School autonomy, accountability and collaboration: a critical review

Abstract

English education has recently experienced radical policy reform in the areas of school autonomy and accountability. The key focus of this paper is on how schools might best navigate through these policy moves. It highlights how these moves have constructed schools, teachers and students in problematic ways but also how they are offering possibilities for improving the quality of schools and schooling. The focus here is on the promise and scope of school collaboration. The difficulties of creating socially responsive and responsible collaboratives in the current ‘heterarchical’ and market-oriented policy environment are acknowledged. Guided by quality democratic governance, they are, nonetheless, presented as crucial in supporting schools to productively deal with the demands of this environment.

Keywords:

• school autonomy
• school accountability
• school networks/collaboration
• English education

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under the Future Fellowship Scheme [grant number FT100100688].

Notes on contributor

Amanda Keddie is a Research Fellow at The University of Queensland. Her research interests and publications are in the field of gender, cultural diversity, social justice and schooling. She has published extensively in these areas.

Notes

1. The use of the term ‘system’ as it refers to the English context is drawn on in this paper to denote the mechanisms of governance in England responsible for state schools. It is acknowledged that unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, England does not have a devolved system of educational governance.

2. The body authoring this report, the National College (formed under New Labour), was retained by the Coalition while their disinvestment in many other organisations and agencies formed under New Labour led to their demise. It will thus be interesting, as Gunter (2012) points out, to see how the College will be reshaped within the current government's more concerted focus on the imperatives of the market.