ABSTRACT
Neo-liberalism has been used to explain the development of cultural, economic and political changes across a plurality of sites and practices, from the transformation of citizenship and the reorganisation of urban environments to the production of new feminist subjectivities and the reconfiguration of aspiration. This chapter analyses the various phases and forms through which school governance that has been reshaped under the direction of different governmental regimes. It traces the movement from liberalism to neo-liberalism and link the latter to a number of trends and tendencies that have characterized the politics and policy of education in England. The chapter utilises a Foucauldian governmentality approach that is sensitive to the concrete reality through which techniques of governing are embodied, negotiated and translated through the day-to-day practices and relations inhabited and performed by governors.
