This article explores the increasing commercialisation of education through the empirical case of Teach For All, a network of social enterprises which is spreading a new model of teacher training across Europe and around the world. This model, which is supported and funded by a heterogeneous mix of public institutions and private sector organisations, is not only opening up public education to private involvement and influence, but it is also reshaping what it means to be a teacher. The substantive argument that we present here is that commercialisation is not only about making money (which is certainly being achieved through this kind of heterarchical network), but also about making people up as commercial and enterprising subjects. Drawing on the idea of neoliberalism as both a material process of economisation, and a form of governmentality, we weave together an analysis which considers the interrelations between profit, the subjectivities of the Teach For All teacher, and the governance of teacher education in Europe.

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Character education has enjoyed a resurgence of interest among education practitioners and policy makers in recent years in different national contexts. In England, the publication of a 'Character and Resilience Manifesto' by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility in 2014 put character education on the government's agenda, primarily as a means to improve social mobility.Drawing on Foucault's notion of 'problematization', this article examines how 'problems' and 'solutions' are constructed and legitimised through expert knowledges in the Manifesto. We find that by drawing on evidence from psychology and behavioural economics, 'character' is predominantly understood as a set of skills and dispositions to be developed in order to boost individual labour market outcomes and wider economic growth. Contextualising the findings in Foucault's work on 'governmentality' and 'biopolitics', we argue that the call for character education is part of a wider intensification of the demand for self-government and self-investmenta demand that is particularly pronounced for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The article concludes with some reflections on the urgent need to critically interrogate the assumptions, expert discourses and values underpinning current forms of character education.

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