Corporatised leadership in English schools

Abstract

Corporatised leadership in schools in England is being promoted through new actors and new types of school, these latter with corporate structures, values, regulatory freedoms and contractual arrangements with staff. Corporatised leadership is characterised inter alia by the promotion of the interests of business through the curriculum, school structure, learning materials and pupil experiences, and the adoption of business-derived leadership practices and identities. Corporate leadership produces and is produced through new actors – here, Chairs of Governors, the alignment of whose symbolic capital with the privileged corporate discourse increases their influence. The paper draws on semi-structured interviews with nine school leaders from a range of school types. The data were analysed using Bourdieu's concept of fields to explore the cross-field effects of business/economics and educational leadership.