ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the elite ‘policy community’ which created Academies and Free Schools, and the 15 of them who consented to participate in this research. It reveals a high degree of commonality in terms of their being: (1) privately educated; (2) Oxbridge educated; and (3) PPE graduates. There were also manifest commonalties in terms of gender, ethnicity, educational paths, social networks, political access and potential religio-cultural-moral inculcation (attendance at schools with chapels and/or a Christian foundation). In the context of the make-up of the 2010 Parliament, there was a distinctly discernible elite, which could have particular implications for education reform. When the biographies of the wider ‘policy community’ were analysed, a distinct ‘political class’ emerges of those who controlled the development of academisation: the proportion of cross-party Academy/Free School policy architects who were privately and/or Oxbridge educated exceeded not only the proportions on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords, but also of senior judges – the most elite group in society.
