Aims and approach

In March 2014, an anonymous document arrived on the desk of the leader of Birmingham City Council. The document, sent with a covering letter – also anonymous – claimed that a number of schools in Birmingham had been deliberately targeted by hard-line Muslim school governors (Clarke, 2014; DfE, 2014c). The accusations within the letter alleged that these governors were ‘plotting’ to replace school leaders in several schools with individuals who were imposing a hardline Muslim curriculum (Gov.uk, 2015).

Although the letter turned out to be a hoax, the affair, and the media storm that followed (Adams, 2014; Baxter, 2014b; BBC, 2014), uncovered a number of ‘concerns’ that had been expressed, both in the media and elsewhere, about the rapid changes taking place within education since the general election of 2010 and the coming to power of a Conservative–Liberal Democratic Coalition government (James et al, 2011; Wilkins, 2014). These issues were bound up with deep and prevailing concerns around the whole area of English education and the apparent erosion of a democratic and equitable system of education for all (see Scheurich and Skrla, 2004; Sun et al, 2007; Ball, 2009; Ozga et al, 2013).

These were not new concerns, but, in essence, reflect those raised in a growing body of academic literature that has been building since the Education Reform Act 1988 introduced the idea of independent state schools. The introduction of ‘local management of schools’, as it was termed, heralded the beginning of ‘school autonomies’ in England, allowing schools to ‘break free’ of local authority budgetary control (see Maclure, 1989; Sharp, 2002). These changes intensified under New Labour’s academies project (1997–2010) and subsequent Education Acts (Education (Schools) Act 1992, Education Act 2005, Academies Act 2010, Education Act 2011), and have radically changed the structure of the English education system, permitting further financial and curricular autonomies, and introducing free schools and encouraging collaborations between schools (academy chains, multi-academy trusts and cooperative and maintained groups of federated schools). In England, these changes have created a marketised environment in which schools compete for pupils, which rather than creating educational equity, has compromised it (see Hatcher, 1994, 2006; Hatcher and Jones, 2011): a system that some have termed ‘a systemless system’ (Lawn, 2013; Lawn et al, 2014).