Academies and Educational Reform Governance, Leadership and Strategy

Behind the headlines and controversy surrounding new academy schools, many of their principals, teachers and pupils have been quietly changing the culture of learning and achievement in some of the most disadvantaged communities in England. While successful innovation and change is not unique to academies, this book illustrates how the academy policy represents a significant opportunity to improve the life chances of their pupils. Too much attention has focused on unanswerable questions about whether academies are better or worse than their predecessor or comparable schools in their neighbourhood. Too little focus has been on what policy-makers and practitioners can learn from the different, and often conflicting, perspectives of the key players, notably sponsors, architects, principals, parents and pupils in order to create a school that can truly serve their community with distinction. "The development of Academies is a high profile initiative which has given rise to a large number of publications. However, as the analysis in this book illustrates, many of these consist either of polemic or of attempts at evaluation with limited sophistication or success. By asking the question `what can be learned from the Academies programme?' this book provides a different perspective. The range of interviews with key informants provides concrete original data around which the discussion and analysis are skilfully woven." Mike Fleming, University of Durham, UK "Not only do the authors draw upon interviews with a wide range of practitioners working in Academies, but they also give the reader access to the thinking of leading strategists in the development of their philosophy, most notably Lord Adonis. This in its own right recommends the book as a text of critical importance. More than this, however, the authors undertake a painstaking but always riveting analysis of the successes and failures of this central strategy in New Labour educational policy." Derrick Armstrong, University of Sydney, Australia