Framing literacy policy: power and policy drivers in primary schools

Literacy Volume 45 Number 3 November 2011 103

Framing literacy policy: power and policydrivers in primary schoolsColin Mills

Abstract

This article is linked to the theme of the special is-sue through its focus on micropolitical analysis ofthe changing role of ‘policy drivers’, mediating na-tional policy through interactions with primary schoolheads and teachers. The central arguments draw oncase studies undertaken in two primary schools wherechanges related to literacy teaching were being enactedat a particular historical moment (in 2008–2009). Con-ceptual tools are drawn from the work of Goffman onframe analysis to examine how an increasingly diverserange of drivers, representing new forms of marketi-sation (Local Authority (LA) consultants; a regionaldirector responsible for the travel of literacy policy; one‘bought in’ from a private company) interacted withpractitioners. Differences in the framing of policy be-tween heads, teachers and policy drivers are identifiedand analysed as significant features of new kinds of‘assemblages’ in public policy. Insights from the anal-ysis are drawn on to propose a research agenda forpolicy research in the literacy field in a shifting polit-ical era in England (and the rest of the United King-dom). This agenda incorporates critical perspectives,giving voice to practitioners, and building on interna-tional work, as well as work on policy drivers in othereducational areas, and from other disciplines.

Key words: literacy policy, policy drivers, framing,primary schools

Introduction and background

Efforts to achieve large-scale improvements in liter-acy in English primary schools have been identified by‘insiders’ to policy change as central to governments’educational agendas (Barber, 2007; Stannard andHuxford, 2007). Commentators working in the literacypolicy field have provided perceptive insights on someof the tensions between what schools and teachers areasked to change and what they actually do (Lefstein,2008; Moss, 2004, 2007a, 2009).

Central to understanding these tensions, yet oftenoverlooked in accounts of change, is the role of ‘policydrivers’, identified by Bryan in an article in this jour-nal in 2004 as being of “central importance to under-standing the way in which policy is realised in practicein the classroom” and often determining “the tone ofthe process in which policy is driven through” (Bryan,2004, p. 142). This article revisits and aims to rede-

fine the roles of policy drivers. Who have they been?Who are they now? Does research from within andbeyond the United Kingdom teach us about their ac-tivities? Drawing on studies of interactions betweendrivers, heads and teachers, I identify some of thesegroups’ differing perceptions about literacy policy. Ispeculate about roles of policy drivers in new politicalcontexts and conclude by proposing agendas for liter-acy policy research. Underpinning the article is a claim:it is important to understand how power works in thefield of United Kingdom primary school literacy pol-icy and its – often politicised – travel into schools andclassrooms.

Who have been policy drivers?

From 1997, a great deal of policy driving in primaryschools was carried out by Local Authority (LA) con-sultants, strongly allied to the central thrust of Na-tional Literacy Strategy (NLS) imperatives. When theNLS was replaced by the Primary National Strategy(PNS) in 2003, one of the declared rationales for thatchange was that schools:

“Take ownership of the curriculum, shaping it and mak-ing it their own. Teachers have much more freedom thanthey realise to design the timetable and decide what andhow they teach” (DfES, 2003, p. 4).

The role of policy drivers in that change was envisagedas being a more collaborative, supportive one, offeringmore scope for school autonomy:

“LEAs have the job of providing support services to pri-mary schools; helping and, where appropriate, challeng-ing schools to improve and raise standards” (DfES, 2003,p. 7).

When, in June 2009, an announcement was madeto end the PNS, government publications empha-sised the devolution of support for schools back toschools (DCSF, 2009). A new role for LAs was seen asfostering:

“Effective partnership between schools, and betweenschools and other providers, to secure value for money,a broad range and mix of provision, effective earlyintervention and quality improvement” (DCSF, 2009,p. 77, emphases added).

Copyright C© 2011 UKLA. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Literacy

104 Framing literacy policy

Who drives policy now?

This shift towards a ‘mix’ of provision connects witha more wide-ranging change: the marketisation ofschooling and policy implementation charted andanalysed within the United Kingdom by Ball (2007)and Burch (2009) in the United States. In the primaryliteracy arena, with the national strategies weakened,many LAs (and schools) have ‘bought in’ consultants,or larger ‘for profit’ companies. Some were engagedin short-term contracts to deal with literacy initiatives(e.g., the Rose Review of early reading); or with par-ticular priorities (e.g., boys’ underachievement in lit-eracy). A recent survey, analysing websites and mar-keting materials in the educational press, identified atleast 30 companies and consultants offering servicesto schools in literacy (Mills, 2011). Their origins areinteresting. Some started as ‘sole traders’ establishedby individuals. Andrell Education, for example, be-gan as a small company offering courses in primarywriting and has achieved national popularity. Cover-age of other curriculum areas includes Maths and the-matic work (www.andrelleducation.co.uk). Read WriteInc (www.readwriteinc.co.uk), offering major confer-ences and training in the field of phonics and earlyreading, has a high national profile. Its founder, RuthMiskin, has exercised considerable political influence(Wilby, 2008), being involved in government policyformation bodies including the recent body reviewingthe National Curriculum. Similarly, many former LAand PNS consultants now work as commercial agents,thereby, as critical writers on public policy describesuch processes, “combining and condensing differentforms of power and authority” (Newman and Clarke,2009, p. 94).

Previous work on policy drivers’ interplaywith schools

Published research in the United Kingdom reveals lit-tle of what happens when those charged with effect-ing change in literacy, as commercial companies, orgovernment-sponsored agents, work in schools. Thegovernment-sponsored evaluation of the NLS by Earlet al. (2003), for example, drew on extensive studyof teachers, LA and national consultants’ activity, butpaid scant attention to the school–policy driver inter-play. Issues of power are usually neglected, often ig-nored, in studies of UK policy change in the busyyears from 1997 to 2010 (e.g., Stannard and Huxford,2007). Cameron’s (2010a, b) recent work is an excep-tion. A fascinating ‘insider’ account – he worked as aconsultant in a London borough – it pays attention tothe power perspectives at work, and links well withthe themes of this special issue. Cameron identifiesnuanced processes, including an intriguing duality inthe roles played by Secondary National Strategy (SNS)consultants as both ‘controlling agents’ and ‘catalysts’:

“As a controlling agent, the consultancy was an in-strument of increased panopticism within an educa-tion system that combined with exam pressures to am-plify or greatly increase the power held by school andLA hierarchies. As a catalyst, the consultancy oper-ated as critical friend to teacher professional learn-ing and personal development” (Cameron, 2010a,p. 622).

Accounts of other countries’ policy changes are alsomore alert to issues of power and the often contentiousnature of implementation, where different players of-ten have strongly conflicting values, especially in lit-eracy (Openshaw and Soler, 2007; Snyder, 2008). Twoexamples, from the United States and Australia, showilluminative work exemplifying critical approachesto studying what happens when outside agents en-ter schools. US-based studies, by Coburn (2001, 2005,2006) and her colleagues (Coburn and Stein, 2006),describe power processes at work when teachers inter-pret and enact change in literacy. Drawing on longitu-dinal data from urban elementary schools, they con-ceptualise authority and status relations within schoolsas often shaping the policy adoption. Fine-grainedethnographic work illustrates how different actorshave varying conceptions of what counts as valid ev-idence of children’s learning and improved attain-ment (Coburn et al., 2008). Davis’ (2009) importantAustralian work also focuses on the use of externalconsultants as policy drivers in schools. Ethnographicwork similarly probes interactions between practition-ers and external actors, their “differences of definitionsand strategy” and the “subtle shifts of language” un-derpinning policy change (Davis, 2009, p. 24). Powerperspectives are, again, to the fore in her critique of theseemingly apolitical ‘advice’ offered by consultants topractitioners:

“Their advice is not neutral, nor is it a simple compila-tion of practitioner wisdom as it is often represented. Itis embedded in a particular set of views about society andthe world which then determines how experiences of orga-nizations and understandings of management and lead-ership are framed” (Davis, 2009, p. 19).

Aims of the study – buildingon previous work

I aimed to build on the above work by investigating theinterplay between heads, teachers and different kindsof external agents (from an LA, a private company anda government agency) in two English primary schools.I will draw on case studies to illuminate the differ-ent stances each group took towards changes in liter-acy they were working to bring about. My key ques-tion was: what were their different understandings ofpolicy?

Copyright C© 2011 UKLA


The schools

Hales Down is a 3–12 community primary school inHolford, a cathedral city in the West Midlands, partof a large LA with a mix of schools, including a largenumber of small village schools. It is in the centre of alarge council estate, built on the outskirts of the city inthe 1950s. The school had what the head teacher Dave(a pseudonym, as are all the forenames used in thisarticle) called ‘a stormy ride’ during the 2 years prior tomy study. In a 2007 inspection, the school was placedin OFSTED’s ‘special measures’ category and receivedintensive support – and monitoring – from the LA.During 2008–2009, there was special attention given tothe progress of pupils, especially boys, at Key Stage2 (7–11) in English in general, in writing in particular.This was overseen by Mary, a regional director of thePNS. In 2008, 57 per cent of Hales Down’s Year 6 pupilshad achieved Level 4+; the national figure reflectingpupils reaching that target was 80 per cent. Coinciden-tally, 80 per cent was also the average attainment forpupils within the LA. In Dave’s words, 57 per cent was“not a disaster . . . we were achieving much worse thanthat two years ago”. The ‘sticking point’ was that:

“We are surrounded by schools doing much better thanthat. The LA’s average is high. We are also being heldback by the ‘gap’ between KS1 and KS2. I can see thatstatistically on line. The figures are plain to see”.

The second school was Holly Mount, a large 4–11 pri-mary school in Wendon, a very advantaged commu-nity in an affluent town 15 miles from a large NorthWest metropolitan centre. In contrast to Hales Down,Holly Mount was recognised by OFSTED and by theLA as a ‘successful’ school. Standards, as measured bynational attainment tests, were high. In the 2008 KeyStage tests, for example, 72 per cent of Holly Mount’sYear 6 pupils achieved Level 4 and above in English(the national average was 80 per cent; the LA’s was 82per cent). I had been working in school on another re-search project during the spring term of 2008. Therewas disquiet among the staff after an LA policy di-rective following the publication of a major review ofearly reading, the Rose Review (DfES, 2006). The head(Ellen) was aware that the performance of pupils atKey Stage 1 was not as high as other schools in the au-thority.

The Rose Review concluded that schools should adopt“high-quality phonic work” as the prime approach inteaching early reading. Based on what many in the lit-eracy field questioned as robust evidence (Moss, 2007b;Wyse and Styles, 2007) and driven by what some pol-icy scholars saw as an over-centralised approach tocurriculum content (Moss and Huxford, 2007) this re-view’s implications had been adopted in what wasperceived (by the school staff and head) as a very pre-scriptive way by the LA. Holly Mount had an eclec-tic approach to early reading, well defined in a policybooklet. The LA, however, set in place a series of vis-

its by a literacy consultant (Jo) employed by a privateconsultancy company in order to “support and moni-tor progress towards an early reading policy consistentwith the recommendations of the Rose Review of earlyreading” (LA letter to head teacher, May 2008).

Data collection – tools of analysis

My activities between July 2008 and March 2009 cen-tred on observation of meetings between ‘external’drivers, an LA consultant, Lena, and her line man-ager, Mary (Regional Director of the PNS) with teach-ers and the head at Hales Down; observations of ses-sions delivered by Jo, a consultant bought in by the LAand working at Holly Mount with the head and teach-ers there. I supplemented observations with semi-structured interviews with the policy drivers, headsand teachers. I spent 30 hours, over at least 10 days,in each school, observing meetings, professional de-velopment activities and interviewing. I analysed allinterview data using a set of descriptions represent-ing the different ways in which the groups of partic-ipants ‘framed’ their accounts of policy change withinthe schools. This kind of frame analysis draws on Goff-man’s (1974) identification of framing as the processby which individuals and groups ‘define’ problems,open up and legitimise certain ways of acting, closeoff and delegitimise other ways. Gitlin’s (1980, p. 6)definition is useful: “frames are principles of selection,emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit the-ories about what exists, what happens, and what mat-ters”. It is these links between framing and powerthat have made the concept particularly illuminatingfor examining how policy negotiations work. Theyuncover how people use their own interpretationsto shape others’ meaning-making processes in an ef-fort “to mobilize them to take action” (Coburn, 2006,pp. 346–347). I analysed all data using a set of cate-gories that described the different ways in which par-ticipants framed the issues of policy and identifiedfive categories of policy framing that were significant.These categories of policy framings are summarised inTable 1 to show some of the contrasts between theframings of policy drivers and of teachers and heads.

I will draw on data to bring out some of the differ-ences (and tensions) between my three groups of ac-tors: drivers, teachers and head teachers.

Policy framing – the drivers’ views

External consultants and their managers drew pre-dominantly in their framings on accountability to gov-ernment and LA priorities and to standardised testing.Mary, representing the PNS, addressing a staff meetingat Hales Down early in my observations exemplifiesthis:

“The main problem, you can see from the online data, isin boys’ achievement . . . and we can further analyse the



Table 1: Categories of policy framing

Policy drivers’ understandings of policy framed by Description

Accountability to government/local authority policy Policy justified by claims to currentgovernment/local authority targets: Rose Reviewof early reading; boys’ underachievement

Standardised testing Policy linked to pressure to increase test scores andcomparisons between schools

Teachers’ and heads’ understandings of policy framed by Description

Accountability to aspects of school policy Policy evaluated in relation to school-basedpriorities (pupil needs; parents; previouslydefined school policy imperatives)

Claims to professional identity Policy claims linked to issues of personal values,based on past experiences, observations, personalimperatives

Subject knowledge and pedagogy Policy linked to claims about subject knowledge(how best to teach reading); research; pedagogicalknowledge

figures to see that it is boys’ writing that is bringing youdown in the local authority rankings, and in the nationalfigures. You are getting 57% to Level 4 at Year 6 – that’sway below the authority benchmark . . . 75% and waybelow the actual figure for the authority which is 80%.That’s also the national figure we are reaching. When youhave a close look you can see it is the boys who are holdingyou back”.

An extract from an early meeting between Jo, the‘bought in’ consultant from a private company, work-ing at Holly Mount and Ellen, the head, illustrates thisfocus on national data and LA priorities as well as therelationships between these two and the publicly avail-able test results (SATs):

“There’s nothing desperate about the figures we are work-ing on. It’s just obvious that . . . sort of looking across LAschools . . . your Level 2 results are not as high as they’dbe expecting. Not . . . sort of . . . looking at other schoolsin your banding . . . and looking at your baseline figures. . . have I got these . . . yes. That’s what’s pushing themas an authority to look at early reading”.

The reasons for, and origins of, the policy drivers’strong adherence to national agendas related to schoolperformance, league tables and comparisons betweenschools, are rooted in a focus on performance thathas been well documented in the literatures on re-form from both a general viewpoint (Chapman andGunter, 2009) and from the particular vantage pointsof primary schools (Wyse et al., 2008). Studying theinteractions between ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ revealsthe contrasts between policy drivers and teachers’ per-spectives. The following extract from an interviewwith Lena (the LA literacy consultant attached to HalesDown who previously worked as a teacher in the area)also expresses a commonly aired view: the consultants’feelings of separation from practitioners having to en-act policies:

“The authority keeps a close eye on schools’ results. I didnot think about that so much when I was a teacher, in theclassroom. We are pushed to chivvy up schools. I knowthat sometimes puts pressure on schools and it does on usas well. I sometimes feel a bit . . . in between . . . schoolsfeel got at . . . they have to deliver the policy that we intime walk away from”.

Jo, the consultant bought in by the LA from a privatecompany, gave voice to an often-voiced dilemma aboutwhere the ‘interests’ of the policy drivers lay. Meetingthe needs of the school and the practitioners they areworking with? Meeting the profit motives of the com-pany they work for?

“My understanding is that I am hired by the LA, throughmy company to advise and guide towards better practiceand results. We are told not to ever ‘push’ our productsand I’d never do that. Though of course that’s hard as Ialso spend time ‘selling’ our materials and if teachers askabout resources and methods it’s hard not to fall into thattrap”.

The employment of a consultant from a private com-pany by an LA was (to my knowledge) relativelynovel at that time (2008). The work (and influence)of such profit-led companies is likely to increase ifmuch-depleted LAs are to play a smaller role in pol-icy change. Jo’s dilemma links with insights from ahead teacher’s (Ellen’s) reservations, summarised be-low, on companies’ involvement in centrally directedchange.

Policy framing – the teachers’ views

Teachers’ framings of policy were different. They weremore likely to frame the policy issues by reference topriorities that were embedded in the school, well illus-trated in an interview with Christine, the Early Years



leader at Holly Mount after her first meeting with Jo,the external consultant:

CM: “What’s your view, Christine, of the author-ity’s policies on early reading and the thingsyou are being asked to look at?”

Christine: “Well, I see what they are doing, and I under-stand that’s a topic everyone is thinking aboutat the moment, but we have spent a long timegiving the early stages of reading attention. Ihave been on lots of courses over the years andworked to develop things here in school. It feelslike this policy is saying . . . something like . . .start again and do it differently. I didn’t thinkthat Jo was taking account of what we haveachieved and changed over the years. I feel per-sonally very tied up in lots of my ideas that Icherish about early reading!”

Themes emerging from this interview were stronglyexpressed by other teachers. Their beliefs about poli-cies on reading and writing were closely related totheir professional identities. They often referred totheir understandings based on their subject and ped-agogical knowledge – what they understood about liter-acy from their initial training or from professional de-velopment activities. The knowledge they referred towas often rooted in their observation of classroom pro-cesses. Their discussion of the policies under reviewoften involved reference to what they ‘knew’ and ‘felt’,based on their experience, rather than on their adher-ence to particular policy ‘targets’ or their subscribingto preferred methods or materials. This extract froman interview carried out with Hales Down’s teacher,Phil, catches these themes well. It was conducted aftera session with May and Lena, addressing PNS and LA‘targets’ for boys’ writing:

“I respect what May and Lena are saying and I knowwhat their priorities are. But their starting and finishingpoints were the test results. I want to talk about what getsboys writing . . . what kinds of topics motivate them. I’vedone a lot of thinking about that over the years. And beenon courses and things . . . I’m a bit worried about who hasthe power here. We surely have got to base what we do onour experience, and what we know about our kids”.

Policy framing – head teachers “betweentwo worlds”?

Analysis of the data on the head teachers reveals in-teresting trends. They tended to frame their interpre-tation of policy issues in terms of the perspectivesshared with the teachers: policies of the school; theirown professional identity; their subject and pedagogi-cal knowledge. They also shared some of the perspec-tives identified in the analysis of the drivers’ framings.Both head teachers identified clear dilemmas. Theyhad accountability to national and local targets. They

also had commitments to the interests and well-beingof their children and colleagues. They each had toconfront questions about their leadership styles (Mills,2010). Dave connected these dilemmas to his prior ex-periences as a class teacher and as a literacy specialist,as well as to his strong sense of social justice:

“I see what the authority is working on and I under-stand the pressure that Lena and the other consultants areup against. But I know about writing and I know aboutboys . . . I know the kinds of issues involved. When I wasleading English in a school I used to do exciting things toget all kids writing – and got boys enthused by writingabout football matches and things that turned them on. Ina school like this you have to . . . to know what gets themgoing and interested and what doesn’t. We can practiseSATs as long as we like . . . and I know lots of schools dothat . . . not naming names or anything . . . but I do feel be-tween two worlds in a way. I have got to do what is bestfor the kids . . . I’ve got to keep the pressure on the staff.I’ve got to show we are working hard to get our resultsup”.

Ellen linked the dilemmas experienced to her role asa leader and a manager. She had professional rela-tionships with both Christine, the Early Years special-ist within the school, and with Lee, the recently ap-pointed English subject leader, and these came intoconflict with the pressures to adapt rapidly to the pol-icy drivers’ need for ‘results’:

“I know I have responsibilities to deliver in terms of na-tional policies and results. And I can do my best to dothat and work to get the authority the results they need tosee and report on. But I need to keep my staff in mind too.Christine works hard and has put a lot of time into theschool and its policies. I know that Lee is keen to do wellin this new role and I want him to and need to supporthim to do that. I need to be helping him to do what heknows are the right things while also keeping our Mas-ters happy. My priority is to lead and manage my staffand to help them to do their best. I’ve got to keep that inmind whatever the other things are I am being asked todeliver . . . I’ve got to keep my own sense of professional-ism too”.

Another final extract from an interview with Ellen con-nects with issues concerning the privatisation of policy,and the influence and potential power of ‘outside ven-dors’ (Burch, 2009, p. 7):

“I have some reservations about the ‘selling’ of certain ap-proaches and method and materials. I respect Jo and hercompany. I value what they are doing. But I feel swayedinto working their way while they’re here with their ma-terials and books. I want to look around and choose. I feelcross that the LA is buying in their approach . . . seeingphonics, and their approach, as the ‘be all and end all’.There’s been no explicit push to sell their materials but aweaker head might be pressured to do that”.



This view of Ellen’s is interesting and timely, giventhe rapid expansion of private companies’ promotionof services to schools, charted and analysed in a re-cent critique (Mills, 2011). Both head teachers’ posi-tions reflected dualities and tensions within seeminglystraightforward policy processes. One school was re-quired to boost boys’ progress in writing. Another wasasked to adapt its early reading policy. Yet each headteacher had to manage different framings of policy.This involved complex negotiations, changing leader-ship styles and conflicting allegiances (“help him todo what he knows are the right things”; “keeping ourMasters happy”). Importantly, each had to deal withthe ambiguous nature of the power of the ‘outsiders’ intheir schools, in what Dave termed in an interview as“my domain, as others think of it!”

Discussion – literacy policyand new assemblages

There are three main questions I want to address here.What was happening in these two primary schoolsin 2008–2009? How might an understanding of theseevents lead to a fuller analysis of issues of power inthe driving of literacy policy in primary schools? Whatkinds of research agendas might be necessary and use-ful for UKLA and other researchers in a new and un-certain political and policy terrain?

Diverse actors were playing their parts as policydrivers, working for a quasi-governmental body (Mayfrom the PNS); an LA (Lena, working for ‘Holford’);a private company (Jo), hired by Holly Mount’s LAto work on a particular policy priority (early read-ing). It is important to locate these events in the con-text of the kinds of marketisation of schooling iden-tified earlier in this article. For a focus on the ‘sell-ing’ of policy and services in schools brings into playnew kinds of groupings and networks, as well asforegrounding the issues of power, influence and sta-tus that are inevitably troublesome when outsiderswork in schools (Ball, 2009). It is also extremely help-ful to draw on understandings from those who havestudied change in other, wider fields of public pol-icy. Newman and Clarke (2009), for example, demon-strate the ways in which the driving of policy inhealth and social services has moved from centralgovernment towards an ‘arm’s length’ relationship,through “agencies, privatised contractors, public–private partnerships, and the creation of markets”(p. 3). They employ the concept of assemblages in or-der to analyse the new formations as well as the novelkinds of interplay and working relationships. Assem-blages, they claim,

“Bring together people (as specific sorts of agents), poli-cies, discourses, texts, technologies and techniques, sitesor locations, forms of power or authority as if they form anintegrated and coherent whole that will deliver the imag-

ined or desired outcomes” (Newman and Clarke, 2009,p. 24).

On the surface, the teachers, heads and policy driverswere working towards the same declared ends (im-proving boys’ achievements; changing early reading).But the ways they framed, and worked to change,schools’ priorities reveal conflicts. The concept drawsfocus to what Newman and Clarke term “the diffi-culties of making ill-suited elements fit together asthough they are coherent” (p. 9). The policy driverswere often ambivalent about the way they were be-ing asked to manage practitioners’ understandings oftheir work, from which as Lena admitted in interviewthey could “in time, walk away from”. Teachers hadstrong ideas about what counted as literacy for theirpupils. These ideas were often in conflict with the pol-icy work they were being asked (told?) to do. Newmanand Clarke’s notion of the fragility of assemblages il-luminates both of the heads’ particular awareness ofthe short-lived nature of the groupings, as Ellen’s com-ment about feeling “swayed into working their waywhile they’re here” made plain. Recent political andpolicy shifts could make it particularly timely and im-portant to study and understand the ways in whichassemblages may (or may not) do their work as “newpolicy communities that mix elements of business andphilanthropy with public policy concerns and values”(Newman and Clarke, 2009, p. 94).

A changing political context

A declared intention of recent political ambitions isthat schools be given much more ‘freedom’ to choosetheir policies and practices (DfE, 2010). At the sametime, LAs may have fewer resources to provide thehelp that ‘Holford’ LA gave Hales Down. These twofeatures of current change make it far more likelythat schools, including the projected new Free Schoolsand Academies, will ‘buy in’ the services of burgeon-ing private consultants and companies. These radicalchanges in governance may lead to shifts in schoolsthat those studying literacy policy will need to scru-tinise. If national accountability (including proposedtesting of phonics) continues, will these private com-panies continue to market services in terms of theirclient schools’ successes in achievements in test re-sults? Will models of literacy learning promoted byinfluential companies dominate other understandings,those based on knowledge, research and practice? Thattrend is already clearly evident in a recent study ofsuccessful schools in the teaching of early reading,where, unusually, key ‘brands’ and schemes are iden-tified (OFSTED, 2010).

A research agenda for literacy policy?

There are fruitful research agendas for UKLA mem-bers and others in the field of scholarship interested in



the connections between political change, power andliteracy policy. Well-grounded examples of how policydrivers make claims to expertise, sell their expertise,interact with teachers, could afford knowledge of how“the intermediate area between state, market and com-munity” (Newman and Clarke, 2009, p. 94) actuallyworks in schools. Work in the field of primary liter-acy exploring these issues in a new political era couldmatch critical work within other areas of schooling –for example, Gunter’s (2010) account of consultants’pervasive influence on the school leadership field –and work on ‘outsiders’ as policy drivers from otherdisciplines (Hodge and Bowman, 2006; Sturdy et al.,2009). Socio-linguistic tools like ‘frame analysis’ helpto discern differences in the talk and practices of pol-icy drivers and practitioners.

To help the next generation of primary school leaders,we need to know more about head teachers’ dealingswith ruptures in their ‘authority’ and ‘status’ (Coburnet al., 2008) when, like Ellen, their ethics of leader-ship are compromised by the influence of outside ex-pertise that they have been persuaded to purchase.Or when, like Dave, drives towards national stan-dards conflict with imperatives about children’s learn-ing, leaving leaders working “between two worlds”.Those supporting teachers can encourage them to drivepolicy, by incorporating practitioners’ expertise, toooften silenced in policy debates (Comber and Nixon,2009). They can assist practitioners in understanding,and challenging where necessary, the framings of thosewho gain considerable cultural and economic powerthrough their policy work.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the generous help given by the headsand the teachers in the two necessarily anonymousschools in which I worked, as well as by the external‘actors’ who gave of their time and their insights. Thestudy I draw on in this article connects with work Iam doing with colleagues at Manchester and I am ex-tremely grateful to them, especially to Professor HelenGunter, Dave Hall and other members of the vibrantSchool of Education Policy Reading Group. HelenGunter also read, and made characteristically cogentcomments on drafts of this article. Two anonymousreferees were generous in their advice, which helpedme to make connections and clarifications within thisarticle.

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CONTACT THE AUTHORColin Mills, School of Education, University ofManchester, Ellen Wilkinson Building, OxfordRoad, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.e-mail: [email protected]


Documents

Framing literacy policy: power and policy drivers in primary schools