Typologising the corporatisation of parent roles in the ‘modern’ governance of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) in subordinated communities

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article develops and explores a typology illuminating the types of parent roles in the governance of Multi-Academy Trusts in the corporatised field of school governance and leadership. Policy has positioned parents as objects of managerialist and corporatised practice. This article draws on data generated through observations and interviews with corporate actors and parents from three multi-academy trusts. Such a typology seeks to describe and illuminate how policy and practice entanglements have constructed parent role types as supporters, providers, monitors, local civic knowledge experts, mediators and partners. Thinking with Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital, I explore how these types support the governance of trusts in the delivery of public accountabilities and management of risk. I make two contributions. Firstly, I provide a typology that can be used to describe and illuminate parent role types constructed in a corporatised field. Secondly, by exploring the typology through the corporatised practices of accountability and risk management, parents are revealed as enablers and products of corporate activity, with role types positioned hierarchically in the field, in dominated positions. This study challenges the homogenisation of the consumer parent relationship with governance as these types are constructed as products and enablers in corporate activity.