ABSTRACT
In January 2013 the author was appointed as a Professor at the University of Glasgow to set up a new research center in the School of Education. The actual launch of the Robert Owen Centre took place in September 2013, when he/she became its Director. Instead, it depends on a whole range of interacting processes that reach into the school from outside. Academies were launched in the year 2001 with the aim of replacing inner-city secondary schools that were defined as requiring ‘special measures’ as a result of being inspected. What was distinctive about the early academies was that, although they were state-funded, they became autonomous from local authority control, had their own sponsor, and were given greater freedom regarding the national curriculum and national agreements on teachers’ pay and conditions. The concern with beyond-school factors was central to ‘Children’s Communities’, another Manchester initiative that was to later influence the development of the work in Glasgow.
