ABSTRACT
By tracing a genealogy of school governance this chapter highlights some of the circumstances and dilemmas shaping the trajectory of school governance as a dominant mentality. On this understanding, genealogical enquiry is opposed to the study of origins, essences, certainties and even structures' or institutions'. Genealogical enquiry instead highlights the fluidity and discontinuity of institutional orders', seen here as condensations of shifting and unstable relations of power. The purpose of genealogical enquiry, and indeed the whole theoretical enterprise of a Foucauldian approach, is to demonstrate through critique, scepticism and problematisation that things are not as obvious as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted'. The important point to consider here is that New Labour continued the discursive and political work of previous governments, namely facilitating and embedding a public service market' within education focused on strategies of outsourcing public service contracts to private bidders.
