‘Untangling the entangled knot’: A critical and genealogical examination of multi-academy trusts’ (MATs) ideologies, power and governance in England

Pennington, Andrew and Su, Feng and Wood, Margaret (2023) ‘Untangling the entangled knot’: A critical and genealogical examination of multi-academy trusts’ (MATs) ideologies, power and governance in England. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 33 (3). pp. 323-344. ISSN 0962-0214

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Abstract

With the majority of children in England now educated in academies, these academy schools are increasingly being subsumed into multi-academy trusts (MATs). The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling in this scenario raises critical issues of importance for public policy, including the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs in England, the future of democratic modes of governance of local services and questions of accountability. Applying Foucault’s genealogical framework to this study of MATs, the paper analyses the antecedents of current governance arrangements and attempts to highlight and reinvigorate suppressed, delegitimised and belittled knowledges. Highlighting implications of academy status and the creation of MATs for the decay of the public sphere at a local level, the authors argue that the threads of representation, community engagement and local control in school governance are important components of democratic renewal. The paper’s contribution lies primarily in its application of a genealogical approach which brings into sharp relief the play of historical and contemporary forces and events which have fostered a discourse that enables the subjugation of agency, self-governance and autonomy of MAT constituent schools and their communities. This discourse has wider significance for the centralisation of decision making and control away from communities, and the erosion of the polity.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Keywords:	academisation of schools; multi-academy trusts; education policy; power; democracy; community; school governance;
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Education
Depositing User:	Frank Su
Date Deposited:	26 Jun 2023 08:57
Last Modified:	12 Nov 2024 14:26
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3967

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