1 Enterprise Governance: The Role of Accountability in 21 st Century British Education Dr. Andrew Wilkins, andrew.wilkins@roehampton.ac.uk Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Roehampton Paper presented to American Education Research Association (AERA). Roundtable Session ‘Policies, Governance and the Influence of Accountability on Schools’. Philadelphia, USA. 5 April 2014 Abstract Since the 1980s new legislation has been implemented to ensure state schools in England can opt out of the locally controlled system to become (what was then called) ‘grant maintained’ – funded by the state but administratively self-governing. Up until very recently however, very few schools in the state sector actually practised what might be considered self-governance, at least in the legal sense. Many schools operating under the direct control of local authorities (‘ maintained’ schools) were to some extent administratively self-governing with limited control over budgets, premises and HR, but legally remained the responsibility of the local authority and therefore responsive to rules and regulations presided over by the local authority. Today, however, very few schools in the secondary school sector are ‘maintained’, at least not by local authorities. Many schools today are free-standing legal entities operating independent of local government; federated schools joined together as part of a cluster or trust as a separate legal entity; or sponsor schools run by large corporate academy chains. Concomitant with these developments have been government demands for ‘effective governance’, namely the inspection, audit and ‘professionalization’ of the school governing body – a body of volunteers whose role and responsibility it is to hold the headteacher and senior leadership to account for the performance and finance of the school. Given this paper is set to be discussed in the context of a roundtable discussion I have rendered it more conversational in tone. I’m also aware that some participants in the discussion may be unfamiliar with the history of English education policy. I have therefore constructed a kind of ‘nuts and bolts’ paper for want a better description. It outlines the aims, context and data for my study as well as some of the recent developments to affect school organization and school accountability in England. Following this I draw on evidence to flesh out what it is school governors actually do and how these forms of ritual participation and their rationalization are impacted by the changing legal and power arrangements of different school setups and the encroachment of particular forms of accountability, notably finance, legal, performance and consumer. I have deliberately foregrounded the discussion around observable concrete practices, and therefore resisted engaging too much in conceptual or theoretical deliberation/engagement for the time being. However, I am keen to apply theory where it might serve to increase both awareness and intervention to affect change. Foucauldian approaches to governmentality spring to mind.