opportunity as a key policy objective. This twin approach can be seen at its most obvious in the concept of 'excellence for all'. This paper contends that in recent policy texts the vocabularies of quality management discourse and egalitarian discourse have become conflated, serving to mask key issues relating to educational inequality, seen at its most stark in the attainment gap. The paper argues that this has led to a failure to distinguish between the goals of quality management and the ends of egalitarianism. Discursive conflation of this sort risks obscuring the significance of socio-economic context and the limited impact of within-school action. The paper also suggests that the focus on equality in terms of school provision paradoxically risks entrenching social inequalities despite the appearance of egalitarian commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on an in-depth evaluation of a Single R egeneration Fund Budget funded partnership based on individual and community education as a means of promoting social inclusion. Partnership has become the preeminent mechanism for furthering the UK Government's social inclusion agenda. The paper focuses on the dynamics of partnership itself at management level. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is drawn upon in thinking about some of the processes facilitating or hindering partnership working. In particular, the paper draws attention to gender dynamics in partnership working and the ways in which these interact with organizational and professional practices. The article postulates that connections established prior to the formal partnership constituted cultural capital, which was transferred to the partnership. In particular, it was found that gender networks and practices constitute an important source of skills and dispositions. This way of viewing partnership working contributes to debates about sustainability, since it suggests that personal qualities that are essential to project success are a transferable resource and that there is a pool of cultural capital based on previously existing social networks that may transcend organizational and professional boundaries. The paper suggests that practices and networks on the ground may survive changes in both the language of public policy and models of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on theBuilding Colleges for the Future(BCF) initiative (2008) which saw a wave of new-build Further Education (FE) colleges spring up across England in the final years of the New Labour government. It draws on qualitative data from a research study focusing on four new-build colleges in the West Midlands of England to theorise the BCF initiative. Using theory derived primarily from Lefebvre, the paper contextualises BCF within a frame of neoliberalisation and discusses the impact of the ‘production of space’ represented by the initiative with a research focus on two areas: pedagogy and ideology. The main findings are that these new-build colleges can be interpreted as spatial expressions of policy-makers and others’ perceptions of teaching and learning; in ideological terms, they also trumpet a ‘new lifestyle’ and a ‘new art of living’ for FE staff and students that is however, in tension with residual pedagogical practices and values. The article concludes that despite being an expression of neoliberal abstract space, these new-builds can still be seen as providing a frame for alternative individual and collective encounters with education which may subvert and outlast the processes of neoliberalisation that they appear to embody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is generally acknowledged that being ‘historically informed’ lies at the heart of critical accounts of education policy-making, the use of historically focused retrospective research methods within the field is rare. This paper makes the case for retrospective research at a time when some of the most significant episodes of post-war educational policy-making are fast passing into the realms of not-so-recent history. In particular, it is argued that current policy scholars now have an opportunity to revisit the issues and concerns regarding the formation of the ‘New Right’ education policy reforms 30 years ago. Drawing on the experiences of a recently completed study of educational policy-making during the 1979–1983 Thatcher administration, it is argued that retrospective methods offer a surprisingly rich opportunity to collect primary data from the policy elites of the 1980s. It is concluded that the time is right for the production of a useful addendum to the founding studies of educational policy sociology that were conducted at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper first draws on the political philosophy of R.H. Tawney to outline some universal principles for the provision of socially just education. It then moves onto a more pragmatic approach, analysing where the injustices lie in contemporary British education and outlining policies and practices that are socially just, not in an instrumental neoliberal sense but in terms of more egalitarian social democratic and socialist traditions. The final section of the paper focuses on Finland as the closest example of a socially just education system, before arguing for a rethinking and reworking of Tawney’s educational thinking for the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the case of a relatively low-profile policy initiative that has been successively reframed as part of larger policy ensembles within UK schools over a six-year period, and translated during this time at national and school levels. The policy examined is that of study support or out-of-hours learning. The trajectory of this policy is traced as it is first launched within an educational policy ensemble around the raising achievement agenda and then re-framed as part of the then New Labour government’s major educational and social policy agenda of Every Child Matters. Drawing on interview data from head teachers and teachers, the ways in which study support policy was translated in two contrasting schools over this period is explored, highlighting different tensions with national policy and local agendas. The ‘fate’ of study support as an initiative is questioned following a change of government in the UK and in the context of global education policy developments. This analysis of the re-framing of a low-profile policy adds to our understanding of the cycles of policy ensembles and their translation by different agents in different sites over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. In the following paper, I examine the current government’s education policy discourse and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis, reveal the government’s attempts to rearticulate education around the logics of market, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility for social problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue that such rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of ‘empowerment’, which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics by constituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors who have been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them by central government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the implications of policy fracture and arms length governance within the decision-making processes currently shaping curriculum design within the English education system. In particular, it argues that an unresolved 'ideological fracture' at the government level has been passed down to school leaders whose response to the dilemma is distorted by the target-driven agenda of arms length agencies. Drawing upon the findings of a large-scale online survey of history teaching in English secondary schools, this paper illustrates the problems that occur when policy-making is divorced from curriculum theory, and in particular from any consideration of the nature of knowledge. Drawing on the social realist theory of knowledge, we argue that the rapid spread of alternative curricular arrangements, implemented in the absence of an understanding of curriculum theory, undermines the value of disciplined thinking to the detriment of many young people, particularly those in areas of social and economic deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon an earlier analysis presented in this journal. Using official figures for school compositions and for outcomes at KS4 from 1997 to 2007, this paper considers each of the annual cohorts of new Academies in England, from 2002 to 2006. It shows that their level of success in comparison to their predecessors, national averages, their changing compositions and their changing exam entry practices are insubstantial. Of course some schools are gaining higher scores since Academisation, but others are gaining lower scores. Using the most recent results available there is no clear evidence that Academies produce better results than local authority schools with equivalent intakes. The Academies programme therefore presents an opportunity cost for no apparent gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some particular aspects of the privatisation of public sector education, mapping and analysing the participation of education businesses in a whole range of public sector education services both in the UK and overseas. It addresses some of the types of privatisation(s) which are taking place 'of', 'in' and 'through' education and education policy, 'in' and 'through' the work of education businesses. This entails a traversal of some of the multi-level and multi-layered fields of policy: institutional, national and international. Such an approach is important in demonstrating the increasing diversity and reach of some of the education businesses and their different kinds of involvements with different institutions and sectors of education. It also makes it possible to set local rhetorics, such as 'partnership', within the context of corporate logics of expansion, diversification, integration and profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Involving around #1 billion of expenditure over a five-year period, the National Grid for Learning (NGf L) initiative embodies the fast growing influence of both market and technological forces in UK education. The formation of the initiative can, therefore, be seen as a pivotal signpost for the direction of New Labour education policy-making, particularly with regard to the increased roles of the private sector and quasi-governmental actors in the development and eventual implementation of educational policy. Based on data gathered from a series of in-depth interviews with 'key actors' in the formation and initial implementation of the NGf L, this paper details the formation of the initiative and explores the mechanisms and structures of power and decision-making employed during its formation. Adopting the analytical frameworks of 'policy community' and 'policy network', the emergence and 'roll-out' of the National Grid for Learning is discussed in three distinct phases: the origins of the initiative; its initial policy formation; and, finally, its ongoing implementation and first stages of becoming a policy-in-practice. The paper concludes by discussing the NGf L as an example of current UK education policy-making and examines the national and global precedents underlying the nature of its formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe one secondary school’s radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we describe the school’s move towards a thematic curriculum and ‘personalised learning’ as a process of productive tensions which enabled the development of new approaches to education. While these innovations were considered to be of major benefit to both teachers and pupils, a fundamental contradiction between the focus on individual development underpinning the new approach and the demands of accountability in a persistent culture of performativity proved to be insurmountable. We argue that this particular contradiction highlights the dominance of measurability in judgements of school success and individual progress, with consequences for the pupils’ longer term education futures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 1980s, state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of ‘good governance’ (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise, and performance evaluation as mechanisms for improving public service delivery). The rise of academies and free schools (‘state-funded independent schools’) has increased demand for good governance, notably as a means by which to discipline schools,in particular school governors– those tasked with the legal responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. A condition and effect of school autonomy, therefore, is increased monitoring and surveillance of all school governing bodies. In this paper, I demonstrate how these twin processes combine to produce a new modality of state power and intervention; a dominant or organizing principle by which government steer the performance of governors through disciplinary tools of professionalization and inspection, with the aim of achieving the ‘control of control’. To explain these trends, I explore how various established and emerging school governing bodies are (re)constituting themselves to meet demands for good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the concept of participation in relation to a range of recently imposed social and education policies. Drawing on recent empirical research, we explore how disciplinary technologies, including government policy, operate at the interface of service users and providers, and examine the interactional aspects of participation where the shift from abstract to applied policy creates tensions between notions of parental responsibility and empowerment, participation and 'positive welfare'. In this, our analysis raises three important issues/questions: whether existing mechanisms for engagement between service users and service providers enable any meaningful participation and partnership in decision-making; whether multiagency service provision is successfully incorporated within a participatory framework that allows service users to engage across and within services; and whether on the basis of our findings, there is requirement to remodel mechanisms for participation to enable user-experiences the opportunity to shape the way that services engage with families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current performance and 'excellence' culture that has so bewitched politicians and beset educators, there are no discourses available to voice and to make sense of the anxieties that consistently arise for children who are pushed towards ever-higher performance. Drawing on the findings from a study of children's transitions from primary to secondary school, this paper examines some of the structural and emotional consequences of current school-choice policy in the UK. Deep-seated fears of downward mobility held by some sections of the middle classes are potently mobilized when faced with the constraints of local secondary schools markets. Children from professional middle-class families are pushed towards high performance as a response to these fears with parents using a range of strategies to place their child in a high performing school, including entering them for selective schools' entrance examinations. In the pursuit of the kind of attainment seen to be necessary in order to ensure the successful reproduction of professional middle-class status, we argue that difficult emotions have to be suppressed or split off. For middle-class girls in particular, the constant striving for and achievement of high attainment, rather than unproblematically engendering a sense of confidence in their abilities, can produce a sense of never being good enough. Nor is it only the middle classes who are implicated in these processes. There are serious consequences for working-class children and we discuss how they are positioned in relation to UK policy initiatives that prioritize 'excellence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the nature of the university as an institution in a time of great change in the function of the university. Lifelong Learning as a concept is highly politicized and its desired ends are not clear – possibilities are discussed. The debates herein are related to the position of the universities and their (potential and current) role in recruiting adult learners. Consideration is given to the ways in which the university must change if it is to become a fit place in which for adults to learn; continued and increased adult participation being crucial if lifelong learning is to become a reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of assessment policy and practice from a critical/poststructuralist perspective is comparatively rare in education assessment writing. This paper is such an engagement. Texts derived from an earlier empirical study of assessment dialogue in infant classrooms were re-examined using a critical discourse analysis. While the approach was exploratory, the methodology and its outcomes are relevant to policy theory. The analysis examines two main aspects of classroom discourse – the performative, in relation to speech acts and metaphor – both for what they do in constructing personal and social realities for infant subjects. The discussion uses the concept of intertextuality to explore discourse relationships and change; it also considers the nature of dominant discourses and policy contestation. Questions about agency are raised. The complexity of policy as 'effect' is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of technologically-based 'virtual education' has been portrayed as a means of widening access to learning opportunities for those currently excluded from participation in lifelong education and training. Now in the UK these claims are being operationalized under the 'University for Industry' initiative and associated Virtual College programmes all of which aim to make real the concept of Britain as a 'learning society' for all with an emphasis on reaching those traditionally seen as non-participants in learning. This paper examines these claims in the light of current knowledge about the characteristics of non-participants in lifelong learning and the barriers that they face. It is suggested that the application of 'technological fixes' to underlying socio-economic determinants of participation will solve some problems, create others, and leave many unaffected. In this way the paper argues for independent research on the impact of the 'virtual college' movement, and begins to outline the form such research could take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On coming to power in 1997, the New Labour government promised to move beyond the 'ruthless free-for-all' of the neo-liberals. However, rather than revisiting the 'stifling statism' of 'Old Labour', the government has claimed to be developing a so-called 'third way' in which policies are put forward on the basis of 'what works' rather than being driven by any one ideological approach. Through drawing on Giddens' outline of 'first', 'second' and 'third way' politics, this paper looks at a range of New Labour's education policies and examines the extent to which they can be seen to embody a distinctively different approach. It finds that, despite some remnants of old Labour 'first way' thinking, the government's strategies have largely been an extension of second way 'neoliberalism'. Education action zones are identified as the initiative which comes closest to representing a 'third way'. The paper concludes by discussing the potential of this initiative for addressing and overcoming the failures of first and second way policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers studying the impact of parliamentary devolution conclude that education policies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverging. They attribute this to five factors: the redistribution of formal powers associated with devolution; differences in values, ideologies and policy discourses across the four territories; the different composition, interests and policy styles of their policy communities; the different ‘situational logics’ of policy-making and the mutual independence of policy decisions in the different territories. This article reviews trends in higher education (HE) policy across the UK since parliamentary devolution. It focuses on policies for student fees and student support, for widening participation, for supporting research and for the HE contribution to economic development, skills and employability. On balance, it finds as much evidence of policy convergence, or at least of constraints on divergence, as of policy divergence. It argues that each of the five factors claimed to promote divergence can be associated with corresponding pressures for convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reforming vocational education in the English education and training system has occupied governments for at least the last three decades, the latest development being the introduction of 14 lines of Specialised Diplomas. Using an historical analysis of qualifications reform, we suggest they are unlikely to transform 14-19 education and training. The failure to reform academic qualifications alongside their vocational equivalents is likely to result in 'academic drift', lack of status and a relatively low level of uptake for these new awards, a process compounded by low employer recognition of broad vocational qualifications. In rejecting the Tomlinson Report's central proposal for a unified diploma system covering all 14-19 education and training, we argue that the government may have condemned the Specialised Diplomas to become a middle-track qualification for a minority of 14-19-years-olds, situated between the majority academic pathway and the sparsely populated apprenticeship route. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces how the meaning of ‘skill' has broadened considerably since the 1950s through an examination of the relevant policy literature. It stresses the central role of both the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and Further Education Unit (FEU) in re-defining ‘skill' in the late 1970s and 1980s. Core (or key) skills, which have come to dominate contemporary education and training debates, are seen as an extension of this agenda. Recent usage of the term, skill, is found to be more applicable to a vision of a low skill economy than that of a high skill one, presenting policy makers with range of difficult problems with regard to vocational education and training (VET) policy. I'm not against skills as such . . . so long as it really is skills we're talking about. (Hart 1978: 205) . . . nothing is more false than the claim that, for a given assertion, its use is its meaning . On the contrary, its use may depend upon its lack of meaning, its possession of wholly different and incompatible meanings in different contexts, and the fact that, at the same time, it as it were emits the impression of possessing a consistent meaning. (Gellner 1973: 42) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language of austerity has been widely used to characterize policy-making in post-industrial nations since the financial crisis. Youth services in England are a noted example of the effects of austerity, having suffered rapid and severe cuts following a period of record investment prior to 2008. In this article, I argue that ‘austerity’ is an inadequate conceptual basis for critical analysis of policy-making since 2008, and that youth services are better understood as an exemplar case of the reforming effects of a ‘late neoliberal regime’. The late neoliberal regime describes a regulation of production through a finance capital imaginary, as distinct from the productive capital imaginary of the quasi-marketising neoliberal regime. I argue that late neoliberalism has effected the disassembly of quasi-marketised youth services and simultaneously the emergence of a new youth sector founded on norms of investment and return. I trace the reforming force of this regime through the productive relations of capital distributions, policy discourse, and organizational forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Free school policy claims to partly decentralise to local proposers decisions over who provides a free school, where and for what reasons, within the constraints of a government approval process. This article analyses empirically the people and organisations doing the proposing and their interactions with the approval process. The article begins by locating free schools within Big Society and quasi-market policies. The emerging free school landscape is then mapped and the motivations, aims and demography of a sample of 50 proposers are explored. A key distinction emerges between two analytical clusters. First, proposers able to negotiate the approval process are shown to draw on a range of professional networks, to have strongly academic educational aims and to on average not seek to specifically serve disadvantaged communities. Second, and conversely, the majority of proposers located in highly disadvantaged areas have aims and expertise that do not fit well with what the government is willing to accept. This is not conceived as a simple dualism but highlights the significance of both a lack of critical engagement with inclusion among accepted proposers and the effects of an approval process that has prioritised an unequal distribution of particular forms of professional expertise and experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking recent policy on education and social mobility as a working example, this article examines developments in the mechanisms for realising policy over the past ten years, as indicative of changes in the neoliberal state. This initial analysis suggests that, despite similarities in the process of policy formation before and after the General Election of 2010, the changing nature of the policy levers chosen by the Coalition Government represents a move from a rationalist, directing state towards a more hybrid bul nevertheless neoliberal model. The Government still intends to 'steer' the education system through data, however, but in a more developed market system with little supervision, its effects will be less predictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the increasing internationalisation of higher education, there is a pressing need to think through how demands for educational equality and justice, that currently tend to be framed at the national and sub-national level, should be conceptualised at a global level. This article compares two recent media and policy debates in the UK, over admitting wealthy students off-quota to university and restricting international student visas, in order to demonstrate the contradictions that are created when demands for educational equality stop at the national border. Based on a discussion of these debates, the article calls for the principle of educational equality to be extended outwards, beyond the national border, to apply to domestic and international students alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines education policy and the policy process in the light of two key concepts. The first is the concept of 'governmentality' from the work of Michel Foucault (1991). The second is the concept of 'political spectacle' from the work of Murray Edelman (1985, 1988). Taking note, further, of recent work by Fairclough (2000) on political 'spin' and rhetoric, the article suggests that education policy needs to be seen in the light of a more modern stress in governance which recognises that 'the conduct of the conduct of conduct' (the management and presentation of policy - the conduct3 of the title) is not only of electoral relevance but has considerable implications for education and policy. The article probes the ways in which current education policy in the UK is affected by conduct3 and attempts to place it within the Foucauldian governmentality framework. It suggests that while conduct3 can be understood as a modern variant of the Machiavellian concern with sovereignty, it is also associated with the neoliberal marketisation of democracy. On this reading, it can be considered as a mutation of liberal governmentality, serving to undermine some of its key principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, the vocabulary of public services is becoming infused with the prefixes 'inter'-, 'multi-' and 'co-'. Public-sector agencies are being encouraged to adopt 'multi'- or 'inter-agency' configurations; 'workforce reform' seeks to dissolve once-impermeable professional boundaries; leadership is to be 'distributed'. This tendency is referred to as the 'inter'-regnum in education policy. (This does not mean that we are dealing with an 'interregnum' in the sense that we are somehow between modes of governance.) The term 'regnum' is used to emphasise that this propensity for the 'inter' is asserting itself as a new 'reigning philosophy'. Examples of the 'inter'-regnum are presented from the UK (mainly England), and these are located conceptually within an analysis of hierarchies, markets and networks. Thereafter the cultural, intellectual and economic contexts which allow for the 'inter'-regnum to emerge as policy are explored. The 'inter'-regnum draws its legitimacy from a number of sources. First, it resonates with the culture of consumerism, and it takes further that earlier market-based regime of governance which was associated with the new public management. Second, it is functional for the 'new capitalism' as a new work order of affinity- and solution-spaces. Third, it has important intellectual supports: that is, in addition to its association with recent marketing theory, it can appeal to emerging theory and research in organisational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]