Inside the English education lab collection has a dual focus. It offers a critical examination of the academies programme, and it interrogates methodological practice in education research. Overall, it argues that academies reproduce rather than reform inequalities, and that there is political salience to in-depth, qualitative methodologies.

Foreword – Diane ReayIntroduction: A time and a place: doing critical qualitative and ethnographic work across an academised educational landscape – Christy Kulz, Ruth McGinity and Kirsty Morrin Part I - ‘Privatisation’: Positioning policies and publics: academies, governance and agency1 Academisation and the law of ‘attraction’: an ethnographic study of relays, connective strategies and regulated participation – Andrew Wilkins2 When the MAT moves in: implications for legitimacy in terms of governance and local agency – Helen Ryan-Atkin and Harriet RowleyPart II - ‘Practice’: Schooling the body and bodies in schooling: practice, strategy and the everyday3 Free schools, inclusion and social capital of children with special educational needs and disabilities – Clara R. Jørgensen and Julie Allan 4 The great education ‘permanent revolution’? Shape-shifting academies and degrees of change (and ‘success’) – Katie Blood 5 What 'these kids' need: discipline, misrecognition and resistance in an English academy school – Sarah LeaneyPart III - ‘Reflexivity’: In the contours and on the margins: re-imagining the academy6 Producing the academy school: Foucault and the study of policy production – Jodie Pennacchia 7 The ‘contradictory space’ of the entrepreneurial academy: critical ethnography, entrepreneurship education and inequalities – Kirsty Morrin Conclusion – Embedding an educational settlement: coercion, contestation and localised struggles – Christy Kulz, Kirsty Morrin and Ruth McGinityAfterword: Polyvalent and incoherent: the academies programme and the English educational apparatus – Stephen J. BallIndex

Inside the English education lab shows how critical qualitative methodologies work to illuminate and interrogate the everyday life of England’s privatised educational landscape. England has garnered a global reputation as a key proponent of education policy reforms defined by high-stakes accountability, claims of greater school autonomy, and a centralised governance structure. Employing qualitative and ethnographic methods, with their focus on practices unfolding over time and across particular, situated spaces, Inside the English education lab considers academisation in ways that depart from benchmarks and Ofsted ratings. The collection counters academisation’s contradictory assertion that quantitative data is the singular measure of value. The book makes a pivotal contribution to gauging some of the social and cultural effects of academisation through a reflexive focus on the practical ambiguities and incongruities that result as policy translates into practice. It explores how academisation (re)positions policies and publics through new modes of governance, examines strategies employed by students and teachers in situ, and interrogates how institutions are being produced through space, discourse and practice. Bringing together innovative new qualitative research on academies and free schools, the book traverses numerous geographical and social contexts within England. It provides a valuable viewpoint that reaches beyond policy claims and rhetoric by focusing on the everyday and often ambiguous practices operating within England’s rapidly academising education system.