Pennington, Andrew, Feng, Su and Wood, Margaret ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5067-1978 (2024) Academisation, neoliberal technologies of governance and the rapid growth of multi-academy trusts (MATs) in England. Cambridge Journal of Education, 54 (4). pp. 517-533.

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Abstract

Academisation of schooling in England is a significant development with consequences for the disavowal of the role of community and democracy in education at the local level and wider resonance for geo-policy jurisdictions where neoliberal education reforms play out. This study analyses the operation of power and control of Multi Academy Trust (MAT) boards and the apparent diminution of local oversight and accountability, the bedrock of an inclusive, democratic polity. The explanatory and conceptual contribution made to understandings of the phenomenon of MATs is seen in the problematising of academisation and MAT formation as a technology for the operation of power, foreclosing democratic community engagement with their local schools. This has implications for the vitality of a democratic polity. Yet, more optimistically, generative possibilities of a renaissance of schools’ relations with their communities and reinvigoration of the public realm are envisioned as restorative of local democratic engagement in school governance.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.1080/0305764X.2024.2392537
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/10549

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