Description: This paper presents findings from an interdisciplinary doctoral thesis on the changing discourse of governance in education policy. In a critical discourse approach to the political economy of education policy, the research drew on a neo-Marxist theory of the capitalist state to position education in relation to the wider social formation. In order to examine patterns of historical change the study examined UK education policy documents dating from 1972 to 2005. With the aid of corpus linguistic computer software, a range of critical discourse analytical methods was used to investigate the representation and legitimation of shifting identities, roles and power relations involved in governing education in the late capitalist state. The results of this study indicate the increased prominence of managerial discourse in the post-Thatcher era of educational governance. At the organisational level, the move towards 'governance' and away from 'government' in the late capitalist state is partly a matter of devising new techniques for governing increasing social and economic complexity (Jessop, 1996). In the UK context, the attempt gave prominence to the role of new managerialism, whereby new techniques of organisation and mechanisms of control were overlaid onto existing systems of bureau-professional public management (Clarke and Newman, 1997; Newman, 2001). The policy documents analysed revealed not only a general increase in the discourse of managerialism, but a particular linguistic construction which it is argued helps enact a managerial model of governance. Its prominent use under New Labour is discussed in relation to neoliberal continuities with the preceding Conservative governments, as well as its role in re-defining social justice in terms of a skills-based workfare model of social inclusion.