Introduction

The seismic shift in public education services is well charted by researchers, but examining the realities of everyday speedy neoliberalism is little explored, largely because the tracing, evidence collection and codification of meaning is a demanding undertaking (see Hall, 2011). I take up the challenge by focusing on the realities of what it means for salaried professionals in public services education to live and work precariously at the edge of the rolling back of the state. Specifically I locate my analysis in England, where public services education is being privatised through corporate elites shaping policies that are marketising provision, and are seeking to invest for profit and/or by philanthropic benefaction in schools as businesses.

As politicians and manifestos declare that the market can and should provide, there are consequences of this, as highly qualified educational professionals find that their work and workplace change beyond recognition, and they may even find their jobs made redundant. So I focus on dispossessed experts who are seeking to reposition themselves productively within a turbulent system, and specifically I give attention to those who have relocated as corporate knowledge workers by rebranding their practice as consultants who do consultancy for fees.

I begin the chapter by providing some contextual information, before going on to examine the corporate approach to the relocation of the self and work within the marketplace. I then go on to provide meaning to these changes, whereby forms of corporate hegemony are interrelated with the agency of these consultants through using Gramsci's (1986) work on conjunctural crises. The contribution from this analysis is located empirically in the revealing of these accounts, combined with theorising that seeks to relate meta-narratives of neoliberalism with the realities of people who are marketised.

All change?

My starting point is to ask: who do educational professionals who work in schools turn to for support and advice? From the 1980s till the 2000s a teacher in England could turn to another teacher as their ‘colleague’, to advisers in the local education authority and to experts in national government units or agencies, and in universities. There has been a strong tradition of experienced professionals relocating their employment from schools into local and/or national services, and into higher education, in order to develop and share expertise with the profession variously through advice, training and research. These sites of support have faced major changes.