Impacting policy discourse? An analysis of discourses and rhetorical devices deployed in the case of the Academies Commission

Abstract

Academisation of the English secondary school system has been extremely rapid and represents significant changes to the governance of the English school system. However, there has been a relative scarcity of attention to the rationales, rhetorics and discourses underpinning the academies programme. Seeking to address this gap, a poststructuralist discourse analytic lens is applied to 63 written submissions to the Academies Commission from a range of stakeholder groups, in order to map the different discourses and narratives drawn on in relation to academies and academisation. In setting out the various discourses identified, a cluster of discourses and rhetorical devices that produce the British education system as ‘in crisis’ are given especial attention. It is argued that these discourses provide the rationale and legitimisation for radical policy intervention as exemplified by the academies programme. The findings also provoke discussion concerning potential subjective agency in the promotion or otherwise of particular narratives and ‘conceptual emblems’ that inform the field of educational policy.

Keywords:

• academies
• education policy
• discourse
• schools
• schooling system
• standards
• rhetoric

Notes

1. The first ‘City Academies’, later known as ‘sponsor academies’, were instigated from 2002 by the New Labour Government, replacing schools identified as poor quality, usually in areas of social disadvantage. They benefited from distinctive funding arrangements and sponsorship, and other forms of pump-priming, including, frequently, new school buildings under the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme (see Mahony & Hextall, 2012).

2. Unless the individual academy is part of an academy chain: at the end of 2012, 690 academies were in a chain (excluding the looser ‘collaborative partnerships’): Academies Commission (2013).

3. Building Schools for the Future’ provided new buildings for schools, often designed by top architects, under a programme of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) financing.

4. And later, those rated as ‘Good’ with some features rated as ‘outstanding’.

5. See Edwards et al. (2004); Edwards and Nicholl (2006).

6. The four organisations are: providers of the Academies Commission the RSA (a fellowship organisation and think tank, also sponsor of a small academy chain), and the Pearson Think Tank (a think tank separate from Pearson's business operations, but housed and funded by them). And charitable sponsors of the Academies Commission CfBT and The Co-operative (both of which sponsor small academy chains).

7. In Bakhtin's (1981) terms it is monoglossic; he uses this term to allude to forms of language and accounts that represent authority and work centripetally to exclude others.

8. In Enemies of Promise (1938), Cyril Connolly analyses the factors he considers impeding the flourishing of writers of the time (including Connolly himself, who was educated at Eton). Gove draws on Connolly's book title and claims that the book ‘explores the way in which talented individuals of his [Connolly's] time were prevented from achieving their full potential’ (2013b).