ABSTRACT
A key driver and development of market education experimentation in England since the 1980s has been the removal of local government bureaucracy and politics to make way for improved school autonomy and devolved management as well as greater privatisation of education services and public-private partnerships. In 2010, the scope and scale of these reforms were enlarged significantly through the expansion of the academies programme which led to large numbers of schools operating outside local government jurisdiction. The roll-back of local government has not only given rise to concerns over a regulation gap but also intensified scrutiny of the role of school governors. In this chapter, I examine how school governors are called upon to take responsibility for various strategic-management priorities against the background of receding government control, while at the same time appear to be implicated in various technologies of rational self-management that strengthen the continuation and exercise of government control. An additional, related focus of the chapter therefore concerns the contradictions and vagaries of these reforms, namely the contraction and expansion of state power or what is described as ‘decentralised centralism’.
