Scalar Practices in the Work of Policy: A study of the academies policy in England's schooling system.

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1 Scalar Practices in the Work of Policy: A study of the academies policy in England's schooling system. Natalie Papanastasiou, PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh Contact: N.Papanastasiou@sms.ed.ac.uk Paper prepared for the 2014 ECPR General Conference, University of Glasgow, 3-6 September Abstract This paper combines interpretivist approaches to policy with human geographers critical approaches to scale. A key argument made by post-structuralist human geographers is that scale does not have an ontological existence but is instead an epistemological concept through which actors make sense of their social worlds. It is argued that this distinction has tended to be overlooked in the way social scientists use categories of scale to explain things with rather than examining how actors construct and use scalar categories in their work. This paper suggests that critical studies of policy can be enriched by human geographers interest in scalar practices, which involve scale being deployed as a way of interpreting and strategically constructing meanings of policy. These issues are discussed through drawing on empirical insights from a study which explores the scalar practices of policy actors involved in implementing the academies policy in England s schooling system. Key words: scale, interpretive policy analysis, education policy Introduction: Policy and a Critical Approach to Scale This paper begins with the following observation: that attempts to understand policy are inextricably linked to an inquiry about scale. The concept of scale which is used here refers to the perceived vertical ordering of the social world where this hierarchy or scaffolding is given labels such as the local, national and global. Scale has been embedded in some of the oldest questions that have been raised in the study of policy. One of these questions relates to how and why there is a gap between the goals or visions of policy and its outcomes (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973; Hargrove 1975). Studies of implementation most notably explored this question between the 1970s until the late 1990s and they did so by relying on ideas of scale. Identifying a disconnect between national policy and its local implementation, focusing on how policy is implemented in a top-down manner, and the influence of bottom-up influences on policy are examples of how implementation studies explored policy through the structures of scale. 1 These studies both assumed the existence of scales and used scalar categories to structure analysis. However, this preoccupation with scale was unquestioned and as a result a critical engagement with the notion of scale remained absent. Although traditional implementation studies no longer dominate political science and public administration, their core preoccupation with scale and policy remains a key, taken-for-granted feature of policy studies. One of the most notable critiques of classic implementation studies has stemmed from interpretive approaches to policy. The latter approaches have argued that understanding policy and its implementation requires a different analytical focus which instead explores how a policy means (Yanow 1996). Interpretive policy analysis (IPA) focuses on how 1 A similar argument could be made about the multi-level governance literature, which understands the social world being governed according to vertically ordered layers or levels. 1

2 policy is interpreted by actors and how these interpretations co-construct meanings and representations of policy. A key tenet of approaching policy interpretively is to focus on the actions and representations practiced by policy actors when they are confronted with the task of implementing or responding to policy. Interpretive approaches continue to make reference to ideas of scale in their study of policy, for example by arguing about local knowledge, by categorising actors according to the scale they occupy, or by referring to different levels of policymaking. While IPA explores representations and meanings in the study of policy a critical engagement with the representations related to the concept of scale has been largely absent. The human geography literature on scale provides a valuable resource for understanding how one might begin approach the concept of scale in a more critical manner. Approaches which have critically engaged with the concept of scale in human geography have been divided into two categories: political-economic and post-structuralist approaches. Politicaleconomic geographers were the first to critically engage with the concept of scale during the 1980s and 1990s. Four main arguments can be distilled from the work of political-economic approaches to scale (MacKinnon 2010). Firstly, scales are socially constructed as opposed to preexisting, stable structures in the world. Secondly, scales are understood relationally and are nested within each other. Thirdly, there is a focus on the vertical, hierarchical structure of scales. Finally, actors engage in politics of scale which involves scales being strategically used for political purposes. An example of the latter is Smith s (1993) concept of scale jumping which describes how actors are able to challenge the status quo by associating their activities with a different scale. The political-economic approaches to scale have been subject to a range of criticisms from geographers both within and outside the political-economic field. Since the 2000s, poststructuralists have used these criticisms as the basis for proposing an alternative approach to scale. A key criticism has been that political-economic geographers reify scale through treating scales as the core spatial units through which the social world hangs together (Jonas 1994). For example, the concept of scale jumping separates scales from social practices, whereby social actors can relocate themselves between different (albeit socially constructed) spatial levels this reveals how scales are understood as discrete and hierarchical orderings of space (Herod and Wright 2002). Adam Moore (2008) effectively articulates the post-structuralist critique of political-economic approaches by arguing that scale is not distinguished as a category of practice from a category of analysis. The former are categories of everyday experience, developed and deployed by ordinary social actors and the latter are experience-distant categories used by social scientists (Brubaker and Cooper 2000, p.4). Moore (2008, p.212) argues, the tendency to partition the social world into hierarchically ordered spatial containers is what we want to explain not explain things with and that political-economic approaches have lost sight of this distinction. Katherine Jones (1998) work has also contributed to the post-structuralist arguments about scale. In her observations of social movements she argues that when, for example, a group shows that a local struggle may also be understood as a global struggle this indicates how actors are representing their practices according to constructions of scale. Thus, Jones argues that the construction of scale proceeds through representational practices and that scale can be conceptualised as being situated relationally within a community of producers and readers who give the practice of scale meaning (Jones 1998, p.26). In proposing scale to be a representational practice, Jones then questions what the implications of this are for its ontological status. Her response to this question is that scale is an epistemological rather than an ontological concept; scale does not exist but is, crucially, a key category a category of practice which actors use to interpret and strategically construct their social worlds. 2

3 Moore has suggested a list of research avenues which he would encourage post-structuralist analysts of scale to pursue. I have distilled three of these which are of most relevance to the paper s focus on the study of policy. The first of these returns to Jones (1998) argument regarding scale as epistemology. Moore calls for more research to explore the implications of this by focusing on the ways in which scalar narratives, classifications and cognitive schemas (ibid, p.214) act as both enablers and constraints to particular ways of seeing, thinking and acting. The second area of importance highlighted by Moore is for researchers to ask questions related to the processes of categorising and classifying scale the way scalar categories are constructed, reproduced or dissolved are all key processes which need to be explored in greater depth. An example of this kind of study has been conducted by Kaiser and Nikiforova (2008) who explore the performativity of scale ; their work highlights how a sense of place and identity is articulated through particular practices of constructing scales such as the nation. Thirdly, Moore argues that scalar projects and practices deserve greater attention from researchers. These scalar practices refer to the way actors use scale categories not just to interpret spatial politics, but to frame and define, and thereby constitute and organise, social life (Moore 2008, p.218). A key distinction here is to interrogate the scalar nature of practices rather than practices taking place at different scales the latter kind of analysis will involve reifying scale as opposed to approaching it as a category of practice (Mansfield 2005). All three of these research avenues suggested by Moore are interrelated and hold great potential to overcome the limitations of political-economic approaches to scale by developing the idea of scalar practices through empirical inquiry. Returning to a focus on policy, these arguments serve to underline how scale has remained uncritically examined in studies of policy. In particular, human geographers expose how scale has been implied to have an ontological existence by being used as an analytical category. In light of this, the following puzzle emerges: what kinds of interpretive understandings of policy can be developed when scale is critically approached as a category of practice? What kinds of scalar practices do actors deploy during their policy work? England s Academy Schools Policy This paper uses the policy area of education through which to explore this puzzle. Education can be considered an arena where representational struggles over scale are brought sharply into focus. The rise of mass education systems in 19 th century Europe coincided with the establishment of long-standing nation states (Green 1990) which meant the scalar boundaries of education were represented as being national in nature. In recent years education has been defined in relation to the European and global scales. Authors such as Nóvoa and Lawn (2002) have described how education has been increasingly mobilised as a means through which to construct the European project (also see Grek 2009). Parallel to this, the roles of global transnational organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Bank have contributed to education being defined according to scalar boundaries which are of a global nature (Rizvi and Lingard 2010; Robertson 2005). Policymakers also have a long-standing preoccupation with classifying education in relation to scalar categories within the perceived boundaries of the state. Issues of scale have been the source of many policy debates and reforms regarding the provision of local schooling. In the case of England s schooling system, local provision has been related to the role of local authorities but has also 3

4 increasingly been defined according to individual schools (Sharp 2002). Policy debates about how to distribute responsibilities of school education between local authorities and individual schools have consistently mobilised concepts of scale, for example by discussing the local authority as the middle tier or schools as needing to serve their local community. 2 A policy which exposes how scalar preoccupations are embedded in education policy is England s academies policy. The official narrative of academies claims that when a school becomes an academy it gains more individual autonomy, becomes free from local authority control, and is directly accountable to the state. Thus, the academies policy is underpinned by three scalar representations: individual schools, local authorities, and the state. The distinctly scalar nature of the policy s claims therefore makes academies a particularly fitting focus for empirically investigating the research puzzle. Academies have been one of the most controversial and widely-debated education policies in England for over a decade. The policy became the focal point of the New Labour government s education vision after it was launched in 2000 and was focused on addressing educational failure. Academies have continued to be instrumental to the post-2010 Coalition government s education reforms; the Coalition extended the policy to include all schools, including high-performing schools. The controversy and debate that has surrounded academies has hinged on the way the policy has stirred up fundamental questions about the governance of education. Academies make distinct claims which relate to questions that include what role the state should play in education, to whom schools should be accountable, whether schools should place their individual interests above all else, about what responsibilities are held by local authorities, and what is meant by the concept of local and state education. The scalar practices of actors implementing the academies policy were explored through an empirical study which focused on two local authority case studies. Case studies were selected according to Stake s (1994) criteria of instrumental case studies. An instrumental case study is designed to provide insight into an issue or refinement of theory (ibid, p.237); the case itself is not necessarily of primary interest and it instead functions as a means through which to develop understandings of the processes or phenomena of interest. The first case is a metropolitan authority located in the North West of England hereafter referred to as Northwestern which has one of the highest proportions of sponsored academies. The second case is a shire county in the East of England hereafter referred to as Eastshire and has one of the highest proportions of converter academies. I focused specifically on the proportions of academies in the secondary school sector. Within each local authority I focused on four academy (school) cases. A total of 30 interviews were held across the two case studies between September 2012 and April In Northwestern the interviewees were local authority officers, business sponsors and academy principals; in Eastshire interviews were conducted with local authority officers, academy principals and academy chairs of governors. The chosen interviewees were considered to be key actors carrying out policy work in the process of implementing academies. Local authority officers were considered key interview participants because their role is to map out detailed strategies as a way of actualising the general vision of councillors. Unlike councillors, local authority officers are non-elected and not affiliated to political parties. In Northwestern, 2 Importantly, these struggles to define education according to the idea of a vertical hierarchy of scales expose the complex nature of the scale concept. Scalar categories are used in policy to simultaneously relate to levels of administration (such as local authorities), geographical area (such as the school catchment area) as well as relating to labels such as the local and national. The way these multiple meanings of scale are constructed and intersect in the context of policy is what this paper argues needs to be understood and problematised. 4

5 academy sponsor representatives were also considered key actors to interview. These actors were instrumental in convincing their organisation to become involved in the academies policy and they played a key role in the academy Board of Governors. Academy principals were also interviewed in Northwestern. These participants had been recruited by sponsors, contributed to the development of their academy, and were responsible for the day-to-day running of the institution. In Eastshire, the focus on converter academies meant that academy principals and chairs of governors were key participants. These individuals were responsible for jointly deciding whether their school should convert to academy status and took a lead role during the conversion process. The general focus of interviews was participants reactions to the academies policy, their decisions around engaging with the policy, the process of schools becoming academies, and any perceived changed which participants related to the policy. While this paper pursues an interpretivist inquiry into understanding policy work, the concept of practice that I specifically draw on is more firmly grounded in the work of post-structuralist human geographers. According to Moore (2008), who argues for scale to be understood as a category of practice, practice involves actors using categories as a way of making sense of their social worlds. Following on from this, scalar practices reflect how actors use categories of scale not just to interpret spatial politics, but to frame and define, and thereby constitute and organise, social life (Moore 2008, p.218). There are two key elements to this definition of practice. The first is that practice involves actors interpreting their worlds through particular categories or lenses, and the second is that practice relates to how the social world is strategically framed, constructed and organised through practice. Similar to the arguments made by Wagenaar and Cook (2003), post-structuralist human geographers understandings of scalar practices dissolve traditional boundaries between structure and agency when interpreting the actions of actors. I thus understand scalar practices to reflect both the way scale operates as an epistemological concept which structures actors world views, as well as how scale is strategically deployed by actors in their pursuit of particular political work. What is clear in post-structuralist human geographers conceptualisation of practice is that representation is understood to be a key part of practice. In the context of policy I argue that representation is part of practice because an integral part of what policymakers do is to talk about, make sense of and mobilise particular understandings of their work. Approaching practice in this way supports the way Katherine Jones (1998) refers to the construction of scale taking place through representational practices. Thus, in addition to having a research interest in what policymakers do such as the decisions they make, the people they talk to, or the meetings they attend my understanding of practice also leads to an interest in how actors articulate their dilemmas, deliberations and strategies regardless of whether these eventually become actions when they describe and reflect on the process of implementing policy. The paper will now turn to presenting the empirical findings of the study. Insights from the two case studies will be examined separately before being brought together in the concluding discussion. Scalar Practices in the Case of Northwestern Academies in Northwestern When the New Labour government launched the academies policy in 2000 this was met with suspicion by members of Northwestern City Council. These Council members expressed concern about having flagship academies; they thought that the policy would only bring 5

6 benefits to individual academies and exclude schools in the rest of the local authority area. In light of this, officers developed and presented Council members with the Northwestern Academies Model. In this model officers proposed making a number of modifications to the national policy which they argued would address the concerns of Council members. These changes included the City Council being an academy co-sponsor and local authority representatives sitting on academy boards of governors. The Model still involved having lead sponsors from private organisations but these were chosen by the City Council. The latter chose Northwestern-based businesses which were important to the city s economic growth. It was also emphasised how Northwestern Model academies would be integrated into the wider governance of education and children s services of the local authority, and that the academy buildings would be available for community use. Interviews in Northwestern focused on the development and implementation of the academies linked to the Northwestern Academies Model. Scalar Practices of Dissolving Boundaries of Scale A key way in which Northwestern officers explained the reasoning behind the development of the Northwestern Academies Model was to argue that it involved collaborations across the whole city area as opposed to the benefits of academies being isolated around individual schools. The following quotations are from officers who were involved in the early stages of creating the model and their reasoning illustrates how they deployed distinct scalar arguments when discussing the academies policy: It was a case of trying to show people if we all worked on the same composite that we would get something better than if we only worked on our bit [ ] I mean my thing was to get everybody dancing round the same maypole really. (Northwestern Local Authority Officer 5) if it runs away with Northwestern, you know, if it's like a whole load of different bitty schools and areas, erm, suddenly have, you know, erm, highly competitive, with very unfair financial arrangements, you know, erm... Then it just starts to break up, doesn't it? (Northwestern Local Authority Officer 6) Embedded within explanations of the Northwestern Academies Model is a clear strategy to construct a sense of the policy operating on a particular scale. Importantly, the spatial boundaries of this scale are defined as correlating with the local authority area. Officers discuss the model as getting people to work on the same composite and contrast this to a situation of a whole load of different bitty schools and areas. Thus, Northwestern officers illustrate how through the development of an alternative academies model they are promoting one scalar construction over another. The alternative to their proposed model is framed as involving academies which operate on an individual basis according to market-based principles of competition, which is argued would lead to the breaking up and fragmentation of Northwestern. Scalar practices serve to dissolve scalar boundaries between individual schools and the local authority to emphasise the vision of the two scales being interconnected in the Northwestern Academies Model. When academy sponsor representatives were asked about how they became involved in the policy, their responses mirrored the scalar project set out by the Northwestern Academy Model. The following quotations are examples of how sponsors made sense of their decision to become involved in the policy initiative: they [Northwestern officers] came along and said to us, we d like you to be a sponsor. We said, no thanks [smiles] it s not where we want to go, it s not in our interest. At that time academy sponsors, there was a particular type: you put your 2 million in and you get a new name on the building and all those sorts of things that wasn t us. Okay. So they [Northwestern officers] came 6

7 back to see us a couple of times, and explained to us that it wasn t about the money, it was commitment. [ ] It was using major employers and bringing our expertise in to helping them to raise the standards of education in Northwestern. And it just felt a natural progression. (Northwestern Sponsor 4) it fitted nicely within something that our policy and our intent as an organisation was and it also brought some benefit locally because it meant, erm, the way the city had gone about why I said before that it was an enlightened approach that the City [Council] had taken was because it had gone through some serious research to think about in terms of the future of this city [ ] (Northwestern Sponsor 5) One of the most striking features of these accounts is the importance sponsors place on the role of the City Council in convincing them that the Northwestern Academies Model was a worthy project to become involved in. Indeed, the sponsor in the first quotation outlines how they initially rejected the idea of academies and it was the prospect of collaborating with Northwestern City Council that eventually led to them changing their minds. The sponsor in the second quotation perceives the Northwestern Academies Model as bringing local benefits and understands these to be achieved through working with city-wide ambitions. The scalar practice of dissolving boundaries between individual schools and the local authority scales appears once again this time it is reflected in the considerations made by sponsors regarding their involvement in the academies policy. All academies under the Northwestern Academies Model had the City Council acting as a cosponsor. Academy principals described the City Council s co-sponsorship role in the following manner: I think they [the City Council] have good local knowledge. They know about other schools, they know about how Northwestern does things[ ] they know about what else is going on in the community [ ] Northwestern City Council have a vision for the future of Northwestern and education is part of that vision. And it's part of the jigsaw, it's not the only part of the jigsaw. [ ] The school is the first part of that jigsaw. You know, when you're regenerating the community what do you put in place? You put in place a good school to help people look at it as a good place to live. Erm, but, you know, what they bring to the table? Local knowledge, vision for the future, erm, a very very proactive interest in the future of Northwestern. Whereas outsiders would have a business sense but they wouldn't have that local drive. (Northwestern Principal 3) So we have, we have a very good understanding and good connectivity to the business model of Northwestern, so the regeneration, Northwestern s got quite an ambitious and innovative regeneration vision. So we connect to that [ ] (Northwestern Principal 2) These two principals differentiate between the scale of their individual academy and that of the wider city but, crucially, emphasise that these two scales are connected. They describe how the City Council co-sponsor helps to strengthen the connectivity to the business model of the city and makes them aware of the overall jigsaw of which their academy is one part. This is particularly evident in the first quotation above where the principal talks about the co-sponsor having local knowledge. The latter is related to knowledge of other schools in Northwestern, to an awareness of the wider activities happening in the immediate community the academy is situated in, as well as to the local authority area as a whole. Scalar practices are being deployed here to emphasise the idea that individual schools are nested within the wider local authority area scalar boundaries are being dissolved. Both principals emphasise the importance of being linked to the overarching vision for the future of the city, which once again underlines scalar practices focusing on the city area rather than emphasising the physical boundaries and interests of individual academies. 7

8 Scalar Practices of Shifting Between Scales The academies policy was also related to the shift which had taken place in Northwestern whereby individual schools were given the choice about what kinds of education services they wanted to buy and which provider to buy them from. The following accounts from local authority officers describe this: funding it's just gone into schools. And, and those decisions are being made more locally. And the [local] authority has a much more finite but much more therefore powerful, you know, strategic role in terms of challenging the performance of schools rather than, you know, carrying them and worrying about them and fussing about them and getting in their way as a result. (Northwestern Local Authority Officer 3) it was a strategic decision that the local authority should focus on its championship role champion of outcomes, advocacy for children [ ] the local authority, as a generic advocate of place. Rather than a kind of educational, technical, professional advocate of place. [ ] we focus our efforts very clearly on our right to look at a school straight in the eye and say, "we believe that you could do better on behalf of our electorate, the people of Northwestern have elected us to look you in the eye and say, to have that conversation with you because they're our children that you're educating. So, how well are you doing? What could you do differently? How could you contribute to the wider aims of the City Council?" (Northwestern Local Authority Officer 3) Officers argue that allowing schools to decide which service they would like to buy back from the local authority means that decisions are being made more locally. There is a shift in the scalar practices being adopted here where the spatial boundaries of individual schools are highlighted as being the most important socio-spatial unit. Nevertheless, even within these discussions over school choice and service provision, the notion of a Northwestern vision continues to remain a strong overarching construct that is situated further up the scalar hierarchy. Officers consistently bring the discussion back to the notion of the local authority and City Council as embodying a scale in which all individual schools are encompassed. Thus, there are two scalar constructions at play here one relating to school choice and freedom to choose education services and the other relating to belonging to the City Council s wider vision for the future. The way in which the discussion consistently shifts back to the local authority scale means that it loses none of its gravity despite the individual school scale being given greater agency. Scalar Practices of Constructing Boundaries Between Scales However, the empirical findings also indicated that the scalar practices of some actors served to undermine or threaten the dominant scalar practices in Northwestern. The most important example of this was the sense of competition between academies and (non-academy) schools: Well the, fascinatingly, the principals certainly feel in competition. [ ] I do understand why, and we have tried to, broken that down, but I think the principals do feel slightly more, traditionally my school s here, your school s there, we re in competition. (Northwestern Sponsor 1) Of course the consequence of that is: brand-new school, brand-new academy, yes we did, shall we say, affect a slight drop in numbers in one or two of our local high schools. [ ] So we've tried to be collaborative. Erm, but yeah, it, it [sighs] being collaborative in a competitive world is a difficult balance. (Northwestern Principal 3) 8

9 These quotations are typical examples of how all principals understand a tension to exist between individual schools and academies. In both the quotations above the actors describe how they have attempted to encourage a more collaborative dynamic between schools but suggest that this has largely not been achieved. The competition between schools regardless of academy status is partly based on educational results and, in the case of schools which share a catchment area, there is also competition over attracting pupils. This sense of competition has been compounded by the academies policy, with non-academies feeling threatened by them and this being particularly acute when a new academy has been set up in the same catchment area as a pre-existing school. The importance of this is that the principals of individual academies and schools are deploying scalar practices which emphasise their individual interests and a zero-sum game being played out between each other. This, in turn, undermines the idea that individual schools are contributing to a wider local authority scale and supporting the policy vision of the Northwestern Academies Model. The latter project is thus threatened by scalar practices which construct boundaries both between individual schools and between schools and the local authority. The discussion has highlighted how the Northwestern Academies Model has involved actors adopting scalar practices which strategically emphasise the city area served by the local authority which primarily involves dissolving the boundary between the local authority and individual schools. Scalar Practices in the Case of Eastshire Academies in Eastshire Prior to the 2010 Academies Act there were no academies in Eastshire due to the local authority generally having high levels of educational performance. The County Council anticipated that the post-2010 Coalition government s reforms (which extended the academies policy to highperforming schools) would lead to a large proportion of schools considering conversion to academy status and it therefore decided on a clear position it would be taking before schools started to convert. This position was that the Council was neutral towards academies and was there to support the decisions of schools and their communities regardless of whether they wanted to convert or not. The Council argued that it remained committed to working in partnership with schools and academies. Scalar Practices of Constructing Boundaries of Scale The following quotations are typical of how Eastshire local authority officers explained their approach to academies: we feel it s a school's choice about whether to become an academy or not, it s for the school and the community to make [ ] we said it s entirely for the community to make a decision (Eastshire Local Authority Officer 3) some local authorities have actively encouraged all schools to become academies as soon as possible. But this authority s position has always been that schools well, good schools, successful schools, are in the best position to make their own choices. (Eastshire Local Authority Officer 1) Eastshire officers demonstrate how the local authority supports the idea that (successful) schools are best placed to decide whether to convert to academy status or not. Thus, officers use categories of scale to emphasise how the boundaries of an individual school are the most 9

10 relevant space in relation to the academies policy. The first quotation above discusses how the policy is a decision for the school and the community. It is clear that the community here is directly linked to the individual school as opposed to the wider local authority scale by the way in which this officer describes community being separate from the local authority. Indeed, officers deploy scalar practices which construct a scalar boundary between individual schools and the local authority and emphasise how the latter should not intervene in decisions being made in the former. Academy principals and chairs of governors also made sense of their policy work by understanding the academies policy to be related to the individual school scale. A striking way this was conveyed was when these actors discussed their institutional identity. The Eastshire academies included in the study had been area colleges or community colleges under previous policy reforms and actors continued to understand their institutional identity according to these labels. These historical identities were discussed by principals and governors in relation to the academies policy because they had refused to change their institutional name from area college or community college to academy. The following quotations are examples of how this issue was discussed: Some transient political phenomenon called 'academies' [laughs] why would we betray that incredible pedigree [of being an area college], you know. So, no, there was never any question of us changing our name from xxxx area college, no. Because we, we're perfectly well aware that another government will come along in five years time or 10 years time or 15 years time and say, "well, you're not going to be an academy any more, you're going to be a trust or you're going to be community school or cooperative school or district school" or whatever it might be, and the answer from us is, "fine, give us whatever status you like, but we're going to continue to be called xxxx area college." (Eastshire chair of governors 4) [changing the school name to academy ] would have just been a a parental red rag really, it would've antagonised sections for no particular reason. It's entirely an irrational thing but by using the name 'academy' in the title of the school, it would have just made things just that little bit more tricky, people would have objected to that [ ] So I think the loss of the community bit from the title, that would have been the issue. I think xxxx school going to xxxx academy would have been no difficulty, but to go from community college [to being called an academy] with all the connotations that community has would have been the issue. (Eastshire Principal 4) It is clear that the community college or area college name of these academies is deployed in the scalar practices of actors to symbolically indicate how academy status has not changed the identity of these institutions. Both of these types of school are associated with a particular definition of what it meant to be a local school. According to principals and governors, what makes these schools local is that they serve their community, which either relates to the school s catchment area or village. According to the governor in the first quotation above, this scalar identity is understood to be part of a tradition or pedigree which has endured various policy reforms. There is such commitment to the way in which institutional identities have been defined in relation to community colleges and area colleges which has meant that this scalar construct remains highly resilient to other policy narratives. The principal in the second quotation demonstrates a lack of personal belief in the importance of institutional name, calling the issue entirely irrational. Also, by describing the prospect of changing the school name as something which would be a parental red rag the principal further reveals a personal perspective that considers the emphasis placed on the academy label as unimportant. However, what is of greatest significance is that this principal ensured that the academy continued to be called a community college despite holding a personal view that this label was not of great importance. None of the principal or governor interviewees associate their institutional identity 10

11 with the area of Eastshire, and in this way they mobilise scalar practices which emphasise boundaries and disconnect existing between the individual school scale and the local authority. Scalar Practices of Shifting Between Scales When principals and governors did acknowledge the local authority scale in relation to academies, they consistently adopted scalar practices which shifted the focus back to their individual academy. The following quotations illustrate this practice when principals and governors discuss how their decision to convert to academy status has negatively impacted the funding received by schools in the wider Eastshire area: as a policy, erm, I think I'm fairly ideologically opposed to it [ ] ultimately, you know, I do have principles and it's important that I stay true to my principles. But I guess also, you know, there are times where you do compromise, not your principles, but compromise because I, I'm employed first and foremost to make a difference to the lives of children. So I felt that, erm, in making one decision [not to convert to an academy] I was going to disadvantage students at xxxx [academy] then of course that's going to be, you know, that for me is a fundamental issue to deal with first foremost. (Eastshire Principal 2) But, again, as a Governor it's hard to argue with nearly 1 million going into your school's infrastructure. Now, you know, at the larger policy level, is that a good thing? Erm, to direct it towards academies rather than other schools? I don't know. [pause] But that's my, my role in this is, as Chair of Governors [laughs slightly] there's just no argument. [ ] it's rather like, erm, arguments about where, where politicians send their children, whether they send them to private school, I couldn't make my school a sort of sacrificial victim for some kind of, erm, erm, policy statement. (Eastshire Chair of Governors 2) Both these quotations are typical of how academy actors in Eastshire justified their decision to convert. In the first quotation the principal is discussing their personal opposition to how the academies policy relocates funding away from the local authority. The second quotation is by an academy governor who expresses scepticism over whether academies are a good thing for other Eastshire schools. These actors both deploy scalar practices which shift the focus of their argument back to the individual school scale which indicates how they situate their responsibilities within this scale rather than the wider local authority. Scalar Practices Attempting to Dissolve Boundaries of Scale When officers were asked about the role of the local authority in relation to academies, instead of emphasising the individual school scale these interviewees discussed the value of being able to offer schools knowledge of the local authority area. For example: So I think what we tend to do is offer the external viewpoint on the school s performance. Erm, and our schools, our academies [ ] get all the datasets and they get all of that what we re able to do is benchmark that against Eastshire, benchmark it against similar schools in Eastshire [ ] what we often [do] is sign post and broker them [schools] to other schools with a really good expertise, which they may know about but often they don t. People know about their own school and maybe one or two mates they get on with [laughs] but they don t necessarily know that the school on the other side of xxxx [area in Eastshire] has got a really good Head of English or whatever. (Eastshire Local Authority Officer 3) I mean there's a unique role for the local authority around the role of the school. So we are uniquely able to talk to schools about what's going on in the local area, what are the plans in terms of housing, in terms of social care, community health information, erm, a place-shaping role I 11

12 suppose. [ ] I believe this is very important which is why I think academies need to have local authorities. (Eastshire Local Authority Officer 6) By presenting the case for the unique role for the local authority in providing schools with knowledge of the Eastshire area, officers adopt scalar practices which go against dominant practices. Officers practices attempt to dissolve the scalar boundary that is typically perceived to exist between the individual school and local authority scale by suggesting that knowledge about Eastshire is relevant and meaningful to schools. These practices were not, however, deployed by actors working in academies which helps to explain the enduring practice of relating academies to the individual school scale. This dynamic demonstrates how dominant scalar practices emerge as a result of suppressing alternatives. Discussion This paper has demonstrated how constructions of individual school and local authority scales are central to the sense-making activities of actors implementing the academies policy. On the surface this may not seem particularly surprising; after all, the official narrative of academies focuses on shifting the relationship between schools and local authorities. However, by approaching scale as a category of practice the discussion has illustrated how the individual school and local authority scales mean very different things to different actors and these meanings are embedded in the contexts of Northwestern and Eastshire. Thus, new insights have been developed into how claims around individual school and local authority scales which are made in national policy narratives are actually interpreted by policy actors faced with the challenge of implementation. The dominant scalar practices in Northwestern constructed the local authority as an essential part of the process of implementing academies and individual schools were typically regarded as being nested within the local authority scale. Scalar practices also involved strategically shifting away from discussions about individual schools to return to a focus on the local authority-wide scale. Academy sponsors and principals deployed scalar practices which threatened to undermine the dominant vision of the Northwestern Academies Model by constructing boundaries between individual schools and between schools and the local authority scale in relation to certain issues. In Eastshire, individual schools were most commonly constructed as being the scale of greatest importance and agency in relation to academies which was conveyed by scalar practices consistently constructing a boundary between the individual school and local authority scales. What was also instrumental to emphasising the academies policy in relation to the individual school scale was the scalar practice of strategically shifting away from the local authority scale to reconstruct issues in light of the individual school scale. While there was some evidence of local authority officers deploying a competing scalar practice which emphasised the permeable nature of the scalar boundaries between the local authority and individual schools, this was largely undermined by boundary-constructing scalar practices. The importance of examining these scalar practices has been underlined by revealing how the strategic deployment of the individual school and local authority scales has been consistent with the policy visions and work being pursued by different actors. Emphasising the local authority scale in Northwestern and how schools are integrated in this scale has been a scalar strategy which has served to reinforce the policy vision underpinning the Northwestern Academies Model. In Eastshire, constructing the individual school scale as being the most significant consideration in relation to the academies policy reflects the chosen strategy of both local authority and academy actors where academy conversion is a choice that falls in the domain of 12

13 individual schools. It can thus be argued that scalar practices provide a window through which we can understand how actors perform their policy work in order to pursue particular strategies. Not only have the dominant scalar practices in relation to the individual school and local authority scales allowed for an insight into policy strategies, these practices are also harnessed by actors to justify their actions and explain how and why the academies policy has played out in each case study area. In the case of Northwestern, the empirical material has illustrated how scalar practices have been used to justify the pursuit of the scalar project of the Northwestern Academies Model. In Eastshire, the pursuit of individual interests at the school scale is a scalar strategy which actors have used to make sense of why all high performing secondary schools chose to convert to academy status. Indeed, Eastshire officers have emphasised the individual school scale to justify their lack of action in relation to the academies policy and how they have stepped back from influencing the choices made by schools. While this paper has argued that there are dominant scalar practices in Northwestern and Eastshire which emphasise the local authority and individual school scales respectively, the empirical findings also illustrate how these are infiltrated by ongoing tensions and challenges. The way in which individual academies and schools in Northwestern feel that they are in competition with each other is an example of a scalar practice which is in tension with the Northwestern Academies Model. This competitiveness serves to undermine the idea that the individual school scale is nested within a wider local authority scale and that all schools and academies are linked to the same vision. In Eastshire, local authority officers emphasised the knowledge they could provide individual schools about the local authority-wide context as a unique and valuable resource for schools. This demonstrated a scalar practice which attempted to shift the focus away from the individual school scale and emphasise the importance of the local authority scale. These examples highlight how dominant scalar practices are constantly contested and at odds with other kinds of scalar practices that are at play; the endurance of a scalar project will rely on its dominant scalar practices continuing to resist the emergence of alternative projects. In light of the above, the empirical study has demonstrated how scalar practices feature heavily in actors interpretations and strategic constructions of policy. Analysis has revealed three types of scalar practices which involve constructing scalar boundaries, dissolving boundaries and shifting between scales. These three techniques of scalar practice have been used to promote particular understandings of policy and simultaneously suppress others. By adopting conceptual insights from post-structuralist human geographers work on scale and integrating these with interpretive approaches to policy, the discussion has revealed this to be a valuable endeavour through which interpretive understandings of policy work can be further developed. Acknowledgements The research has been supported by the UK s Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ESI01943X/1]. 13