Conference Program

The expansion of the academies programme in England since 2000 has profoundly reshaped school governance, particularly through the growth of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs). As schools move from local authority oversight to trust-based control in the form of MATs, traditional stakeholder models of governance grounded in election, parental representation and local democratic accountability, have increasingly been displaced by professionalised forms framed by managerialism and corporatisation (Healey, 2024; Wilkins 2017). These emphasise risk management, performance metrics and skills-based appointments.

This transformation raises a central question aligned with this panel: under what conditions does professionalized governance protect democracy, and when does it operate as a vehicle of dominance and depoliticisation? In the context of MATification, I argue that professionalisation is frequently mobilised as a technology of managerial control rather than as a democratic resource. Executive leaders and trustees consolidate authority through appeals to expertise, compliance and corporate responsibility, while parental and community actors are repositioned as consultative or symbolic participants.

Drawing on Mouffe’s (1999) theory of agonistic pluralism, I conceptualise school governance as an inherently political space structured by competing values and interests. However, organisational and hybrid forms of professionalism within MATs often reframe political disagreement as risk, inefficiency or reputational threat. Governance is cast as a technical practice oriented towards consensus and performance, rather than as a forum for contestation and value negotiation.

Empirically, the paper draws on interviews and observations from an ethnographic study of three MATs. I illuminate how professionalised governance structures privilege managerial authority over democratic deliberation and narrow the space for dissent. Parental engagement is frequently repurposed as a mechanism for securing legitimacy and compliance, rather than enabling meaningful participation in decision-making. In this context, parents are positioned less as democratic actors mediating competing claims and more as recipients of professional judgement.

These dynamics foreground the educational dimension inherent in professionalism. Professional practice involves the transmission of knowledge from “experts” (executive leaders, governance professionals, trustees) to “lay” actors (parents and communities). Legitimated in the name of public interest or improved outcomes, this pedagogic function extends beyond technical matters to shaping expectations, orientations and acceptable forms of conduct. Under neoliberal conditions marked by individualisation and depoliticisation, such processes risk reinforcing asymmetries, paternalism and subtle forms of institutional domination.

Against these trends, I mobilise agonistic pluralism to reimagine democratic professionalism in school governance. Rather than treating conflict as dysfunction, an agonistic approach understands disagreement as constitutive of democratic life. I ( argue for reopening political space within MAT governance through parent-led bodies with genuine decision-making authority, publicly accountable forums that legitimise contestation, and collaborative policymaking processes that recognise dissent as a democratic necessity.

The paper contributes to debates on professionalism in contemporary public governance by showing how organisational professionalism within hybrid governance arrangements can both enable and constrain democracy. It reframes parental engagement as a contested political space shaped by asymmetrical power relations and invites reflection on how professionalism in education might move from being a vehicle of depoliticisation to a practice of “doing democracy” in neoliberal times.