In this paper, I draw on a study of school leaders' experiences of inspection to argue that repeated changes to school inspection policy in England constitute a post-panoptic regime. Thinking with and against Foucault, I elaborate post-panopticism, here characterised by: subjects' visibility; "fuzzy" norms; the exposure of subjects'…

Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and illustrating with examples from the English system, the paper addresses the hidden racist dimension to contemporary education reforms and argues that this is a predictable and recurrent theme at times of economic crisis. Derrick Bell's concept of "interest-convergence" argues that moments of…

Parents are being invited to step in to help improve public education, but they enter with neither resources nor power. Real parental involvement requires commitment to organizing parents and restructuring schools, as well as inventing rich versions of diverse educational democracies of difference. Schools must function like meaningful…

The compulsory system of education is criticized on the grounds that it has become a regimented "universal trap" antithetical to democracy. In contrast to the Jeffersonian concept of education in the service of citizen initiative for the preservation of freedom, current compulsory education is a tool of industrialism and of a rigidly stratified…