ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the rapid development in consultancy services in England in the past 40 years, with a specific emphasis on the privatization of knowledge production. Socially critical research is increasingly evident in published accounts where the relationship between consultancy and capitalism is explored. Investigative projects illuminate the relationships between knowledge production, marketization, and profit. Successive UK governments have produced policy documents for education in England that make clear statements about a situation, usually a crisis, with planned reforms. There is a demand for functional knowledge, delivery processes and a disposition to work for efficiency and effectiveness. The chapter examines the inter-relationship between the state, public policy, and knowledge. It presents how networks of knowledge actors identify, use, and mobilize particular types of knowledge and ways of knowing in the scoping, framing, and enacting of education policy.
