In 1987 the Portuguese and British governments initiated 'radical' changes to the organisation and provision of school education. Influenced by a programme which combined political and economic neo-liberalism, conservative social doctrines on family and nation and traditional forms of education, these two governments proposed to 'innovate' and to 'modernise' public management and governance. 'Decentralisation' and 'autonomy' were both essential principles and goals underlying the introduction of private market principles and mechanisms in public education. The translation of those principles and goals into policy and the objectives which they conveyed were at the centre of political and professional disputes in the two countries. This thesis traces the emergence and development of principles and objectives informing the reform of school management and governance and maps the change in administration, governance, financing and provision. The comparative study of this change begins with the consideration of why governments, in countries at different stages of social development and democratisation and with an increasingly diverse social and ethnic composition, embraced policy solutions derived from similar libertarian and individualistic economic and political definitions of social freedoms and rights. The aims of the thesis are to explain and to contrast the transformation of existing mandates for compulsory education and of the nature of professional practice and school relations; to map the trajectory of changes in management and governance in two local areas in each country; to discuss the early impact of these reforms on teaching and learning and the anticipated lasting effect on schooling. An integrated comparative approach is combined with policy sociology and a perspective of the state which takes into account national specificity and complexity and the emergence of a transnational new form of social regulation. Interviews were undertaken with key actors in both central and local national government, in regional services, representative groups with an interest in education and with those responsible for the management and governance of schools in the two countries. These interviews provide the core material to trace the influence of adopted principles over practice at local and school level. The thesis concludes with the analysis of the impact of reforms at the institutional and local community levels. It discusses comparatively the way in which political deregulation, re-regulation and combined deregulation/re-regulation coexist at the school level and influence change in the following areas; curriculum, assessment, financing, teachers' recruitment, pay and working conditions, inspection, school admissions, special educational needs and discipline. Similarities in political regulation are contrasted with the way in which principles and reform initiatives were expressed differently in Portugal and England. The various forms and mandates which reforms took nationally and internationally across areas of social reform and across education's sub-systems and, the different ways in which principles were translated into policy initiatives are taken into account when considering the long-term anticipated impact of reforms in both countries.

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This thesis provides a detailed and contextualised account of the New Labour government's education policy from a post-Marxist perspective, with the aim of understanding the complexities and paradoxes of policy implementation in secondary schools in the UK during this period. While Marxism has remained a dominant critical app roach to the study of education, J argue that its ontological commitment to economic necessity limits the scope of its critical and explanatory power. Other approaches, such as functionalism and interpretivism, also contain theoretical shortfalls that prevent a comprehensive understanding of education. Drawing on poststructuralist theory to rearticulate key concepts in Marxism, I show how a post-Marxist approach can provide a deeper critical explanation of the pol icy process and the micropolitical tensions that affect the way policy is implemented within the school. My empirical investigation identifies a particular tension in New Labour's education policy discourse, between two seemingly incompatible strands: neoliberal modernisation and social cohesion . Through a genealogical analysis of the policy discourse, I reveal how this tension emerged and became articulated in the policy texts and speeches of the New Labour government. Moreover, I reveal how this tension developed as New Labour attempted to consolidate the previous Conservative government's neoliberal agenda while also renegotiating a historical schism in the labour Party between the discourses of 'gradualism' and 'radicalism'. In order to understand how New labour's pol icy discourse, and the tensions existing within it, played out in schools, I undertake in-depth research in two secondary schools in England . This research, which included open interviews, focus groups and Q-method analysis with staff and • pupils, is collated into two case studies. These case studies identify the specific micro political logics that led the schools to develop radically different approaches to implementing policy.

This was a case study that looked at the way a new education department was set up in the new Peterborough unitary authority between 1996 and 1998. The aim was to investigate the way in which a new LEA was set up and identify the national and local influences that may have been influential in the decision making process. The research design was constructed to take into account that the case study involved an institution which was being set up over a period of two years. It would be chronologically based and a historical methodology would be the basis of research work. Within this framework, participant observation, interviews and documentary research would be the research tools used. This would also have the advantage that this approach made good use of the experience and skills of the researcher. A number of theoretical models were used in this case study. These included the rational actor model, bounded rationality, disjointed incrementalism, organisational process, bureaucratic politics model, Sabatier's political change model and Bachrach and Baratz's pluralist model. This range of models was adopted in the expectation that each had its own particular focus within the decision making process but taken together they could provide an over-lapping view. The new education department was set up at a time when there were concerns over the future economic situation of the UK. There was a national debate concerning what public services were needed and how best to provide them. The previous Conservative Government had reduced the powers of the local authorities and the new Labour government was to encourage local authorities to find the best way of providing services. For the new unitary authority, the challenge was to set up a new LEA which met local needs. However, this was a period of national political change and a new central government was formed in the middle of the setting up process. This was to cause the new LEA to re-plan to take into account expected strategic changes. The education department faced a number of challenges. There was local opposition to the setting up of a unitary authority. The city administration favoured policies which were to run counter to central government expectations. Few experienced education officers were available to the new LEA The main findings of the case study were: Central government was the single greatest influence in the setting up of the education department. Government legislation changed the role, responsibilities and structure of the new department. These changes over-stretched the new LEA, especially as central government did not provide a sufficient level of funding to the LEA. The DfEE was an important influence on the early development of the department. At first, the DfEE did not intervene and there was no guidance available to the new LEA. The city council and education department spent a year preparing to set up a new LEA and then found that it had to make significant changes on the election of a new government 12 months before the unitary authority was to be established. Local social and economic issues were ignored by the DfEE?s focus on national targets. These local problems had a significant affect on student achievement so the LEA never met government targets. The institutional culture of the city council was not supportive of the new LEA. This helped to create a shortage of able and experienced senior education officers. The education department received limited support from the local schools. Many schools had opposed unitary authority status and half of all secondary schools were grant maintained by 1996. In 1998 the education department was facing an overspend of nearly £1 million. Senior education officers resigned their posts and within a year the education department had to be re-organised.

This research provokes a different set of perspectives on education policy. It observes that in England education is so connected to ideas of knowledge and identity that it operates at two levels. The first level is rational and concentrates upon institutional and organisational behaviour. The second level is linked to a system of beliefs which enable us to demonstrate knowing and understanding. The categorical mistake often made in educational policy analysis is to try to apply first level thinking to second level problems. This research applies a conceptual framework which looks at policy formulation of 14-19 education reform in the period 2001-2005 based around the Tomlinson report. It also subjects this analysis to questions derived from the thinking of Gramsci, Bourdieu and Wittgenstein on such second level thinking. Readings of educational purpose by governments as a tool for economic and social purposes are exposed as elements of Bourdieu’s misrecognition. Indeed the purpose of education that emerges is about raising standards and operating a system based on choice and institutional autonomy. The danger in such a system is that means have become ends and there is no connection between the actions taken by government and their stated aims. Government policy can be reduced to a series of self-evident statements which rely upon belief rather than rationality. The research concludes that although education reformers in England can envisage transformational reform they are impeded by doxastic beliefs from articulating the means to implement such reform. As a result education in England is likely to continue its cycle of misremembered reform through further attempts. The proposal made here is that fundamental reform can only be made by working through such beliefs on an individual basis. The specific solution advanced here is taken from the Tomlinson and involves introducing a transformed vocational education system for those aged 16 and over. This research offers four new understandings. It presents a new approach to the research of educational policy based upon philosophical assumptions about knowledge and identity. It services that approach through a new analysis based upon a conceptual framework drawn from Williams’ tensions around purpose, change and democracy. Secondly it deploys such assumptions and analysis in a specific historical period which demonstrates the conceptual limits upon change within 14-19 reform. In doing this it also draws out new understandings about the ability to identify change propositions and the profound difficulty in translating them into change processes. The final claim of this research is that it seeks to tackle how transformational change in education might occur within the limits that are identified here.

Planning and policy-making may be represented in one dimension along a continuum from the technocratic to the political mode and on another dimension as the cyclical process of policy formulation, adoption and implementation. Within this matrix the roles of administrator, planner and policy-maker can be identified and divided into steps. There should be constant interaction among planners, policy-makers and administrators and, depending on the issue, varying degrees of overlap of function. This derived planning/policy-making paradigm is applied to the problem of contracting resources for education. In contrast to the expansion of the previous two decades, education systems in several Western nations in the 1970s faced economic recession, disenchantment with the education process and declining enrolments. The problems created by these changes in primary and secondary education in England and Australia are analysed in the areas of recurrent and capital expenditure and particularly in their impact on teacher education, staffing, curriculum, accommodation and governance. Attention is focussed on the policy solutions developed especially in response to declining enrolments at the national level from the early 1970s to mid-1980 in England and to late 1980 in Australia. Case studies are made of the Inner London Education Authority and the Australian Capital Territory Schools Authority. Evidence for the hypothesis that governance is centralised in a contraction situation is ambivalent. There is limited evidence to support the hypothesis of a three stage reaction to declining enrolments: avoidance of recognition of the problem, a spirited defence of vested interests and a planned response to minimise the threats and use the opportunities provided. In neither England nor Australia had comprehensive policy responses to declining enrolments emerged by 1980. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations for the A.C.T. Schools Authority in the 1980s.

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This thesis makes a contribution to the study of education policy in England by analysing decisions taken by the Board of Education and its successor bodies from 1918 to 1972 concerning whether self-governing nursery schools or nursery classes attached to infant schools should be the preferred institution for pre-school education. It draws on documentary sources from Board/Ministry of Education files at the National Archives, from Local Authority records, and from the archives of other interested organisations, offering a qualitative analysis influenced by policy and decision-making theory. It argues that these decisions were determined both by fundamental beliefs about what nursery education was for, with schools seen as more suitable for promoting physical well-being and classes as better for easing transition to formal schooling, and by the fact that nursery education was a low political priority in which the limited resources made available were not sufficient for all children to experience the ideal. It demonstrates that the Board/Ministry operated largely as a policy making elite in this area, and neither the voices of the established policy network of educationalists nor marginalised constituencies such as working parents had a significant influence on the decisions. This exclusion militated against the successful implementation of policy. The thesis also analyses decisions made within four Local Education Authorities (LEAs): two which invested almost exclusively in nursery classes and two which established both schools and classes. These differences emerged prior to World War II and were caused by the varying values and beliefs of the education committees. Despite increased central control after the war, the established paths constrained new developments so that the original patterns largely persisted. Therefore, the local picture offers a small correction to the elitist model of policymaking as it demonstrates that some voices outside central government had an impact on the implementation process.

Understanding the causes and consequences of the speed and the radical nature of secondary school reform in England is the prompt for this PhD inquiry. The hypothesis is that there has been a shift in constitutional practice and a realignment of democratic values in informing schools policy. The work of this thesis, in tracking the development of the academies policy, reveals a marked shift in decision-making style at the top of government. In the years of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010, policy-making was robust more than consultative; urgent more than deliberative; experimental more than careful. Policy-making in education also became more closely associated with the views of the prime minister. Hennessy (2001a: 507), in assessing Tony Blair’s political style, was worried by his ‘excessive prime ministerialism’ that ‘cuts against the collective grain’ and, in chapter 3, the ability for a prime minister to exploit the latitude provided by a mostly unwritten constitution to exert power will be discussed. Three research questions will form the framework for this inquiry: 1. What does the development of the academies programme reveal about the connection between democratic values and secondary education policy formation? 2. How has constitutional practice influenced the development and scrutiny of the academies policy? 3. What do the discourses of those who supported or contested the academies programme reveal about democratic values and constitutional practice in policy making?

This thesis examines the rationale and debate of the ‘Fresh Start’ schools policy introduced by the New Labour government in 1997 as a vehicle for improvement in schools that historically had been classified as failing. Underpinning the policy is the assumption that Fresh Start can act as a catalytic agent of positive change to performance, school cultures and the school community. The literature review examines school improvement in schools with challenging circumstances (where many Fresh Start schools are based) and includes the theoretical framework underpinning school improvement. It examines the recent political context that has driven school improvement, the role of inspection in identifying failing schools, the development of Fresh Start policy and alternative routes available to schools failing their OFSTED inspection. The case study traces the transformation process and outlines the profile of the first Fresh Start Primary School in England with a population of 40% Travellers on the school roll. It includes an early evaluation of a number of initiatives associated with catalytic change and school improvement that have been employed in the case study school, in other Fresh Start Primary Schools in England and in socio-economically disadvantaged schools around the world. It looks particularly at the impact of breakfast clubs, a school-wide literacy scheme, ‘Success for All’, and community education based in the school. The impact of these initiatives is considered within the context of the school, the school community and government policy. The research findings conclude that Fresh Start together with the initiatives have been effective strategies for improvement in the case study school, and may provide a good model for other schools in similar circumstances.