Discourses of aspiration, opportunity and attainment: promoting and contesting the Academy schools programme

Abstract

The Academy schools programme was launched in England in 2000, promoted as a school reform policy to raise aspirations, broaden opportunities and improve standards in disadvantaged communities. In this study, discourse analysis is used to demonstrate the ways in which these Discourses1 have been constructed, contested and strategically reworked at a national and local level, highlighting the connections between these different spatial scales. Therefore, the paper provides an empirical example of how geographers can use discourse analysis to conduct policy relevant research and encourages education geographers to undertake multi-scalar analyses which engage with geographical literature on the politics of scale.

Keywords:

• Academies
• aspirations
• discourse
• education geographies
• scale
• standards

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Molly Warrington, the editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on a draft of this paper. My particular thanks go to all those who participated in my research. This paper is based on doctoral research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes

I use Discourse with a capital ‘D’ when referring to Foucauldian Discourses and discourse with a lower case ‘d’ to refer to the linguistic understanding of discourse as communication in the medium of language. Further details are provided on page 51.

This paper is based on a study of the Academies programme as it existed under the Labour Government (1997–2010). At the time of writing, the new coalition Government is reworking the programme, introducing changes which are not analysed here.

The pseudonym ‘Hetherby’ is used to refer to the case study location to protect the identity of my research participants. I apologise to those who wished to be named but to do so would risk identifying others who requested anonymity.

Eleven national policymakers/civil servants and two representatives from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust were interviewed for the study. A total of 39 interviews were conducted with stakeholders in Hetherby and 24 consultation meetings were attended.

Following Gee (1999, pp. 9–10), the term ‘discourse analysis’ (with a lower case ‘d’) is used to collectively refer to analytical approaches to ‘big D’ Discourse and ‘little d’ discourse.

The English school system is divided into Key Stages. This paper refers to Key Stage 2 (children aged 7–11 years) and Key Stage 4 (children aged 14–16). Key Stage 4 is the final Key Stage in compulsory schooling and at the end of this Key Stage students sit national examinations called the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

The use of the term ‘maintained schools’ in this instance refers to all schools funded by the state, i.e. maintained by state funds.

Walford (2005, p. 5) makes a similar observation in his analysis of Labour's 2001 election manifesto: ‘It is not clear what exactly was meant by ‘opportunities for all children’, [or] how success in achieving this would be measured'.