Objects and subjects of risk: A governmentality approach to education governance

Across the globe school autonomy reforms have been criticised for opening up public assets to various dangers or risks, from misappropriation of public monies by private sponsors to secretive governance structures maintained by homophilic groups. While these risks are not the exclusive product of school autonomy reforms, they are an endemic feature of the conditions made possible by these reforms, namely ‘depoliticisation’, ‘corporatisation’, ‘endogenous privatisation’, and ‘disintermediation’. In response international organisations and national governments have called for improved accountability amid fears of corruption and governance failure. In this paper we take a fresh look at the existing literature on school autonomy through a unique focus on risk as a rationality of government. Specifically, we adopt a governmentality perspective of school autonomy reforms in England and Australia to capture the significance of risk to recalibrations of education governance.