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Rapid policy-driven changes have presented challenges for allschools, but in areas of high socio-economic deprivation–traditionally difficult areas for governing bodies to operate–these challenges have been magnified. Some of the most recent research into issues faced by governors in these areas is documented in a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (see Dean et al, 2007). Although the report also emphasises that many of the problems encountered by schools resonate with all governing bodies, it makes the point that they are compounded by the difficulties of working in areas of high socio economic deprivation. This chapter draws on a case study of governors in two multi academy trusts in areas of deprivation. Using interview data it explores how governors working in these challenging areas make sense of their work and environment. It concludes that although conditions are undoubtedly very challenging, governors have a profound sense of community and the school’s role within it.

Education is not a top priority for newspaper editors and stories on education are often squeezed out in order to give priority to areas such as health, social care or immigration. In terms of journalistic reporting, as one ex-education editor put it in May 2014: “[You] are more likely to find education reporters that are or have been school governors than have reported on it”–a fact borne out by this particular analysis. This chapter looks to contextualise reporting on school governors within the period 2008-2015 taking a granular approach to investigating the changes in the ways in which school governing was framed during this period.

The lack of a proper and robust system of accountability and local oversight was thought to be one of the principal reasons why the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair was allowed to gain such traction, and why it resulted in such a profound crisis for education and for school governance in England. This chapter analyses the cultural, social and political factors that have influenced democratic accountability in education since the post war consensus. Placing it in the context of accountability of public services, it outlines evolutionary changes in terms of what constitutes democratic accountability. The chapter also investigates what impact the English inspection system has had on educational accountability and how this in turn has influenced the policies and practices of school governing.

This book set out to examine how political and cultural changes have affected the governance of English schools and how one particular episode, the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair, brought to light the many issues created largely due to intense and rapid changes within the structure of English education. In this the final chapter, I examine how the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair became a catalyst for even greater and more sweeping changes to governing policy and practices, and discuss the implications of these for democratic school governance in England.

The ‘Trojan Horse’ affair did not occur in isolation, but in common with many such ‘defining episodes’ manifested in the guise of a culmination of a number of factors: contextual, cultural and political. One of the defining factors surrounding the event was the way in which it was crafted by the media and manipulated by both the media and the government to such an extent that it became impossible to understand whether this was an education scandal or terrorist threat. In order to examine the event in more detail and to examine why it was so influential in terms of later policymaking, this chapter places the affair within the context of what is known as the ‘mediatisation of education policy’–a field of research that explores and examines the complex ways in which the media influences and shapes policy