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This chapter focuses on the role of philanthropy in the global dissemination of particular discourses and assumptions that enable the neoliberal project in education. This involves the process of reimagining the educational space as a market, whereby the relations, values and ethics of schooling are increasingly modelled on those of business, and the accompanying reconfiguration of the role of the state as a provider of education towards that of an enabler and measurer of an education market. It also implies a change in the existing forms of subjectivities that invites schools to be thought of more as producers, teachers as technical workers, families as consumers and students as products. Changes in current education governance methods and mechanisms have opened up new spaces for new policy actors to participate in processes of policymaking, service delivery and evaluation.

Introduction 1. The "3Rs" in rethinking governance: ruling, rationalities, and resistance, Mark Bevir and R A W Rhodes Part I: Ruling Narratives 2. Governance and Modernist Social Science: a genealogy, Mark Bevir 3. What's wrong with Whitehall? Mandarins and ways of thinking in British government, Graham K. Wilson 4. Mass Privatization, and the Changing Nature of Governance in the UK, Mike Raco 5. Educational governance in England, Stephen J Ball and Carolina Junemann 6. Claiming Authority over the NHS, Scott Greer 7. The Governance of Social Care for the Elderly in England, Jonathan Bradbury Part II: Decentring practice: rationalities and resistance 8. Negotiating Austerity and Local Traditions, Alison Gardner and Vivien Lowndes 9. Austerity Realism and the Governance of Leicester, Jonathan Davies and E. Thompson 10. Contestation and Contingency in Advisory Governance, Claire Dunlop 11. Proactivity in tax administration: nudging the knotty, Karen Boll 12. Local knowledge: an interpretive analysis, R. A. W. Rhodes

This paper explores some hitherto neglected but nonetheless important aspects of the changing landscape of education policy and governance in England. It sketches some particular features of the increasingly complex and ‘congested’ terrain of the education state and traces some of the primary discourses that currently inform and drive education policy (and indeed social policy more generally) both in relation to governance and substance. The paper draws on an ESRC funded study (RES-062-23-1484) of ‘Philanthropy and Education Policy’. This research involved 3 sets of activities; extensive and exhaustive internet searches around particular (corporate) philanthropies, philanthropists and philanthropically funded programmes; interviews with some key ‘new’ philanthropists and foundations interested and involved in education; and the use of these searches and interviews to construct ‘policy networks’. Together these constitute a ‘method’ of ‘network ethnography’.

This paper addresses some recent changes in the landscape of state education in England. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Academies, state-funded independent schools introduced by New Labour and now being drastically extended and taken further by the Coalition government, are contributing to the ongoing and increasing blurring of the welfare state demarcations between state and market, public and private, government and business; and are pointing up the shift in the role of the state from ‘‘directing bureaucracies’’ to ‘‘managing networks’’ (Smith 1999). Academies have been contracted out to a wide range of sponsors (entrepreneurs, business, charities, faith groups) and removed from local authority control (they are funded directly by central government). They involve a deliberate attempt to promote a new set of values and modes of action in public education, enterprise and competitiveness in particular. The paper will look closely at the case of one multi-academy sponsor, the charity Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), which was founded by a group of hedge fund managers and is rapidly expanding its involvement in state education in England (and in the USA, India and Uganda), taking up positions and roles previously reserved for the state itself and bringing new practices and methods to bear upon education problems. Keywords: education policy, governance of the education system, new philanthropy, academy schools, ARK (Published: 16 September 2013) Citation: Education Inquiry (EDUI) 2013, 4 , 22611, http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/edui.v4i3.22611

This topical book uses network analysis and interviews with key actors to address the changes in education, with a focus on education and the role of new philanthropy.