This paper builds on previous research (Ball, 2012, Ball & Junemann, 2012) to explore some aspects of the embodiment of policy. The author draws on Larner and Laurie's (2010) work on technocratic expertise and how, as she puts it, "privatisation ideas and practices are transferred in embodied forms," and in particular her argument…

A major aim of this paper is to draw attention to the insidious manner in which the deficit discourse and practices associated with neoliberal reform are de- or re-professionalising educationists through an acculturation process. In the context of Ireland, as elsewhere, the author identifies how the three "technologies" of Market,…

Neoliberalism is often addressed by commentators and critics as a set of ideas or a doctrine. This article considers neoliberalism as a set of financial practices and exchanges--as about money and profit--and goes on to suggest that as practitioners, researchers, activists we need to understand and engage with that logic and its mechanisms.…

This paper argues that English education policy has come full-circle--from the first constitution of a state system of education in 1870 to the beginning of the end of state education in 2010--and that this circularity can be understood in relation to the reluctant state. That is, in the nineteenth century, the English state hesitantly and slowly…

This paper explores some particular aspects of the privatisation of public sector education, mapping and analysing the participation of education businesses in a whole range of public sector education services both in the UK and overseas. It addresses some of the types of privatisation(s) which are taking place "of", "in" and…

This article explores the ways in which the neo-liberal impetus toward the privatization of state schooling signalled in the Education Reform Act 1988 (ERA) has become embedded in the English school system. Four main points are made. First, that ERA itself was of huge strategic rather than substantive importance as far as privatization is…