Over half of England's secondary schools are now academies. While their
impact on achievement has been debated, the social and cultural outcomes
prompted by this neoliberal educational model has received less
scrutiny. This book draws on original research based at Dreamfields
Academy, a celebrated flagship secondary school in a large English city,
to show how the accelerated marketization and centralization of
education is reproducing raced, classed and gendered inequalities. The
book also examines the complex stories underlying Dreamfields' glossy
veneer of success and shows how students, teachers and parents navigate
the everyday demands of Dreamfields' results-driven conveyor belt. Hopes
and dreams are effectively harnessed and mobilized to enact insidious
forms of social control, as education develops new sites and discourses
of surveillance.