A new political economy of teacher development: England’s Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund

ABSTRACT

This article identifies new arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the public sector, one that extends current understandings of education privatisation, the transformation of public services ‘by substitution’ and, specifically theories of the ‘shadow state’. Drawing on data from the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE) project, the paper’s context is the current situation of post-qualification teacher development in England and its point of departure the Teaching and Leadership Innovation Fund (TLIF) initiative, in the wider context of Conservative political interests in promoting ‘social mobility’ through enhancing ‘teacher quality’. Through a political economy analysis of public records, course information, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and interviews, the paper offers an emerging typology of enterprises to describe the organisations that won TLIF funding to provide Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers in designated ‘Opportunity Areas’. Further, the paper extends available theorisations of the shadow state by identifying three kinds of shadow state structure – autonomous, intermediate and co-created – in relation to CPD provision under TLIF. This provisional identification is offered for critical examination beyond the immediate context of English CPD policy. The paper argues that these different relations of power and interdependence represent a new political economy of teacher development in England.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher development
• political economy
• shadow state
• enterprise
• teaching and leadership innovation fund
• England

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Helen Gunter, Tom Are Trippestad, Justin Fisher and Meg Maguire for their critical feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A response to a Subject Access Request (CRM:0841011) by the first author of this paper confirmed that officials in the Department for Education wrote to the winners of TLIF 1 funding in October 2018 to ask them not to participate in our research as this might ‘negatively impact on what TLIF is trying to achieve before we are able to provide any evaluation of impact/success’.

2. https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/50d0c65f-c713-44f1-a38f-fc9fb1331cc2?p = @FQxUlRRPT0 = NjJNT08 = U

3. Gamble (1988), referring to a key characteristic of ‘New Right’ governments such as Margaret Thatcher’s, noted that a ‘strong state’ was required ‘to break the resistance of special interests, including the new class of public sector professionals who are likely to oppose’ such governments’ radical policies (p. 33).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Viv Ellis

Viv Ellis is Professor of Teacher Development at King’s College London and Honorary Research Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Warwick Mansell

Warwick Mansell is a freelance education journalist, a frequent contributor to the Guardian and Observer newspapers and founder-writer of the website Education Uncovered.

Sarah Steadman

Sarah Steadman is a doctoral researcher at King’s College London. Her ESRC-funded study is investigating different modes of pre-service teacher education.