This thesis examines England’s academy schools policy by integrating interpretive policy analysis (IPA) with a critical approach to scale. The thesis begins with the observation that studies of policy have an underdeveloped conceptualisation of scale. The concept of scale used here refers to how the social world is perceived to be vertically ordered and is given labels such as the ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘global’. Categories of scale have typically been used by policy actors and social scientists alike to describe, understand and analyse policy. Policy and scale are thus inextricably linked and this thesis seeks to study policy by critically engaging with scale and in this way develops a research focus that has been largely unexplored. The implementation studies literature is identified as being a particularly striking example of policy analysis which has tended to use categories of scale in an unquestioned manner. Implementation studies have a tradition of discussing ‘bottom-up’ or ‘top-down’ processes which reveal an analytical framework that assumes the existence of a scalar hierarchy. While the thesis supports the critiques of implementation studies made by scholars associated with IPA, it is argued that the interpretive critique has not been extended to the concept of scale. In order to address the problematic approach to scale in interpretive studies of policy this thesis examines how actors adopt ‘scalar practices’ in their policy work, which is consistent with the critical approach to scale that has been developed by post-structuralist human geographers. The latter group of scholars describe scalar practices as the way actors use categories of scale to interpret and strategically construct their social worlds. A focus on scalar practices allows for scale to be understood as an epistemological concept; this marks a departure from how social scientists have tended to use scalar categories to explain things with which has, in turn, problematically suggested that scale has an ontological existence. Education has been identified as an arena where representative struggles over scale come sharply into focus. The way in which education has been mobilised in relation to a wide range of scalar constructs such as the state, local authorities and a school’s catchment area, demonstrates how education is understood to be part of a political world which is ordered according to a vertical hierarchy of scales. This is particularly striking in the case of England’s academies policy. The official policy narrative of academies describes how a school converting to academy status becomes free from local authority control, becomes directly accountable to the state and gains greater levels of individual autonomy. It is thus a policy that is underpinned by distinctly scalar claims, making it a highly appropriate case study through which to explore the scalar practices of policy actors. The case study design of the research project focused on two local authorities and four academies within each of these. Interviews were carried out with local authority officers, academy sponsors, principals and chairs of governors. The study identifies how actors deploy four key scalar practices: constructing scalar boundaries, dissolving scalar boundaries, shifting between scales and emphasising the interconnectedness of scales. A theoretical approach called the practice of scalecraft is subsequently developed which not only focuses on the nature of scalar practices but also on what kinds of political concepts underpin these practices. The thesis concludes by suggesting that scalecraft can be used as a framework through which to incorporate a critical approach to scale in future interpretive studies of policy.

No / The English school sector has been transformed over recent decades through wide-ranging education policies. One far-reaching change has been the dramatic rise in academy schools driven by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition (2010-2015) (Stevenson 2016), with 64.7% of secondary state-funded schools now holding academy status (Department for Education 2018). A central issue emerging from this context is the changes to school teachers’ pay and working conditions, given that autonomy over employment terms and conditions transfer from local authorities to operating education trusts under the academy model (see Academies Act 2010). Stevenson (2011) importantly argued that rather than establishing new directions in education policy, recent changes – such as the academy expansion enterprise – solidify the long-standing trajectory of restructuring to public education, underpinned by neoliberal ideologies. Such projects seek to fragment a public service accountable to local authorities, superseding it with a state-subsidised system buttressed by predominantly private investors (Stevenson 2011); pressing schools into competition for students and resources (Connell 2009). Dovetailed in this setting, a significant study by Carter and Stevenson (2012:491), exploring workforce remodelling in teaching, found strong evidence for “an accelerated form of creeping managerialism,” with middle-grade teachers carrying increasing responsibility for the monitoring of colleagues. The combined effects of markets and managerialism, that bolster the grander-scale neoliberal project, have worked in unison to fundamentally recast teachers’ experiences of work (Stevenson and Wood 2013). Currently in its analytical phase, this PhD study, informed by a labour process theoretical (LPT) perspective, set out to explore (1) the various formal and informal structures and processes (control strategies) that impact on school teachers’ work, (2) how teachers experience those control strategies, (3) teachers’ orientations to work and (4) how teachers’ orientations to work interrelate with their experiences of control strategies. Several scholars employ an LPT perspective to facilitate critical studies of teachers’ work (for examples see Carter and Stevenson 2012; Stevenson and Wood 2013). Yet there remains a paucity of research that takes an LPT approach to the in-depth interpretive analysis of teachers’ work. Inspired by a call from Reid (2003) for research that combines LPT with detailed single-site ethnographic accounts, a qualitative ethnography of one academy school in Northern England was conducted over a four-month period. This comprised interviews with 26 teachers, senior managers, HR and trade union representatives; a six-week shadowing period; non-participant observations and document collection. This article focuses on two key issues relating to the impact of academies and widespread managerialism on teachers’ work experiences: working time and teaching preparation. In particular, it highlights the erosion of autonomy previously given to teachers to manage their own time, lessons and resources; with accounts of increased frustration at the rising mechanisation of teaching. The central contribution of this paper, therefore, is the application of LPT to the context of contemporary teachers’ work in England, to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of academies and widespread managerialism on school teachers’ working lives.

The academy school programme, OFSTED’s use of school performance data, and performance management and performance related pay reforms are dramatically transforming the work and employment landscape in teaching. Yet there is limited knowledge of teachers’ experiences of work in relation to this context. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the impact of these education reforms on school teachers’ working lives through a labour process perspective. A critical realist ethnography of an inner-city secondary academy school was conducted over four months. This comprised a six-week shadowing phase, document collection and 26 semi-structured interviews with Teachers, Managers, HR and Trade Union Representatives. Findings reveal that the removal of a contextual value added measure from school performance metrics leads to an increase in teachers’ workloads and an extension of their working hours. This is compounded by an unofficial erosion of teachers’ directed working time that infiltrates through the academy trust. Pressures on workload also stem from management-led initiatives generated by appraisals in leadership programmes. Furthermore, teachers’ work becomes standardised and re-organised through the heterarchical multi-academy trust model in an effort to improve the school’s OFSTED rating. Performance related pay reforms act as a parallel instigator to the standardisation of work, polarising the creative and mundane aspects of teaching across the workforce, whilst oppositional orientations to work form as the majority of teachers align with a shared sense of commitment to work. This thesis amalgamates labour process theory with the hollowing out thesis, making key theoretical, conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions, alongside practical recommendations. / Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences at the University of Bradford Scholarship