Carolina Junemann

Education Policy and Philanthropy—The Changing Landscape of English Educational Governance

This article 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 article draws on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC–-funded study (RES–000–22–2682), “Philanthropy and Education Policy.” This research involved three sets of activities; extensive and exhaustive Internet searches around particular (corporate) philanthropies, philanthropists, and philanthropically funded programs; 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.”

ARK and the revolution of state education in England

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.