This book draws on empirical research conducted at Dreamfields Academy, a celebrated secondary academy in a large English city. The author explores how the heightened marketisation and centralisation of education instigated through academisation is reproducing raced, classed and gendered inequalities. Over half of England's secondary schools are now academies that receive funding directly from central government and operate as autonomous businesses. Academies' impact on achievement levels has been hotly debated, but the social and cultural changes prompted by this model have received less scrutiny.

Dreamfields' 'structure liberates' ethos claims to free students from a culture of poverty through hard discipline. Its headteacher assumes the role of business executive, saviour, pioneering cowboy and military commander leading a redemptive troupe of teachers who act as 'surrogate parents' salvaging 'urban children'. With its regimented routines and outstanding results, Dreamfields has received praise from across the political spectrum.

This book examines the complex stories underlying the glossy veneer of success by exploring how persistent structural inequalities are concealed beneath the colour-blind rhetoric of aspirational citizenship. The book traces how students, teachers and parents navigate the everyday demands of Dreamfields' results-driven conveyor belt, as raced and classed inequalities are reshaped in new ways, and spaces of democratic participation are foreclosed. The book also explores how the hopes and dreams of students, parents and teachers are harnessed and mobilized to enact insidious forms of social control, as education develops new sites and discourses of surveillance.