Over the last 20 years, international attempts to raise educational standards and improve opportunities for all children have accelerated and proliferated. This has generated a state of constant change and an unrelenting flood of initiatives, changes and reforms that need to be `implemented' by schools. In response to this, a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating `how well' policies are realised in practice - implemented! Less attention has been paid to understanding how schools actually deal with these multiple, and sometimes contradictory, policy demands; creatively working to interpret policy texts and translate these into practices, in real material conditions and varying resources - how they are enacted! Based on a long-term qualitative study of four `ordinary' secondary schools, and working on the interface of theory with data, this book explores how schools enact, rather than implement, policy. It focuses on:










contexts of `policy work' in schools;







teachers as policy subjects;







teachers as policy actors;







policy texts, artefacts and events;







standards, behaviour and learning policies.







This book offers an original and very grounded analysis of how schools and teachers do p