directed bureaucratic administration) linked to an advanced liberal government of the education domain. The problem with schools The argument I wish to begin with is that recent problematisations and developments have contributed to the emergence of the self-managing, entrepreneurial school and its corporate form of management. Let me draw attention to two developments within this milieu, one being a concern about the management of teachers and the other about the organisation and outcomes of schools. Teachers and the discourses of derision Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, scrutiny of the standards and quality of the teaching profession and the standards and effectiveness of education systems cast a shadow of concern over the activities of teachers and the organisation of schooling. This is not new, though. In relation to the quality of teaching, the probity of teachers has been an ongoing concern in the administration of schooling, as witnessed by the school Inspectorates and ‘payment by results’ regimes of the nineteenth century (Silver 1994). The existence of this concern is hardly surprising given that teachers have such an important role in cultivating socially adjusted and productive citizens for the nation, and that they do this with a high degree of autonomy. Who, for instance, knows what really goes on in the thousands of closed classrooms around the nation every minute of every school day? In the latter part of the twentieth century, concerns for the standards and quality of teachers coalesced in a ‘discourse of derision’ (Ball 1990b) that brought the ethical and authoritative standing of teachers and the ‘educational establishment’ into question. Teachers were accused of being politically motivated, self-interested, deterministic in their thinking (Rutter et al. 1979), and insulated from accountability. Teachers, particularly progressive teachers, were frequently denounced as a threat to educational standards, and deemed responsible for social indiscipline, crime, violence and even economic downturn. Reflecting the advanced liberal rationalities discussed previously, this discourse of distrust and derision scrutinised the authority of experts, bureaucracies and the institutions of the state from the point of view of an increasingly ‘empowered’ citizenry. Evidence of this was the creation in these public attacks of a divide between what many perceived to be the antagonistic interests of the public, and the ‘education establishment’, which included teachers. The goodness and reasonableness of citizens was opposed to the supposedly self-interested and dangerous teaching profession, with the latter described as “those ‘experts’, ‘specialists’ and ‘professionals’” and the “‘educational establishment’” (Ball 1990b, 18). In short, the ‘educational establishment’ appeared to frustrate the power of free citizens. While Ball’s description of the discourse of derision describes the situation in the United Kingdom, conservatives in the public debate in Australia throughout the 1980s also whipped up a sense of crisis and panic by construing teachers and education bureaucrats as subversive agents who wielded too much authority without proper public accountability. The dichotomous nature of the discourse of derision identified by Ball was also evident in Australia:
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