Anatomy of a Professionalization Project : Bloomsbury Academic : 9781474282536 : 1474282539 : 21 Apr 2016 : Public services have been a target for reform in Western-style democracies for more than three decades. This volume documents and examines the case of School Business Managers (SBMs) as an example of a growing but scarcely-acknowledged phenomenon: the government-backed creation of new 'professions' within the public sector for groups of support workers not formally recognised as such. The dawn of the millennium saw the beginning of an unprecedented professional project as the New Labour government set about the systematic creation of a pool of suitably skilled and qualified School Business Managers in England. The Government's stated purpose was to support educational leaders in meeting mounting public expectations for state schools in increasingly complex and challenging circumstances.Although the 'war stories' of lead professionals such as teachers and physicians in the contex