Ball, Stephen

English

Institute of Education EPrints

Academies in Context: politics, business and philanthropy 
and heterarchical governance 
Stephen J Ball
Published in Management in Education 2009 23 (3), pp. 100-103
The English Academies programme has become one of the most 
controversial aspects of the New Labour strategy for education 
and public sector reform. And in many ways, given the significance 
of the programme, that controversy is understandable and 
appropriate. Particularly because, as I argue here, Academies are 
indicative of and contribute to a set of more general and highly 
significant  experimental and evolutionary policy ‘moves’ which 
involve the re-invention of public sector institutions and a 
reformation of the overall institutional architecture of the state and 
its scales of operation. That is to say, Academies are one small 
part of a more general shift from government to governance 
(Rhodes and Marsh, 1992) (Marinetto, 2005); a shift from the 
‘hierarchy of command’ to a new form of ‘polycentric’ and 
‘strategic’ governance that is based upon network relations within 
and across new policy communities designed to generate new 
governing capacity and enhance legitimacy. These new policy 
communities bring new kinds of actors into the policy process, 
validate new policy discourses – discourses flow through them - 
and enable new forms of policy influence and enactment and in 
some respects disable or disenfranchise or circumvent some of the 
established policy actors and agencies. These new forces are able 
to colonise the spaces opened up by the critique of existing state 
organisations, actions and actors. All of this involves an increased 
reliance on subsidiarity and ‘regulated self-regulation’, and it 
drastically blurs the already fuzzy divide between the public and 
the private sector ‘reallocating tasks, and rearticulating the 
relationship between organisations and tasks across this divide’ 
(Jessop 2002 p. 199). All in all it replaces hierarchy with 
heterarchy. That is, it replaces bureaucracy and administrative 
structures and relationships with a system of organization replete 
with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent-but-
coexistent patterns of relation. 
The Academies programme is a good example of the complexity 
and instability and the experimental nature of these governance 
reforms, the programme has gone through at least three iterations, 
in response to lack of sponsors, rising costs, inefficiencies and 
opposition. This highlights that within the general logic of reform 
there is a great deal of muddling through and trial and error. 
Tony Blair indicated the role and nature of these changes and the 
general logic of New Labour’s public sector reforms in his speech 
in 2005 introducing the Labour government’s White on secondary 
education:
In our schools … the system will be finally opened up to real 
parent power. All schools will be able to have academy style 
freedoms. All schools will be able to take on external 
partners. No one will be able to veto parents starting new 
schools or new providers coming in, simply on the basis that 
there are local surplus places. The role of the LEA will 
change fundamentally … Where business, the voluntary 
sector, philanthropy, which in every other field is a part of our 
national life, wants to play a key role in education and 
schools want them to, they can.
I am not suggesting that this involves a giving up by the state of its 
capacity to steer policy (see below), this is not a ‘hollowing out’ of 
the state rather it is a new modality of state power, agency and 
social  action  and  indeed  a  new  form  of  state.  That  is,  the 
achievement of political ends by different  means: ‘States play a 
major  and  increasing  role  in  metagovernance’  (Jessop 2002  p. 
242).  The  ‘methods’  and  relations  of  heterarchy  do  not  totally 
displace other forms of policy formation and policy action but: ‘the 
state, although not impotent, is now dependent upon a vast array 
of state and non-state policy actors’ (Marinetto, 2005).
In England (and there are similar developments in many other 
national systems around the globe (see Nambissan and Ball 2010) 
these heterarchies form ‘new kinds of educational alliance’ (Jones, 
2003 p. 160), which ‘New Labour seeks to create’ around ‘its 
project of transformation’ (p. 160) and which mobilise various 
resources in the borderland between the public, private and 
voluntary sectors. They are a policy device, a way of trying things 
out, getting things done, changing things, and a means of 
interjecting practical innovations and new sensibilities into areas of 
education policy that are seen as change-resistant and risk-averse 
In general terms they ‘pilot’ moves towards a public service system 
in which increasingly the state contracts and monitors rather than 
directly deliver education services, using ‘performance’ 
measurement, benchmarking and targeting to manage a diversity 
of provisions. In business literature heterarchical organisations are 
better at coping with ‘rugged fitness landscapes’ and with the 
demands of ‘simultaneous engineering’ – that is when innovation 
and production overlap and the pace of design and implementation 
are speeded up, such organisations are ‘decompartmentalised” 
and denoted by ‘distributed authority’ (Stark, 1999).
Academies  are  one  ‘move’  in  a  more  general  process  of 
‘destatization’  -  tasks  and  services  previous  undertaken  by  the 
state are now being done by various ‘others’ in various kinds of 
relationships  among  themselves  and  to  the  state  and  to  the 
remaining  more  traditional  organisations  of  the  public  sector, 
although  in  many  cases  the  working  methods  of  these  public 
sector  organisations  have  also  been  fundamentally  reworked 
typically by the deployment of market forms (competition, choice 
and  performance-related  funding).  In  education  other  specific 
policy  moves  in  this  loosely-scripted  process  of  ‘modernisation’ 
and  ‘transformation’  include  specialist  schools,  Trust  schools, 
‘tendered’1 and  ‘contracted-out’  schools;  although  the  latter  two 
forms are currently small  in scale. Only four schools have been 
fully  contracted  out  to  private  management  companies:  one  to 
Edison (Enfield), two to 3Es (GEMS) and one to Nord-Anglia (all 
three in  Surrey)(see  (Ball,  2007) for  more detail  on these).  There 
have been 7 competitions for the establishment of new schools; in 
Haringey (won by the LA), Southampton (Oasis Trust – a Baptist 
group), Northamptonshire (Woodnewton – A Learning Community 
1 The 2006 Education and Inspections Act extended The requirement for a 
competition for new schools to cover special and primary schools. New schools must 
be subject to an Invitation for proposals for their establishment by 
alternative providers, which can include the LA.
and The Brooke Weston Partnership), Kent (The Homewood Trust 
–  another  local  school),  Lincolnshire  (British  EduTrust  [an 
Academy  Sponsor]  and  the  Gainsborough  Educational  Village 
Trust),  West  Sussex  (The  Bolnore  School  Group  –  a 
parent/community  group),  and  Gloucestershire  (still  in  process). 
The  Brooke  Weston  Partnership  also  runs  an  Academy  in 
Northamptonshire and part of the partnership, the Garfield Weston 
Foundation (a charity of Associated British Foods and the Garfield 
Weston Family) donated over a period of 12 years £10.2m to the 
SSAT  [Specialist  Schools  and  Academies  Trust]  for  the 
sponsorship  of  Specialist  Schools.  Garfield  Weston  through  its 
investment  company  Wittington  Investments  is  a  co-funder  of 
Explore Learning (with the Peter Lampl (Sutton Trust) and Peter 
Ogden (Ogden Trust)), which operates storefront Learning shops 
in larger braches of  Sainsbury’s.  Garfield Weston, among many 
other things, offers bursaries for private school places (as does the 
Ogden  Trust)  and  has  supported  the  School  for  Social 
Entrepreneurs.  The Foundation is also a ‘founding supporter’  of 
the Teach First programme which is funded mainly by business 
(although  other  founding  supporters  include  the  DCSF,  the 
Trainign and Development  Agency,  The National  Association of 
Headteachers  and  Manchester  City  Council).  Teach  First  is 
‘an independent charity founded to encourage top graduates, who 
would not normally enter teaching, to teach for at least two years in 
challenging  secondary  schools  in  London,  North  West  and  the 
Midlands. With  tailored  leadership  training  developed  with 
over 100 employers, Teach First aims to develop the leaders of the 
future’. (Website). Academies are strongly represented among the 
participating schools in the Teach First programme. 
As of January 2009 the total number of planned Trust Schools is 
444, with 124 Trust Schools already open. To give one example:
Pensans Community Primary School, in Cornwall will 
partnering: Falmouth University, Penwith / Truro College, 
Digital Peninsula Network, Virutal Schools, Cornish Pirates 
Rugby Club, The Co-operative Group. The Trust will focus 
on raising attainment and aspiration in the West Penwith 
area, fostering creativity and innovation through curricular 
development. The Trust aims to replace a culture of low 
expectation with one of excellence and high achievement. 
There will be a specific focus on raising measurable levels of 
attainment in Literacy and Numeracy, alongside creating 
awareness of local and global responsibilities via a focus on 
the issues of sustainability and ecological degradation. This 
will provide a platform for the promotion of co-operative 
values within the Trust. (Dcsf website)
The range and variety of Academy sponsors are indicated in the 
other papers in this issue but include entrepreneurs, charities, 
businesses, faith groups, universities, local government and 
parastatal organisations. (Specialist School and Trust sponsors 
are equally diverse). Academies are somewhat distinct in as much 
that they have an ‘independent’ status within the state school 
system and are contracted directly to their sponsors by the DCSF. 
They are also forms of partnership. Academies come into being 
via ‘partnerships between sponsors and local education partners to 
enable them and the DfES to assess their individual circumstances 
and decide if a new Academy is the right solution for their needs’ 
(DfES Standards Site). A good deal of this partnership activity is 
behind the scenes and goes on between the DfES, SSAT, the 
Cabinet Office and LEA officers and councilors – a re-spatialisation 
of education policy.
The point here is to offer a glimpse of the complexity and inter-
relatedness  of  participation  in  state  education,  education 
discourses  and  education policy  conversations by philanthropic, 
voluntary and private interests (both organisations and individuals), 
as well as to indicate the blurring between them. We can also see 
the  role  of  link  and  lead  organizations  within  this  particular 
heterarchy  –  the  SSAT  specifically.  There  is  a  variety  of 
asymmetrical and diverse power relations involved in this complex 
of  reciprocal,  multi-level,  interdependencies  ‘some  happening 
spontaneously,  others  created  deliberately  through public  policy 
and  institutional  engineering’  (Davies,  2005  p.  313)  but  overall 
heterachies  such  as  this  remain  political  constructs.  Within  the 
processes  of  modernisation  and  transformation  the  boundaries 
and  spatial  horizons  and  flows  of  influence  and  engagement 
around education are being stretched and reconfigured in a whole 
variety  of  ways.  To  achieve  some  kind  of  coherence  and 
functionality these heterarchies rely of trust and reciprocity and in 
some of their aspects they draw upon social relations established 
elsewhere,  in  business for  example (see  (Ball,  2008) or  between 
charities and their lead and link organisations (CAF, NCVO, NPC 
etc.).
Business is integrated in a number of ways here in the governance 
and provision of state education, in driving innovations and, in 
effect, disrupting other tradition social relations. This is part of what 
(Pollack, 2004) p. vii) calls the ‘dismantling process’ and asserts to be 
‘profoundly anti-democratic and opaque’. So for example, 
Academies have the opportunity to set aside existing national 
agreements on the pay, conditions and certification of teachers – 
the flexibilization of the workforce. This is a radical move in a more 
general push for the ‘modernisation’ of the school workforce – 
‘workforce re-modelling’ – which is now the responsibility of the 
Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) one of an 
increasing number of new ‘lead organizations’ in the 
transformation of state education.
Within and through this  heterarchy and many others  like  it  and 
linked to it, new organisational sensibilities, values, perspectives, 
interests  and  policy  narratives  are  brought  into  play  and  given 
legitimacy.  In  particular  the  discourse  of  enterprise,  in  various 
forms, is ubiquitous (Woods et al., 2007). The opinions and voices 
of  heroes  of  enterprise  are  granted  a  special  legitimacy.  The 
Academies  also  demonstrate  ‘corporate  responsibility’  and  the 
caring face of capitalism and of ‘self-made men’ (sic) who want to 
‘give something back’. These hero entrepreneurs embody some of 
the key values of New Labour; the possibilities of meritocracy, of 
achieving individual success from modest beginnings and wealth 
creation from innovation and knowledge.
Conclusion
Heterarchies ‘enlarge the range of actors involved in shaping and 
delivering policy’ (Newman, 2001) p. 125). Such a mode of 
governance involves a ‘catalyzing of all sectors - public, private 
and voluntary – into action to solve their community’ problems’ 
(Osborne and Gaebler, 1992 p. 20) it is achieved on ‘the changing 
boundary between state and civil society’ (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003 
p. 42) – and between state and the economy. In general terms this 
is the move towards a ‘polycentric state’ and ‘a shift in the centre 
of gravity around which policy cycles move’ (Jessop, 1998 p. 32). 
All of this suggests that both the form and modalities of the state 
are changing – forms of ‘direct’ control are being foregone (where 
they existed) in favour of ‘effective’ control through calibration and 
other steering mechanisms but nonetheless, also, through the 
marginalisation or re-working of local government, professional 
organisations and Trades Unions direct relations are established 
between the DCSF and schools and school providers e.g. 
Academies. (Fairclough, 2000 p. 119) argues that the ‘dispersal’ of 
government, which is a key feature of New Labour modernisation 
of the public sector, does not signal an abandonment of close 
control by the centre and that this deconcentration rather than 
devolution is ‘ not an irrational contradiction, but a predictable 
consequence of the overall logic’ of reform (p. 122). In effect the 
current state of governance, at each level, is a mix between 
hierarchy, heterarchy and market. The government will intervene in 
heterarchical relations at points of conflict or instability as well as 
regulating them – Academies are a case in point.
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Academies in context: Politics, business and philanthropy and heterarchical governance

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Academies in context: Politics, business and philanthropy and heterarchical governance

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