The UK's neoliberal polity is undermining the very public institutions it requires to resolve its most pressing collective predicaments, in education especially, with its essential role of enabling society to learn the virtues and practices of cooperative enquiry necessary for remaking the common good. The author begins by understanding the nature…

The collective action predicaments of the time require citizens to participate in remaking the governance of civil society so that they can become engaged and cooperate together. Can citizens become makers of civil society? This article draws upon Hannah Arendt's "On Revolution" to provide a theory of remaking in which citizens come together to…

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of…

Democratic comprehensive education has been the target of neo-liberal governments--Conservative and New Labour--for thirty years. The project of the present right wing regime Coalition is to complete the demolition. The question before the social democratic tradition is thus to ask whether Raymond Williams' historic "long revolution"…

Behind the thin veil of the Conservative regime's rationale of deficit reduction hides the final demolition of public comprehensive education and Raymond Williams's more expansive long revolution unfolding over a century of creating a democratic state that affords opportunity, voice and justice for all. Restoring the politics of a pre-war or…

The 1988 Education Reform Act radically transformed the local governance of education, according school governing bodies new delegated powers for budgets and staff as well as responsibility for the strategic direction of the school in a quasi market place of parental choice. To take up these new responsibilities the earlier Education Act 1986 had…

In England, school governing bodies are the largest volunteer group. For decades they have displayed a strong tradition of serving their communities with care and commitment. Research shows (DCSF, 2008b) that most governing bodies have made an effective contribution to the improvement of their schools. Yet concern about the disengagement of young…

If learning is a journey between worlds, school governing bodies have a crucial role to play in mediating them. By establishing a public space for the voice of different communities to be expressed and deliberated governing bodies enable schools to understand and engage the cultural sources that motivate young people to learn. This article draws…

The 1988 Education Reform Act sought to deconstruct the framework of post-Second World War social democratic governance and replace the tacit rule of professional providers with mechanisms of choice and market competition, thus empowering parents and school leaders. Functions, powers and responsibilities were fundamentally reconstituted and have…

This study of school governors across the UK has suggested that while school governors and school boards had adopted (modernizing) perspectives of monitoring schools to improve performance they have nevertheless developed conceptions of governance which are independent of "the state" and reflect local cultural traditions of governing education. In…

Analyzes the impact of neo-liberal corporate accountability on educational governance since the demise of professional accountability in the mid-1970s. Argues that corporate accountability is inappropriate for educational governance. Proposes an alternative model: democratic accountability. (Contains 1 figure and 125 references.)(PKP)

The governance of schools reconstituted by the Conservative Education Reform Acts of 1986/88 has been the subject of review since the turn of the century, with questions raised about the roles and responsibilities of governing bodies. Do governors as volunteers have too many responsibilities? Do they contribute to school improvement? Do they…

The argument of the paper proposes that learning grows out of motivation which depends upon recognising and valuing the distinctive qualities of each and the cultural traditions they embody. If learning expresses a journey between worlds, the challenge for the school is to create a learning community that brings together local and cosmopolitan in…