As a company, our policy is to be i

As a company, our policy is to be involved in a great many areas of education. We are involved in the provision of day care nurseries, for instance, all the way through the ownership and operation of schools in the UK and overseas; through accountancy tuition in a fairly substantial way; to the provision of British accredited degrees in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, indeed providing MBAs. We have about 2,000 employees, most of whom are professionals in education. The largest part of the company, at the moment, is the education services: out- sourcing in education. The company provides the Career Service, under contract from the various regional government offices. This is about 10% of the UK. We are very substantially involved in providing OFSTED inspections. We are involved in the delivery of training to potential head teachers, to newly appointed teachers, and indeed to serving head teachers. We recently won a very large PFI to provide the vocational and other support for the Army Foundation College in Harrogate ... we were also recently identified as the contractor to be involved in the support of schools ... in the London Borough of Hackney. (Hansard, 1999)
A good example-indeed a harbinger-of direct private sector involvement in education provision, management and governance is the policy for the creation of EAZs, first established in England in late 1998. Their objectives were to raise achievement in disadvantaged areas through a combination of educational and social interventions. Zones consisted of local clusters of around 20 schools, both primary and secondary schools, working in partnership with parents, businesses and other local groups to tackle disadvantage and improve standards. Each Zone was to be managed by an ‘Action Forum’ that would enable non-professionals to take a leadership role in creating change. Zones were encouraged to be flexible, to promote innovation in curriculum and in the management of teaching staff, to build partnerships that crossed professional and administrative boundaries. It was claimed that Zones would work because they would be strongly led by businesses, who were encouraged to bring ‘new skills, experience, funding and radical ways of working into education’ (Department for Education and Employment [DfEE], 1997). Business was invoked in the Zones as the model of efficiency and innovatory practice:
There is a close link between raising student aspirations and business involvement in education. The private sector can ask a number of questions and raise issues that it would be difficult for the public sector to do. Business can provide a strategic focus and financial support. (DfEE Zone Liason officer)
Research in the Zones, based on a study of three Zones in their start-up period, and involving documentary analysis, observation of meetings and
interviews with the main participants (see Alexiadou & Lawn, 2000; Jones & Bird, 2000; Ozga & Pye, 2000) suggests some considerable difficulties attendant on their emergence as models of new forms of networked governance and self-management. Indeed the EAZ programme has been discontinued, absorbed into another initiative (Excellence in Cities). The evidence suggests that business had a variety of different interests in Zone involvement: