Governance, school reform and change management

Abstract

This chapter looks at the changing governance of English schools. The discussion of the policy context pointed to the ‘heterarchic’ nature of school governance in Birmingham, and elsewhere, as a consequence of the emergence of new arrangements for school management and governance associated with the government's academies programme, which occurred alongside the continuation of existing arrangements for the structure and management of schools. These combined to create substantial regulatory confusion over the proper role of the Local Education Authority (LEA), the DfE, school governors and school leadership. It was in these unclear circumstances that the role of Park View in taking over the leadership of other schools, or the expression of Islam in the schools, were presented as evidence of a sinister process of Islamification.