Introduction

The explanation for the leadership of schools game begins in the conceptualisation of the state and its relationship with civil society as a form of institutionalised governance. The UK state has intervened in and adapted to the interplay between hierarchy, markets and networks in public and education policy in England. So, for the New Labour leadership of schools game to play and develop within policymaking, the state had to exercise forms of control through the operation of public institutions. This control was through the institution itself as the custodian and symbol of electoral legitimacy as the mandate to govern, and through forms of governance regarding how outsiders as experts were invited into policymaking and contracted to deliver on policy through advice, design, activity and promotion. In this chapter, I intend to describe institutionalised governance regarding the role of public institutions and how outsiders were brought into the design and delivery process, and I will use the origins and formation of the National College as an illustrative case.

Critical policy scholarship

Ranson (1995) argues that policy needs to be historically located through an analysis of the people and practices involved, together with theorising that interplays rather than separates out agency and structure. So understanding the emergence and development of the leadership of schools as a policy game needs to be linked to the relationship between the state, public institutions that produce public policy and civil society as manifest in forms of governance. A useful starting point is Newman's (2001, p 33) framework, outlined in Table 4.1, ‘to suggest different models of governance, each with its characteristic form of power and authority, pattern of relationships and assumptions about change’.

Newman (2001) recognises that governments tend to operate in all four models, and this is the case with New Labour through ‘a mix of approaches – delegation and central control, long-term capacity building and short-term targets – producing tensions in the process of institutional change’ (p 37, original emphasis). The leadership of schools has: first, hierarchical elements, particularly through the state control of knowledge production, professional identity and practice; second, rational goal assumptions where managerial power to deal with problems (eg performance targets) was deemed necessary to deliver output data; third, open systems through which contractually controlled networks were used to deliver leadership products and training;