Opting into State Control? Headteachers and the Paradoxes of Grant‐maintained Status

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on the significance of two paradoxes of opting out within which grant‐maintained (GM) school headteachers are entangled, and to which they contribute. Discussion of the first paradox focusses on the way GM status, rather than eliminating ‘producer interests’, creates a new one in the form of headteacher control which assists the policy's implementation and the realisation of other educational reforms. Examination of the second addresses the government's willingness to offer an expensive financial subsidy to GM schools when one of its aims is to demonstrate that the administrative and managerial efficiencies that accrue from opting out can improve the quality of education provision in ways that do not entail any increase in public expenditure on schools. The paper suggests that the government is happy to give preferential financial treatment to GM schools because it regards opting out as a necessary condition for increasing its control of state education. It also argues that, while GM schools are ‘self‐governing’ institutions, their autonomy is strictly ‘regulated’, and to such an extent that their headteachers are under heavy and increasing pressure to do the work of the state. The paper concludes with an exploration of the extent to which the paradoxes of the GM schools policy can be usefully interpreted through a neo‐Marxist analysis of the role of the state in education policy‐making.