We use the insights of firms' organizational economics to study school chains' organization. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student and school administrative records. Chains with a larger share of schools whose leadership background is aligned with the chain's…

Early childhood education is regarded as key to help ensure long-term positive outcomes for children, and high-quality provision crucial for long-term developmental outcomes. However, how settings are inspected for the quality of their services varies substantially across countries. In England, the inspection body Ofsted has been heavily…

In this polemical piece, we begin by arguing that the Schools White Paper (2022) is framed within, and seeks to promulgate, a right-wing 'regime of truth'. We interrogate the vocabulary of the Paper to reveal and challenge its 'truths' -- about the curriculum and its 'delivery'; the testing and examination regime; behaviour; and initial teacher…

Analysis of strategic planning practices can offer insight into how universities operate and are structured as organisations, both in terms of where importance is placed and what is elided, and through discursive consideration of how strategy texts legitimate certain ways of thinking and acting and seek to produce consent around managerial…

A multi-centre clinical trial involves the implementation of the same clinical protocol at several independent investigational centres. Multi-centre clinical trials may be preferable to single-centre trials, but their implementation and management is more complex. EU-funded collaborative projects involve several participating organizations and…

This article sets out an original conceptual framework for place-based professional learning by teachers and schools in decentralised education systems. High quality Continuing Professional Development and Learning by teachers is associated with improvements in children's outcomes. Most research in this area focuses on evaluating formal…

This article examines the nature of governance in the Co-operative Academies Trust which comprises academy schools in England sponsored by the Co-operative Group. The historical and political context for the study is summarised, the research methodology is explained, and data are drawn upon from one case study academy. Structural, organisational…

System leadership continues to be constructed largely as a desirable, even normative, evolution of educational leadership, with critiques often focusing on implementation rather than principles. This belies its increasingly recognised role in processes of disintermediation, in which the 'middle tier' comprising local government is dismantled. In…

In Anglophone countries, narratives of public schooling tend to emphasise generic hopes about schooling as central to the idea of a public good, including fostering community, delivering equality and protecting broad notions of democracy. However, as public systems become more open to privatised logics, these hopes sit alongside fears for the…

This article explores the impact of devolution from a centralised UK governance model on universities in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, and shows how a unified system of higher education has been transformed into four systems with contrasting aims and objectives. The structure that has been arrived at makes the UK Government…

In England, schools are able to take on academy status, which is intended by the central government to give them greater autonomy (DfE, 2018). Groups of academies can form multi-academy trusts (MATs), which typically grow in size with additional schools becoming academies and joining. One mechanism for MAT growth is sponsorship, which occurs when…

This paper argues that university strategic positioning is influenced by the organisational dimension, operationalised along the variables of organisational structure, identity and centrality. A comparative case study is presented including two English and two Italian universities and drawing on a set of sixty interviews with academic leaders,…

The purpose of this study is to compare education and inspection systems and to reveal their similarities and differences in terms of structuring and functioning. Thus, it is aimed to make suggestions about education supervision in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus by determining its current state. In the study, the educational supervision…

Purpose: To improve school organisational performance and innovativeness, and meet diverse student needs, school leaders should be innovative, risk-takers and proactive, thus applying entrepreneurial practices/strategies and market mechanisms. This study aims to investigate, from a schoolteacher's perspective, the degree of entrepreneurial…

Relatively few studies have explored the ways in which 'middle tier' institutional arrangements in education, such as school districts and local authorities, are responding to New Public Management reforms characterized by centralization, decentralization, marketization and disintermediation. This paper analyses these issues, drawing on governance…