Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice

Amanda Keddie is Professor of Education, Deakin University, Australia. Her research examines gender, cultural diversity, social justice and schooling. Recent books include: Leadership, Ethics and Schooling for Social Justice (2016), The Politics of Differentiation in Schools (2017) and Supporting and Educating Young Muslim Women: Stories from Australia and the UK (2017).Martin Mills is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research at the IOE, University College London. His work is centred on social justice issues in education. Recent books include: The Politics of Differentiation in Schools (2017), Reimagining Schooling for Education (2017) and Alternative Education: International Perspectives on Policy and Practice (2018).

In this groundbreaking, conceptually innovative text, Keddie and Mills disentangle the messy relationship between social justice and neoliberalism by turning their critical attention to one of the most ambitious and controversial projects in education system redesign: England’s academies programme. Thought provoking and boundary crossing, Keddie and Mills judiciously combine theory and evidence to grapple with the tensions and contradictions inherent to the movement of academisation as it successfully rebuffs local politics and democratic structures only to reinstate similar, albeit opaque, structures and practices of liberation and domination. Not content with some of the well-trodden platitudes of anti-academy rhetoric and related romanticisation of the past order of things, Keddie and Mills move beyond the obfuscatory language of binary thinking, of public (good) versus private (bad), to unravel the strange alignments and productive overlaps that make up the dis-embedding and re-embedding effects of academisation. This book captures the complexity of the current moment and provides a much-needed starting point for thinking through the problematics and pragmatics of achieving socially just forms of education under academisation and similar education systems undergoing market experimentation.Andrew Wilkins, Reader in Education, University of East LondonThis is a timely appraisal of the English education system from a social justice perspective. Documenting the rapid quasi-marketisation of schooling in England (and elsewhere), Keddie and Mills apply a social justice lens to the troubled issues of autonomy, accountability, and the educational outcomes and experiences for vulnerable students. In a climate of teacher shortages and growing questions around models of accountability, this challenging book will be important reading for those wishing to ensure that socially-just values and outcomes are at the heart of developments.Becky Francis, Director, UCL Institute of Education, University College LondonGiven their relatively recent inception, England’s academies have until lately remained an under-researched area. Thus, this new book by Amanda Keddie and Martin Mills makes for a great addition to the emerging body of research that has offered a voice to those working in these schools and will serve as a useful tool for helping us understand how school autonomy is being embraced, enacted, and experienced. Craig Skerritt, Researcher, Dublin City University, Leadership and Policy in Schools

• AcknowledgementsChapter 1. English Schooling, Social Justice and NeoliberalismChapter 2. School Autonomy, School Accountability and Social Justice in English EducationChapter 3. Academisation and School Collaboration: A Story of Six Primary School LeadersChapter 4. New Modalities of State Power: Neoliberal Responsibilisation and the Work of Academy ChainsChapter 5. Co-Operating in a Competitive Marketplace Chapter 6. Alternative Provision: A Destination of Last Resort or Convenient Dumping Ground? Chapter 7. The Ambivalences of Emancipation for Social Justice