‘Untangling the entangled knot’: A critical and genealogical examination of multi-academy trusts’ (MATs) ideologies, power and governance in England

With the majority of children in England now educated in academies, these academy schools are increasingly being subsumed into multi-academy trusts (MATs). The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling in this scenario raises critical issues of importance for public policy, including the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs in England, the future of democratic modes of governance of local services and questions of accountability. Applying Foucault’s genealogical framework to this study of MATs, the paper analyses the antecedents of current governance arrangements and attempts to highlight and reinvigorate suppressed, delegitimised and belittled knowledges. Highlighting implications of academy status and the creation of MATs for the decay of the public sphere at a local level, the authors argue that the threads of representation, community engagement and local control in school governance are important components of democratic renewal. The paper’s contribution lies primarily in its application of a genealogical approach which brings into sharp relief the play of historical and contemporary forces and events which have fostered a discourse that enables the subjugation of agency, self-governance and autonomy of MAT constituent schools and their communities. This discourse has wider significance for the centralisation of decision making and control away from communities, and the erosion of the polity