Introduction

Fast-track graduate schemes are an established pathway into corporate elites, and fast-track leadership development schemes are increasingly common entry points to public sector professions in the UK. In education, Teach for All is an international network of fast-track leadership development programmes, such as Teach for America and Teach First, in England and Wales (Ellis et al, 2015). In England, the fast-track model has been translated across public sector domains with Frontline in social work, ThinkAhead in mental health social work, and Police Now in the police service. This chapter explores the relationships between Teach First for the teaching profession and Frontline, an equivalent programme for the social work profession.

Previous research has identified the ways in which Teach for All programmes, are re-articulating teacher professionalism, professional knowledge or are implicated in the broader transformation of education (Smart et al, 2009; Labaree, 2010; Ellis et al, 2015). Drawing on Bacchi's (2009) ‘What's the Problem Represented to be’ (WPR) approach, this chapter explores how fast-track leadership development schemes represent complex social issues, such as educational inequality and child death by abuse, as problems to be solved by individuals identified as highly talented and the application of a repertoire of corporate rationalities, discourses and practices. In particular it is the representation of high-calibre individuals – individuals who would not normally have become teachers or social workers – as the solution to complex social issues that frames their participation in fast-track schemes. I argue that this is a form of new micro-philanthropy, where such entry and participation in public professions, and thus their contribution to the public, is conditional on reworking and reculturing professional practices and commitments in line with corporatising processes.

The case is presented using secondary sources, news reports and organisational communications that were posted on the Teach First (http://teachfirst.org.uk) and Frontline (http://thefrontline.org.uk) websites.

Corporatisation and new philanthropy

This chapter explores processes of corporatisation, where corporate and financial elites are economically and culturally reworking and reconfiguring public education in line with corporate interests, rationalities and repertoires of action (Saltman, 2010). A prominent mode of corporate elite intervention in public education is through forms of new philanthropy and venture philanthropy (Saltman, 2009a; 2010).