My research

Investigating privatisation trends in the Caribbean (2020–2021)

Joint Principal Investigators: Dr Steven J Courtney and Dr Rinnelle Lee-Piggott, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus.

Funder

Education International

What were we trying to find out?

What is the extent and impact of privatisation in and of education in the Caribbean?

Why does this need investigating?

Privatisation in and of education represents one of the greatest global challenges to education as a public good and to equality in education access and outcomes (Verger, Fontdevila and Zancajo, 2016). The Caribbean is not immune to the threat of privatisation.

For instance, early childhood education is almost entirely privatised in most Caribbean countries. Endogenous privatisation is also a pressing concern: this is where objectives, practices, structures and values originating in the private sector are enacted by professionals in public education (see Courtney 2015, for an explanatory example from England).

As in many other parts of the world, in the Caribbean, privatisation processes in education must be understood in tandem with failures in the public education system as a result of underfunding or poor coverage, especially in hard-to-reach areas. In the last few decades, huge strides have been made in education access in Caribbean countries in terms of enrolment rates, especially at primary level.

However, auxiliary fees in public education still serve as a barrier to universal and equitable access across all levels of education, and quality continues to suffer as a result of the enduring effects of structural adjustment, government austerity and wage cuts. High debt and budget restraints continue to challenge government’s ability to meet their responsibility to guarantee the right to education to all Caribbean children.

Though well documented in some parts of the world, little research has been conducted into privatisation trends and their consequences in the Caribbean region specifically. This research project responds to this gap by describing and analysing privatisation trends in the Caribbean region and by exploring and conceptualising the impact of these trends on the fulfilment of the right to education. The research findings will contribute to a critical debate about the links between students' right to quality education and teachers' right to quality working conditions, and the regulation of private actors in the region.

Research Design

There are three strands to the research:

1. Documentary analysis

2. Online questionnaire

3. Online/phone semi-structured interviews

For the online questionnaire, there are 6 participant groups from ten countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago. The participant groups (with minimum numbers in brackets) are:

1. Public-school teachers (150)

2. Tertiary-institution educators (50)

3. Public-school leaders (60)

4. Tertiary-institution leaders, i.e. heads of faculty/department in the University of the West Indies (20)

5. The parents of public-school pupils (60)

6. Tertiary-institution students (20)

All public-school and tertiary-institution teachers and leaders in the target countries are eligible to participate. For the remote interviews that follow, there are 9 participant groups from five countries: St Lucia, Barbados, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. The participant groups (with maximum numbers in brackets) are:

1. Teachers and lecturers (12)

2. School leaders (6)

3. Tertiary institution leaders, i.e. heads of faculty/department in the University of the West Indies (3)

4. Education support workers (3)

5. Government ministers (3)

6. Corporation/lobby group representatives (1)

7. Education Union representatives (1)

8. CARICOM/OECS representative (2)

9. World Bank, IMF, IDB, CDB representative (4)

The maximum total number of interviewees is 35, with each being interviewed once for no longer than 1 hour. Teachers, lecturers and leaders of public schools or tertiary institutions will be eligible to take part in both the questionnaire and the interview. Their data from the different methods is not linked.

References

Courtney, S.J. (2015). "Corporatised leadership in English Schools". Journal of Educational Administration and History, 47(3), 214–231.

Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., and Zancajo, A., (2016). "The Privatization of Education: A Political Economy of Global Education Reform". New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Investigating school leadership at a time of system diversity, competition and flux (2011–2015)

Funder

Economic Social and Research Council grant number ES/J500094/1

Principal Investigator: Dr Steven J Courtney

What was I trying to find out?

This study focused on how headteachers and principals construct their identities and practise leadership in a system which is increasingly characterised by diversity, competition and flux.

It sought to map the multiple sites and dimensions of similarities and difference within school types in England to produce the first historical, ideological and conceptual typology of its kind. It aimed to provide an understanding and explanation of headteachers’ experiences of leadership in this diverse, competitive and changing landscape, how they understand leadership and how they construct their professional identities. The research questions that the study aimed to answer are:

1. In what ways and why has the English education system become so structurally and competitively diverse and dynamic?

2. How, over time, do headteachers conceptualise their leadership roles, identities and practices in relation to a diverse, competitive and dynamic system?

3. How, over time, do headteachers interpret the relationship between the type of school they lead and the ways in which they conceptualise their leadership roles, identities and practices?

Why does this need investigating?

What has changed and required investigation is the rapid growth in schools’ diversity and its systemic impact on leadership understood holistically rather than as particular, sequential policy interventions, because different types of school are emerging which have differing relationships with the state and which seek to be distinctive in a market place through specialisation and branding.

This is an important topic for policy and research. In policy, the Education Reform Act of 1988 facilitated privatisations to achieve educational reform through enabling market forces, following neoliberal ideology. Key to this was the establishment of schools differing in funding, governance and control of areas such as the curriculum, admissions, pay and employment, between which parents-as-consumers could choose (Ball, 2008). Dynamic and positional variety is therefore a key feature of the English state-funded educational landscape.

Meanwhile, leadership is increasingly privileged in policy under successive governments as a means of achieving education reform. Policies reflect and reproduce assumptions about the purposes and possibilities of school leadership including the notion that that of academies is characterised by vitality and autonomy; that leaders who retain a strong, formal link with their local authority represent the ancien régime and their leadership is restricted; that leadership in free schools invokes entrepreneurialism. One of my tasks in undertaking this study was to expose and scrutinise such assumptions.

What is known about leadership tends to focus on structurally transversal themes such as equity and inclusion (Ainscow and Sandill, 2010); models of leadership (Bush, 2003); broad movements such as the rise in practices associated with New Public Management (e.g. Wright, 2001) or the extent to which certain leadership practices or qualities (Hargreaves and Harris, 2011) or interventions (Earley and Evans, 2004) improve schools or increase their effectiveness. Where school type is a variable within a research design or the focus of analysis, the focus is predominantly on whether a specific type of school produces the benefits claimed for pupils’ outcomes (e.g. Gorard, 2009), or whose introduction into the system is studied as an example of policy enactment within a (neoliberal) ideological framework (Gunter, 2011). The purpose and scope of school leadership are contested between those who see them as either incidental to school diversity, or linked through the ideological exigencies of neoliberalism. For the former, mostly located in the normative, functional part of the field, leadership may be restricted or enabled by a policy landscape, but essentially, characteristics of successful leadership are identifiable, their promulgation is a key function of research and one of the main purposes of leadership is unproblematically conceptualised as the raising of standards (e.g. Hargreaves and Harris, 2011). Scholars holding the latter view are often socially critical and see leadership as a political construct which operationalises a teleologically-focused neoliberal and neoconservative project (e.g. Gunter, 2012). These researchers describe and advocate a wider range of approaches to leadership, including that underpinning Hayes, Mills, Christie and Lingard’s (2004: 520) ‘productive leadership’, ‘[which] support[s] the development of whole school communities as learning organisations in which ongoing teacher learning is complementary to student learning and which encourages the widespread practice of productive pedagogies’. Furthermore, there has been scholarship which has examined social justice work and leadership, including Courtney’s (2011; 2014) work on sexually minoritised school leaders and Hall’s (1996) work on women managers in education. How headteachers make sense of their own biography and of themselves as leaders within it, and how they understand and practise leadership is less explored in the literature, though works where this has been the focus include interviews with headteachers in special education (Rayner and Ribbins, 1999) and in primary schools (Pascal and Ribbins, 1998). Some in the profession have written about leadership, for example MacKenzie-Batterbury (2011) and Daniels (2011) on leading an academy. What is missing from the literature is a broader enquiry which focuses on practitioners’ identifications and practices in a diverse, competitive and changing education landscape, and a scholarly mapping of this landscape.

Research Design

This study was a policy scholarship which sought to explore how head teachers construct their identities and practise their leadership through a qualitative approach drawing on a constructivist epistemology. The research consisted of two phases:

In the first phase, I located and analysed primary and secondary sources to produce a multi-dimensioned mapping of school forms. This typology was informed by and presented alongside a historical narration which explored the reforms’ policy contexts.

In the second phase, I interviewed nine purposively-selected secondary headteachers or principals of schools representing distinctive cases as identified in the typology, including different forms of academy, a maintained community school, a free school, a faith school, a federation and a teaching school. Data were generated by semi-structured interview in three phases to capture dynamism and enhance trustworthiness and were analysed using two approaches; narrative and paradigmatic.

Outputs

The following key outputs were published from the project:

Courtney, S.J., and Gunter, H.M., (2019). Corporatised fabrications: The methodological challenges of professional biographies at a time of neoliberalisation. In: J. Lynch, J. Rowlands, T. Gale, and S. Parker (Eds.), (2019). Practice Methodologies in Education Research. London: Routledge, pp. 27–47.

Courtney, S.J., (2017). Corporatising school leadership through hysteresis. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(7), 1054–1067.

Courtney, S.J., and Gunter, H.M., (2017). Privatizing leadership in education in England: The multiple meanings of school principal agency. In: D. Waite and I. Bogotch (Eds.), The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Leadership. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 295–310.

Courtney, S.J., (2017). The courtier’s empire: A case study of providers and provision. In: H.M. Gunter, D. Hall, and M.W. Apple (Eds.), Corporate elites and the reform of public education. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 177–189.

Courtney, S.J., (2015). Mapping school types in England. Oxford Review of Education, 41(6), 799–818.

Courtney, S.J., (2015). Corporatised leadership in English schools. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 47(3), 214–231.

Courtney, S.J., and Gunter, H.M., (2015). “Get off my bus!” School leaders, vision work and the elimination of teachers. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 18(4), 395–417.

References

Ainscow, M., and Sandill, A., 2010. Developing inclusive education systems: the role of organisational cultures and leadership. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(4), 401–416.

Ball, S., 2008. The Legacy of ERA, Privatization and the Policy Ratchet. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 36(2), 185-199.

Bush, T., 2003. Theories of Educational Leadership and Management. 3^rd Edition. London: Sage.

Courtney, S., (2014). Inadvertently queer school leadership amongst lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) school leaders, 21(3), 383–399,

Courtney, S., 2011. Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) identity and school leadership: English LGB school leaders’ perspectives. Unpublished MA dissertation. The University of Manchester.

Daniels, D., 2011. From reality to vision: The “birth” of the Petchey Academy in Hackney. In: Gunter, H.M., ed. The State and Education Policy: the Academies Programme. London: Continuum, 2011, pp. 92-104.

Earley, P., and Evans, J., 2004. Making a Difference?: Leadership Development for Headteachers and Deputies—Ascertaining the Impact of the National College for School Leadership. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 32(3),

Gorard, S., 2009. What are Academies the answer to? Journal of Education Policy, 24(1), 101-113.

Gunter, H.M., ed., 2011. The State and Education Policy: the Academies Programme. London: Continuum.

Gunter, H.M., 2012. Leadership and the Reform of Education. Bristol: The Policy Press.

Hall, V., 1996. Dancing on the ceiling: a study of women managers in education. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Hargreaves, A., and Harris, A., 2011. Performance beyond expectation. Nottingham: The National College for School Leadership.

Hayes, D., Christie, P., Mills, M., Lingard, B., 2004. Productive leaders and productive leadership: Schools as learning organisations. Journal of Educational Administration, 42(5), 520 – 538.

MacKenzie-Batterbury, R., 2011. The Journey to Academy Principalship. Unpublished EdD thesis. The University of Birmingham.

Pascal, C., and Ribbins, P., 1998. Understanding primary headteachers. London: Cassell.

Rayner, S., and Ribbins, P., 1999. Headteachers and leadership in special education. London: Cassell.

Wright, N., 2001. Leadership, ‘Bastard Leadership’ and Managerialism: Confronting Twin Paradoxes in the Blair Education Project. Educational Management and Administration, 29(3), 275–290.

School leaders' experiences of the 2012 school inspection framework (2012–13)

Funder

Economic and Social Research Council, grant number ES/J500094/1

Principal Investigator: Dr Steven J Courtney

What was I trying to find out?

This research aimed to make contributions in three key areas. First, it aimed to be the first study to locate the new framework in its theoretical and socio-political context. Second, it evaluated for the first time the effectiveness of the new school inspection framework in achieving its political objective of focusing on four (reduced from 27) key areas. Third, it explored for the first time the experiences of headteachers involved in inspections that used it, and also their views of the implications the framework may have for schools and for the English education system.

This research sought to enable understanding of the 2012 school inspection framework by addressing the following questions:

1. What are its characteristics?
2. In which discourses are they conceptually grounded?
3. What are headteachers’ and other educational professionals’ experiences of the pilot?

Why does this need investigating?

The election of the coalition government in 2010 prompted changes to the framework Ofsted uses to inspect schools. The framework was piloted in around 150 schools during May and June 2011 and the views of heads and other professionals gathered.

There is growing evidence that Ofsted fosters a culture of compliance and performativity within a managerialist discourse which it structures through its inspection regime (Ball, 2008; Perryman, 2006; Hoyle and Wallace, 2007). Its inspection framework operationalises this compliance; schools which do not achieve the standards it prescribes can be closed (Perryman, 2010). Its influence extends beyond the relatively brief periods of inspection; many leaders internalise its definition of success (Hoyle and Wallace, 2007) and subject themselves and school staff to intense surveillance in order to ensure that daily practice corresponds as closely as possible to the Ofsted-sanctioned ideal (Ball, 2008). This phenomenon is recognised in the literature as ‘control of control’ (Power, 1999: 66) or panoptic performativity (Perryman, 2006). This inspection framework, then, is of great significance to headteachers, schools and the English education system more widely as both a product of a discourse and a mechanism for its reproduction.

Research Design

The study adopted a mixed-methods approach and consisted of three stages.

First, I conducted a qualitative documentary analysis of the framework, evaluation schedule, a sample of reports and other relevant governmental documentation including press releases.

Second, I interviewed five headteachers who were inspected in the first months of the framework's introduction to find out their reaction to and experiences of the framework and their views of its implications for practice and policy. These interviews took place over the phone or at the usual workplace of the participants.

In the third and final stage, I surveyed a representative sample of those headteachers whose schools were inspected in the first months of the framework, using a questionnaire. This questionnaire was based on the answers provided by the interviewed Headteachers.

Outputs

The following outputs were published from the project:

Courtney, S.J., (2016). Post-panopticism and school inspection in England. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(4), 623–642.

Courtney, S.J., (2013). Head teachers’ experiences of school inspection under Ofsted’s January 2012 framework. Management in Education, 27(4), 164–169.

Courtney, S.J., (2012). Ofsted’s revised school inspection framework: Experiences and implications. Paper presented at BERA conference, Manchester, 4-7 September 2012.

References

Ball, S. J., 2008. The Legacy of ERA, Privatization and the Policy Ratchet. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 36(2), 185–199.

Hoyle, E., and Wallace, M., 2007. Educational Reform: An Ironic Perspective. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 35(1), 9–25.

Perryman, J., 2006. Panoptic performativity and school inspection regimes: disciplinary mechanisms and life under special measures. Journal of Education Policy, 21(2), 147–161.

Perryman, J., 2010. Improvement after inspection. Improving Schools, 13(2), 182–196.

Power, M., 1999. The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.