ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the many important pathways to an imaginary that prizes education over schooling. Every education and schooling imaginary is embedded in a wider social imaginary that largely shapes it. In the State model of education and schooling, that is the dominant educational imaginary, there is a basic and unquestioned assumption. The institution of the school is the essential starting point: education for children and young people becomes in the public perception largely what takes place there. The Department for Education had to provide a regional structure for academies, mostly secondary, since the task had become too big for it to handle and this regional structure will expand. The chapter argues that a self-improving school system was an important pathway to a new education imaginary and has to consider whether what is happening is inflicting permanent damage on the notion.
