Introduction

This introductory chapter sets the foundation for the monograph which aims to capture a school in ‘survival mode’. We foreground the school as a bounded space subject to various competing forces, locally and translocally, that are influenced by historical, political and economic agendas. Our research draws on institutional ethnography (IE) tracing the everyday practices of school leaders, educators and students where we focus on power relations and subjectivities in relation to the marketisation of education. With an acute focus on the wider neoliberal policy context of robust privatisation, which emphasises parental choice and competition between schools, the research addresses the key tensions experienced in one school site in its struggle to survive.