A chance to be better: how does ideology impact on academy freedoms to form curriculum policy?

Elaine Crane

MA Education Studies

Abstract

Curriculum and ideology are inherently linked, illustrated by the part they play in concurrent government agendas to improve educational outcomes for all pupils and compete in education and business on the global stage. A Neoliberal, market economy, ideology has been conceived as resulting in increased freedoms for schools so they can compete in a market and has meant that schools are encouraged to have a curriculum underpinned by the National Curriculum, developed to reflect educational research and local contextual needs. This contrasts however with government need to have ideological control over the emphasis of school policy and accurate measures with which to hold schools accountable. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis CDA methodology proposed by Fairclough (1989) and Appraisal Theory developed by Martin and White (2005) to scrutinise the National Curriculum and Education Inspection frameworks alongside two speeches espousing government ideology through curriculum, this study reveals that school freedom to create policy is powerfully impacted by neoliberalism, inevitably steering a course between reflecting its unique values and aims for the curriculum and complying with the demands made upon it in order to achieve a good OFSTED rating – arguably the most influential of factors in the educational market-place.

Professional Provocation

Curriculum policy defines the core function of every school. Its construction process is as important as its final wording, involving interpretation of national directives and personalisation to school context – the dichotomy of political rhetoric and school autonomy. ‘Policy is about both the identification of political objectives, and the power to transform values into practice through organisational principles and operational practices’ (Bell & Stevenson, 2006, p. 18), it is a powerful imperative for both government and individual schools and a subject worthy of analysis.

As the framework for curriculum policy, a revised National Curriculum in England for Key stages 1 and 2 took effect from September 2014, under the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government – the culmination of Michael Gove’s role as education secretary. Prior to this was growing concern in the education department that the previous curriculum review (arising from the Rose review, 2007) enabled freedoms for schools to be ‘less prescriptive about knowledge content’ and more involved in ‘promoting understanding and skills’ (James, 2018), leading to what Gove called ‘play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture’ and a culture of ‘denying children access to the best that has been thought and written, because Nemo and the Mister Men are more relevant’ (Gove, 2013). The new Framework of the National Curriculum included instead the ‘outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills’ (Department for Education, [DFE] 2013, p. 6).

To reduce curriculum to the bare essentials of what to teach is however to oversimplify its goals and the goals of policy reform in this area. Priestly and Biesta (2013) provide the following model of commonalities in national curricula developments.

These commonalities were spoken of at length in speeches by Gove at the time, ensuring that curriculum policy review at school level encompassed them, almost as quality assurance indicators. Hence, the 2014 National Curriculum and rhetoric around it illustrated the fact that ‘policymakers are increasingly focused on curriculum as an influence on the influential – the teachers’ (Priestly & Biesta, 2013, p. 142).

In his 2011 speech on the moral purpose of education, Gove set out his agenda for sharing best practice. He stated, ‘we have created the opportunity on a much larger scale for great leaders to expand their vision across a group of schools’ (Gove, 2011). This played out in the rise of Amanda Spielman from a trustee at Ark Schools, through her position as chair of OFQUAL and in 2017 as OFSTED chief inspector. Spielman’s career prior to education was in finance, nimbly illustrating governmental desire for an ‘increasingly close-knit relationship between the processes of education and the requirements of the economy’ (Ball, 2013, p. 3) and its want to provide ‘world-class education’ and ‘educational excellence everywhere’ (DfE, 2016 pp. 3 & 7).

The introduction of the National Curriculum alongside freedoms given to schools in its implementation served to place it as a Unique Selling Point of each school – a direct link to the market forces brought into education by Neoliberalism, where ‘competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity’ (Metcalf, 2017). Alongside accountability and the inspection regime, schools’ own curriculum policies are a clear determining factor in parental choice – we can legitimately ask, ‘Whose curriculum is the best?’ or ‘Whose is the most ambitious?’, these questions being answered by an OFSTED judgment.

Spielman’s tenure focused initially on review of the Education Inspection Framework (EIF), resulting in a Quality of Education judgement. In her speech to the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Spielman states, ‘We will look at how schools are interpreting the national curriculum or using their academy freedoms to build new curricula of their own and what this means for children’s school experience. We will look at what makes a really good curriculum’ (Spielman, 2017). The research review published as part of the formation of the new EIF set the tone for further ‘influence on the influential’ by signalling specific research and best practice, inevitably impacting upon school curriculum policy.

The rhetoric that runs alongside curriculum policy makes the high stakes for schools in creating their curriculum policy clear. In this discourse analysis I will focus on patterns of language within the discourse around the primary National Curriculum in England and their impact on the content and focus of the curriculum in one primary academy. The key documents will be the National Curriculum in England (2014) and the EIF (2019) alongside contemporary discourse – speeches made by Gove in 2013 and Spielman in 2019.

I will answer the questions:

• How is ideology conveyed by political speeches surrounding the national curriculum framework and the education inspection framework?

• How does ideology impact upon academy freedoms relating to curriculum policy?

Literature Review

This critical discourse analysis (CDA) is underpinned by the work of Bahktin and Viloshinov, with philosophies largely linked to the Marxist theory of ideology that connects power relationships to social, political and economic theory. That these elements link so closely with policy is unsurprising. ‘Policy is political. It is about power to determine what is done’ (Ball, 2013, p. 9) and is therefore underpinned by the communication of ideology. Ideology is most effective when its workings are least ‘visible’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 85) therefore CDA will enable this ideology to become visible. The ideology of the state and individuals, their ‘models of how the world is ‘supposed to be’ (Jones, 2012, p.11) and their use of the powers they either perceive to have or indeed do have, are fundamental in the writing of education policy.

Curriculum policy is the focus of this study, a policy which is ‘about progress…about moving from the inadequacies of the present and some future state of perfection where everything works well and works, as it should.’ (Ball, 2013, p. 9); it is policy driven by government and subsequently developed and formed within individual schools. This illustrates Ball’s assertion that ‘policy making is an ever-evolving pattern of relationships’ (Ball, 2013, p. 4) as schools seek to use their freedoms to improve the quality of education they provide. Curriculum policy is however impacted by the discourse within and around the National Curriculum and OFSTED judgments: they are ordered and structured to reflect or reinforce relationships of power and work ideologically as the ‘prime means of manufacturing consent’ (Fairclough, 1989, pp. 31, 65 and 4). These relationships include asymmetrical power relationships between government and teachers as well as relationships within the school as an organisation – once again, ‘influence on the influential’ (Priestly & Biesta, 2013, p. 142).

Power relationships inevitably impact on policy, especially in this instance where ‘social conditions for manipulative control’ (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 362) exist, reinforced by interaction through text and talk about the curriculum. The genres here – frameworks and speeches – are dominated by government which can result in dominance through social power (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 360). Bureaucratic texts like the National Curriculum may include manipulation where the ‘recipients being in a passive role…are unable to… see the full consequences of the beliefs or actions advocated by the manipulator’ (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 361). Additionally, the explicit control of access to discourse, who speaks, accessibility of the language used and ‘entry conditions’ to speak in that forum (Fairclough, 1989, pp. 58-68), enable the ‘systematic matching of means to the ends’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 212). Finally, the government’s ideological power ‘to project one’s practices as universal and ‘common sense’ …is exercised in discourse’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 33), possibly creating hegemony which ‘depends upon power relations existing in society’ (Laclau, 1983, p. 116) Analysis needs to reveal how the backgrounded and foregrounded information conveyed in discourse impacts upon policy decisions made in schools.

The context of language, through text and talk, is also fundamental to its meaning – as Voloshinov’s work on language illustrates, ‘meanings emerge in society and society is not a homogenous mass but is itself divided by such factors as social class’ (Dentith, 1996, p. 24). So, the meaning taken from political speeches will depend upon the time and place, and importantly the speaker and audience, their viewpoints and experiences. Voloshinov also recognises that, ‘language and linguistic interaction are the very means by which society… is realised.’ (Dentith, 1996, p. 27), so the content of the political speech itself will convey the cognition and response required for it to have impact upon actions, thus manifesting the speaker’s wants. The socialist philosopher, Habermas found that this inculcation leads to, ‘the system [taking] over the process of ideology planning’ (Escobar, 1985, p. 382). The choice of language used to manipulate or persuade must then be analysed. Bakhtin’s centripetal discourse, authoritative and fixed can be compared and contrasted with centrifugal discourse, the interpretation and use of language by individuals and groups within society (Wetherell, Taylor & Yates, 2001, p. 65). For example, in terms of curriculum ‘the best that has been thought and written’ (Gove, 2013) is subject to interpretation depending upon context.

Finally, the intertextuality of the frameworks and speeches should be considered – ‘the idea that any text is explicitly or implicitly ‘in dialogue with’ other texts’ (Kristeva (1986), quoted by Faircough in Yates, Taylor and Wetherell, 2001, p. 233); the chronology of speeches, publication of frameworks and formation of school policy being significant. Foucault viewed this as studying discourse ‘archaeologically, i.e. by identifying the different elements of which they are composed and the system of relations by which these elements form wholes’ (Escobar, 1985, p. 379). This should be placed alongside heteroglossia – Bakhtin’s ‘belief that the individual and the society come together in discourse’ (Chatterjee- Padmanabhan, 2014, p. A102); each writer or speaker using and interpreting language, impacting each other. To view the corpus as a whole in this way after dissecting the dialogue in its component parts will give, in the final analysis, a holistic understanding of how genres and actors dictated how the school employed its freedoms to develop curriculum policy.

Corpus

The corpus consists of: the speech given in 2013 by then education secretary, Michael Gove to teachers at Brighton College (Gove, 2011); the ‘Aims’ and ‘purpose of study’ for each subject in the primary National Curriculum for England (DfE, 2014); the speech given in 2019 by the chair of OFSTED, Amanda Spelman at the Wonder Years Knowledge Curriculum Conference (Spielman, 2019); the Quality of Education section of the Education Inspection framework (OFSTED, 2019, pp. 9 & 10).

To fully understand the impact of the corpus on how Albert Academy used its freedoms to form curriculum policy, the aims and subject statements of its curriculum policy, reviewed in January 2020, were analysed in relation to each of the speeches and frameworks. The academy is anonymised for ethical purposes.

Methodology

To answer the question of this study, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used as the research approach. CDA is text and speech analysis which aims to contribute to ‘our understanding of power relations and ideological process in discourse’ (Fairclough, 1989, p. 109), involving a process of three stages, ‘description of the text, interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction, and explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context’. (Fairclough, 1989, p. 109). This framework was used to understand the impact of discourse on policy in this instance, the aim being to uncover the ‘ideas, absences and taken-for-granted assumptions in texts’ to ‘allow us to reveal the kinds of power interests buried in these texts.’ (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 5).

The theoretical framework for analysing language and ideology was informed by the work of Bakhtin through the Appraisal Theory taxonomy of Martin and White (2005) shown in Figure 2, enabling analysis of language through each text. I interrogated the taxonomy through ‘The Language of Evaluation’ (Martin & White’s, 2005), forming a mind map of each area: engagement, attitude and graduation, to aid language analysis in the genres studied. The data analysis software, Nvivo was used to store data when coding the speeches, using Martin and White’s appraisal resources, as it enabled analysis and comparison between these lengthy, nuanced texts.

Texts and speeches were analysed chronologically to ensure that intertextuality could be assessed in a logical way. This acknowledges the ‘notion that a text contains traces of prior texts and inescapably carries potential future texts within it’ (Chaterjee- Padmanabhan, 2014, p. A-101) and is fundamental to the ‘story’ of the creation of the policy to be studied in the final analysis.

There is a risk when focusing on each genre separately that the relationships between text and interactions are not explored. To avoid this, and to pursue ‘plurality and the articulation of multiple perspectives’ (Chaterjee-Padmanabhan, 2014, p. A-101), discussion and findings took place concurrently. Speeches and frameworks were described using Appraisal Theory, the social context of discourse was interpreted taking into account backgrounded and foregrounded information, and finally their impact on school policy was explained.

The other risks in this study involve the self-consciousness of the researcher and the possible encroachment of ethnographics on the process, due to the fact that the policy to be analysed was largely written by me. My own position, what Fairclough (1989) calls my ‘members’ resources (MR)’ may make unbiased interpretation difficult. Given that manipulation is most beneficial when subjects do not know they are being manipulated, it may prove impossible for this to be completely negated. The risk of the study verging on ethnographic CDA may be mitigated by the facts that ‘ethnographers are usually more concerned with what the discourse is being used to do’ (Hammerlsey, 2005, p. 8), which aligns with the purpose of the study and the fact that the methodology is thoroughly underpinned by a clear focus on CDA.

Findings and discussion

Speech – Michael Gove, 9th May 2013, to teachers at Brighton College

This speech, by Gove, Secretary of State for Education was made to teachers at Brighton College, an independent school named as ‘England’s School of the Decade’ by The Times (Leonard, 2019). It came to be known as ‘the Mr Men speech’ (Skidmore, 2013), due to a carefully selected example of dumbing down of the curriculum, in which Mr Men characters were used in teaching history. It closely followed the conclusion of the draft curriculum and public consultation period between February and April 2013 (DfE, 2013) preceding the final publication of the National Curriculum by 4 months. The immediate audience was reflected in books, authors and quotes chosen (Dr Johnson and George Elliot) and references to classical education (‘Ciceronian rhetorical tricks’); the wider audience of parents – ‘We all harbour high hopes for our own children’ and teachers who ‘believe in the nobility of their vocation’ was acknowledged.

The speech is heteroglossic, referring frequently to other voices, to show endorsement of the new curriculum and concurrence with Gove: ‘reform-minded teachers want change’, or to deny and distance Gove from the thoughts of others: ‘the unions – and their allies’. Alternatives are used as non-examples: ‘one in seven children still can’t read and write properly’, stressing the superiority of the stance of the new curriculum and of Coalition policy. The chart in Figure 3 shows the percentages of each coded element of the speech, which makes this endorsement and concurrence, distancing and denial clear.

Compliance and agreement are portrayed with endorsements of the new curriculum from the ‘majority of teachers’ and parents – ‘this is what parents want’, emphasised by use of exemplar schools, already aligned to the curriculum (an independent school, one from Ark Multi-Academy Trust and two high-performing London primary schools from Richmond and Notting Hill). Examples of curriculum content align to that expected in private schools, indicating Gove’s view of private sector superiority. Endorsement also comes from 15 historians, all but one of whom attended Oxford or Cambridge University, all but one of whom are men, who commend the curriculum – Gove adds this to refute negative assertions about the curriculum made by university academics in a letter to The Independent and The Daily Telegraph (Chitty, 2014). Gove’s choice to pitch two polarised opinions against each other reflects feedback from the public consultation: notably relevant was concern from respondents, including Michael Rosen, about the demand and prescriptiveness of the English grammar and punctuation curriculum (DfE, 2013) and the response from the National Union of Teachers, arguing for a more cross-curricular inclusive curriculum (NUT, 2013). The unions, Guardian Education and Rosen, all aligned to Labour policies, are named ‘the usual suspects’ and portrayed as (predictably) supporting ‘play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture’. So, while numerous voices are acknowledged in the speech, there is a lack of diversity in those that align and in those that contest: the conservative/liberal elite (‘correct’) who are in power are pitched against the labour proletariat (‘incorrect’) who are not.

Gove’s speech makes government intent clear, indicating expectations as non-negotiable. Counter-arguments are discredited, dissenting voices silenced and allegiances made to exemplify what is now required of schools. The clear indication that previous expectations of the curriculum were too low, with blame for this resting with existing government policy, low exam standards and play-based teaching methods demonstrate ways in which schools need to change their curriculum and pedagogy, setting the scene for the National Curriculum document to follow. The speech had lasting impact, presenting extremes of education as though they were central, castigating anything that had gone before as too progressive and equally not progressive enough. The clear message was that while schools were expected to use their freedoms there was an expectation of how this would manifest.

The National Curriculum for England – Aims and purpose of study for each subject

The ‘aims’ section of the National Curriculum conveys government ideology and clearly sets out the expectations of schools in its interpretation. It is direct in that it does not use coordination or subordination. Verbs used are active and durative: ‘introduces’, ‘provides’, ‘engender’, ‘promotes’, indicating decisive action that will have longevity and adjectives are positive: ‘essential’, ‘educated’, ‘exciting’ and ‘stimulating’. Although it refers to the wider world in lexical labels such as, ‘educated citizens’ and ‘the best that has been thought and said’, it is monoglossic in that these are implicitly subjective statements with no explanation of what it is to be an ‘educated citizen’ or what ‘the best’ is, simply taken-for-granted understandings that are already agreed. There are allusions to the high expectations of schools in phrases such as, ‘just one element’ and ‘There is time and space….to range beyond the…specifications.’ which put force behind the likelihood that more will be done than is about to be outlined.

The purpose of study statements convey the underpinning rationale behind each separate subject in the framework. They include many proclamations: ‘opportunities to compete in sport…build character’, but without any qualification, rendering them monoglossic in that they assume an agreement. They include positive adjectives: ‘intriguing’, ‘rigorous’, ‘inspiring’, and repetition of phrases to emphasise intent: ‘high-quality’ and ‘as pupils progress’. Statements begin with a scene-setting description of what each subject is: ‘an inspiring, rigorous and practical subject’ or does: ‘embodies one of the highest forms of creativity’. Use of the present tense assumes compliance: ‘pupils are equipped to use’, and use of modality assumes obligation: ‘they should be able to think critically’. Ideology is conveyed through numerous explicit references to employment and the place of the nation in the world alongside those of the characteristics that are preferred in citizens: be ‘financially literate’ and ‘physically confident’; have ‘curiosity’ and ‘fascination’.

The English subject statement uses denial to add weight to its necessity: ‘pupils… who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised’. This, added to the use of modal verbs throughout, shows the relationship between the framework and the reader, as one where the reader needs to be both convinced either of the merits for pupils of compliance and the impact on schools of non-compliance. This statement could also refer to the relationship between this framework and its predecessors and may be added to counter the opposing voices to the English curriculum which were addressed in the Gove’s Brighton College speech. This is the only acknowledgment of other voices or texts in the document.

Speech – Amanda Spielman, 26th January 2019, to ‘The Wonder Years’ Knowledge Curriculum Conference

Spielman’s speech was made at the Wonder Years Curriculum Conference, organised by Parents and Teachers for Excellence (PTE), an organisation consisting many of the key authors and educationalists at the time and parents and governors of schools: delegates would have probably included people in these roles and members of institutions such as Policy Exchange and ResearchEd. The organisation states that ‘children should have ‘a curriculum jam-packed full of the very best that has been thought, said and done’, (Parents and Teachers for Excellence, 2020), concurring with the aims of the National Curriculum. It took place during the consultation period for the new EIF and begins with a request to delegates to be involved in this – Spielman asserting a stance that is ‘genuine’ and acknowledges the ‘wisdom’ of the audience.

In the opening two paragraphs, every subject in the primary curriculum is mentioned aligning with PTE and OFTSED’s stance on a broad curriculum and with the National Curriculum framework itself, contrasting with Gove’s speech which focused mainly on English and History in a curriculum criticised at the time as ‘extremely narrow’ (The Independent, 2013). The ideology behind curriculum inspection is made clear by references to ‘social justice’ and reducing ‘economic and social inequality’ brought about by curriculum narrowing.

While Gove’s speech relied heavily on endorsements of the curriculum, distancing it from dissenting voices, Spielman’s foregrounds pronouncements about the aims of the new EIF: ‘for me, the new framework really is about making sure that children’s time in education are their wonder years’, backed up with attributions of the knowledge used in its review: ‘we have used the definition from cognitive psychology’. Denial is used to clarify the aims: ‘no school will be criticised for’ and ‘this draft framework is absolutely not about trying to put a straightjacket on innovation in schools’ curriculum’, seeking to reassure the audience, contrasting with Gove’s speech where denial is used to discredit those with opposing views. Figure 4 shows the main strategies used in Spielman’s speech.

Contentious issues are accompanied by acknowledgement and reassurance: ‘I know this can be a contested phrase.’ Criticism while present is qualified: ‘I understand why it happens.’ Assertions are softened with ‘I believe’, and ‘I am fairly sure’ showing that other voices are entertained. Modality is used to show what schools are compelled to do, occasionally backed up with emotive language indicating feelings associated with non-compliance: ‘it really pains me’ and ‘most would be shocked’. Spielman takes little for granted in the speech, using words and phrases such as ‘hope’ and ‘hopefully’, softening ideological messages in acknowledgement of the asymmetric power relationships at play.

The Education Inspection Framework, section 26, Quality of Education (pp.9 and 10) 14th May 2019

The EIF states how schools will be judged in an OFSTED inspection. The statements around quality of education are separated into sections describing its intent (what is planned), implementation (how it is provided) and impact (what it achieves). It is written in the present tense, assuming compliance. The key ideological aspects are shared in the intent and impact sections, largely relating to equity, access to ‘cultural capital’ and readiness for ‘future learning and employment’ with all learners achieving well and studying the ‘full curriculum ‘specialising’ only when necessary’, this last statement referring to previous narrowing in the curriculum resulting from accountability measures focused around certain subjects.

The implementation section speaks of pedagogy related to ‘knowledge’, ‘understanding’ and ‘concepts’ along with ‘ambitious intentions for…a coherently planned curriculum’. Workload is referred to in relation to feedback, assessment and resourcing – a reflection of the government’s ‘Workload Challenge’ which stated that ‘too many teachers are spending too much of their time on overly detailed, duplicating or bureaucratic work which can take them away from what matters most – improving teaching and learning’ (DfE, 2015, p. 3).

As a framework it is heteroglossic reflecting the workload challenge, social and cognitive science. Its reference to ‘the provider’s curriculum’ reflects school freedoms to tailor it to their specific context, also indicated in the National Curriculum statements and Gove’s speech. This level of interaction seeks to encourage contextualisation and reward schools that provide a ‘genuinely good curriculum, implemented well across a school’ (Spielman, 2019).

Albert Academy Curriculum Policy

The documents and speeches analysed impact on the school policy studied to varying degrees. The National Curriculum framework of 2014 and its intentions as espoused by Gove in his speech at the time, impacted on the pedagogy, with the central inclusion of knowledge and skills to every subject and the curriculum values of aspiration, progress and learning attitude. The ambition required is referred to frequently in Albert Academy policy; ‘just one element in the education of every child’ becomes ‘It more than fulfils the requirements…being ambitious for all pupils’ and when personalised to the school context; ‘The best that has been thought and said’ becomes ‘children should explore the ‘big ideas’ or concepts involved in the story of our world’. Each subject statement reflects this ambition too, including operational as well as ideological statements, illustrating how these subjects will be taught as well as to what end.

Albert Academy curriculum policy most closely resembles the EIF in its wording – the school’s interpretation of intent, implementation and impact are explained in detail. There are direct links from the EIF’s ‘knowledge and cultural capital to succeed in life’ and the policy’s ‘vital key to improving the quality of life…now and in the future’. The pedagogy referred to in the EIF is also repeatedly referenced in policy: coherently planned curriculum; integrating new knowledge into larger concepts; cumulative knowledge and skills; a curriculum made meaningful, manageable and motivating for pupils and teachers – in fact the policy is largely underpinned by the ‘implementation’ section of the EIF. Spielman’s speech and the renewed EIF signalled permission for schools to develop curricula that were broader and more relevant. The policy, the result of a process of curriculum review, resulted in the core of the National Curriculum being surrounded by contextualisation enabled by academy freedoms. While knowledge, skills and understanding are stated frequently, underpinning concepts are also described – power, democracy, systems, change, identity and diversity with contextualised aims to ‘raise educational achievement and attainment equitably’ enabling pupils to ‘make meaning, debate and innovate’ while developing ‘communication, resilience and independence’, giving energy to life, learning and the environment through all curriculum subjects. These are a departure from framework documents but still directly linked to EIF criteria.

Conclusions

Through CDA, I have analysed the key speeches and frameworks influencing curriculum policy in schools and answered the following questions:

How is ideology conveyed by political speeches surrounding the national curriculum framework and the education inspection framework?

How does ideology impact upon academy freedoms relating to curriculum policy?

Ideology inevitably runs through the corpus of this study – ‘curriculum is a canvas on which political parties paint their aspirations for society’ (Bangs, Galton, Mcbeath & Macbeath, 2010, p. 84). Analysis shows government’s agenda to give schools freedom to contextualise curriculum policy while securing rigour. Inherent to this is the neoliberal ideology surrounding education, made clear by referencing the superiority of the private sector, the demands of the economy and the need for schools to be marketised. Gove’s speech employed power explicitly to assert this ideology – manipulation is absent as the agenda is made clear (Lukes, 1974, pp. 16-19) however we hear force, by choice being stripped away; influence, by reminders of accountability; authority, as schools are made to see the reasonableness of the demands. Spielman also asserts authority and influence, demonstrating that ‘while there has been an apparent acknowledgement of the need for diversity in the curriculum…this does not allow [schools] to escape the demands of the machinery of accountability’ and using social science, ‘as a weapon to be used in ideological battles’ (Brown & Wisby, 2020, pp. 186 & 179). The tools of power used by Spielman, encourage hegemony, resulting in shared values around curriculum, demonstrating that ‘the most effective and insidious use of power is to prevent such conflict from arising in the first place’ (Lukes, 1974, p. 23). Gove anticipates rebellion but Spielman gives little to rebel against.

The response in school policy is to mirror the demands of the policy frameworks in language and ambition while using the local context to add detail – the impact of every document in the corpus is evident. ‘Freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties.’ (Camus & O’Brien, 1995, p. 96) – any amount of freedom would inevitably operate within curriculum models such as that of Priestly and Biesta (2013, p. 142) and although contextualised, these central aims ensure that curriculum will always conform to certain criteria. School freedoms are a defining factor in enabling market forces to improve education and differentiate between schools however there is a dichotomy between the existence of these freedoms and the government’s need to both hail successes as part of its own legacy and to quality assure its achievements. ‘Rhetorical claims are easy to make but the enactment of policy is complex and difficult especially when it faces in different directions at one and the same time.’ (Ball, 2013, p. 218). Contemporary ideology has led to Albert Academy seeking a balance between innovation and conforming to government’s curricula aims, the criteria that it will ultimately be judged against and the demands of the market-place in which it finds itself.

Albert Academy policy acknowledges the curriculum as a vehicle through which values and aims are ‘communicated and lived’, its values reflecting the centripetal discourse of the DfE and the centrifugal discourse of the school community. This reflects the process of policy-writing, and the collective voice of the school as its freedom is enacted. ‘The ability of schools to improve is fostered, not inhibited, by the confidence to innovate.’ (Bangs, MacBeath & Galton, 2010, p. 84); in this instance, the influence of OFSTED and the renewed EIF, as conveyed by Spielman, led to the academy using its freedoms to be more innovative in developing its policy but for this to be taken further would ‘require a change in political culture in which the grand gestures and concern about legacies…. would have to be replaced by the humble work of developing educational policies that work for all.’ (Brown & Wisby, 2020, p 194).

Additional to the corpus studied here, extensive discourse surrounding other educational issues will have impacted curriculum policy over the last 7 years; analysis of wider educational discourse would give deeper understanding of these factors and additional members’ resources influencing curriculum policy. Policy reforms education incrementally and many agendas impact on school freedoms – plotting the influence of funding, accountability, teacher recruitment and retention, workload and wellbeing, among others would convey the entirety of the influencing factors on curriculum policy, further developing and validating the study – they are ‘part of a causal nexus of physical and social events which shapes how we think and act, and what we are able to accomplish’ (Hammersley, 2003, p. 773), all influencing Albert Academy’s decisions on how they enact their freedoms for the betterment of education.

References

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