ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the lack of agency can serve to obfuscate state responsibility with respect to policy trajectories. The analysis of the key theme makes explicit how a ‘flexible system’ is represented as an abstract agentless nominalisation and is re-concretised through a conceptual metaphor that casts it as a malleable object. The chapter develops an analysis of how metaphor of flexibility works in the 1979a Ministry of Education (MOE) report to build rationalities for an education system tailored to pupils’ needs. The following analysis of the 1987 MOE report examines the role of the metaphor of flexibility in developing a justification for decentralisation through the ethical-political discourse of ‘creativity’. Drawing on Graham’s analysis of opening up future spaces, it is clear that creation of conditions in schools through decentralisation which would allow for greater creativity is positively evaluated for desirability. Devolution to principals – that is, deregulation – requires a clear regulatory framework which can be considered as a set of regulations.
