This paper explores school reform in England under the Conservative-led Coalition government, elected in 2010, through a focus on the changing roles and status of Local Authorities (LAs). The Coalition's stated aim was the development of a 'self-improving, school-led' system in which LAs should become 'champions for children'. The paper draws on two locality case studies and a set of future scenarios and policy narratives to analyse the ways in which LAs and school leaders are responding to reform. The paper concludes that the Coalition focused its attention on structural reform, but that this placed an additional onus on leadership agency within local school systems to shape contextually appropriate solutions. The schools in the two areas studied appear to have become more fragmented and yet – paradoxically – more networked; however, they are not yet working in the 'deep partnerships' envisaged by Hargreaves (2010). This has meant that the LAs have needed to sustain their traditional roles (for example, in providing challenge and support to schools), whilst simultaneously evolving new ways of working (for example, providing 'bridging social capital'). These roles may sometimes be in tension, but are driven by different factors: LA-level accountability in the case of challenge and support, and reduced funding in the case of 'bridging social capital'. This suggests that the Coalition's conflicting policy narratives were in tension and that the notion of LAs as 'champions for children' requires review.

This paper examines the impetus for schools to engage in and with evidence in England's self-improving school system. It begins with an examination of how the education policy environment has changed; shifting from predominantly top down approaches to school improvement to the current government's focus on schools themselves sourcing and sharing effective practice to facilitate systemlevel change. The paper then explores some of the key factors likely to determine whether schools engage in meaningful evidence use, before analyzing survey data from 696 primary school practitioners working in 79 schools. The paper concludes by highlighting where schools appear to be well and under-prepared for a future of evidence-informed self-improvement. Educational evidence rarely translates into simple, linear changes in practice in the ways that 'what works' advocates might hope. Instead, it is suggested that evidence must be combined with practitioner expertise to create new knowledge which improves decision-making and enriches practice so that, ultimately, children's learning is enhanced (Cain, 2015). It is also felt that professional values and ethics should inform any such process, so that teachers retain a focus on 'what matters' as well as 'what works'? At the same time, however, it is also argued that any pandering to professional prejudice should be avoided: so while the quality and rigour of the evidence is important, it is also key that practitioners themselves possess the skills, motivation and support required to access and critique evidence, whilst overcoming 'activity traps': i.e. taking quick decisions based on personal judgements, which, in themselves, are often not reliable as well as being susceptible to biases (Katz and Dack, 2013; Barends, Rousseau, Briner, 2014). Adding to this complexity is that there has been little research undertaken to provide an evidence base on effective evidence-use (Levin et al., 2013; Nelson and O'Beirne, 2014; Cain, 2015) and so provide support to either side of the debate; likewise there are no acknowledged practical systems or processes that have been adopted across the piece to represent effective or preferred ways to connect evidence to practice. While this situation is now being addressed through initiatives such as the Education Endowment Foundation's £1.4m investment in projects focusing on approaches to increasing the use of research in schools, it will take a number of years before the evaluations of these projects emerge; and longer still before any meta-analysis or synthesis of them might be undertaken and used to provide an overarching frame outlining effective and less effective ways to connect research-topractice.

Relatively few studies have explored the ways in which 'middle tier' institutional arrangements in education, such as school districts and local authorities, are responding to New Public Management reforms characterized by centralization, decentralization, marketization and disintermediation. This paper analyses these issues, drawing on governance and path dependency theories, together with evidence from five locality case studies in England. It finds that the process and impact of 'middle tier' disintermediation is uneven and often fraught, with significant implications for place-based coherence, equity and legitimacy. It shows how national hierarchical mechanisms work in concert to require and/or incentivise change across local school systems, most obviously by reducing the remit and capacity of traditional Local Authorities. This process can open up new opportunities for emerging and existing actors to work together through network and community forms of governance to counteract the negative impact of fragmentation, a process dub 'middle out' change. However, responses and outcomes vary widely across the five localities and productive 'middle out' change is by no means a given, so the article analyses the processes at work and their impact across different contexts. It concludes by assessing implications for research, policy and practice in contemporary education systems.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the development of school autonomy, school leadership and curriculum innovation in England over the past 40 years. It provides a baseline picture for the wider international study on school autonomy and curriculum innovation. Design/methodology/approach An initial literature review was undertaken, including policy document analysis. Interviews and observations were undertaken with participants on a pilot professional programme for school leaders seeking to develop their school curriculum. Findings While all schools in England have needed to adapt their curricula to reflect the new National Curriculum introduced from 2014, relatively few schools appear to have used this opportunity to design genuinely innovative curricula that respond to the changing needs of learners in the twenty-first century. This includes the academies and free schools – currently around one in four schools – which are not legally required to follow the National Curriculum. The authors posit that leadership agency by principals and their professional teams is more important than policy/legal freedoms for securing curriculum innovation. Such agency appears to depend on the capacity and confidence of leaders to shape an alternative and innovative curriculum in the face of structural constraints, in particular England’s sharp accountability system, effectively making these leaders “rebels against the system”. Research limitations/implications The empirical findings are preliminary and based on a small convenience sample. Originality/value Given England’s position as a relatively extreme example of high-autonomy-high-accountability quasi-market school reforms this paper provides valuable insights on school autonomy and curriculum innovation that can inform policy and practice more widely.

This article reviews the literature and explores the institutional and systemic factors that help and/or hinder change and innovation across school systems, with a focus on evidence from England. A number of authors have argued that schools and school systems need to become more innovative and adaptive if they are to meet the needs of 21st-century societies and economies. Quasi-market models premised on school autonomy, parental choice and vertical accountability have been seen as the best way to secure innovation, but the evidence of success remains thin. The article analyses four examples of change and finds that system-wide change is possible, but requires strong and sustained political support and capacity building within a values-based framework that allows for local agency and adaptation. It concludes by drawing out three implications: the need to prioritise ‘professional’ as well as ‘structural’ autonomy; the potential for vertical accountability frameworks to condition the ways in which parents perceive and value innovation; and the need to enhance the legitimacy of innovation in the eyes of education’s key stakeholders.