In the past 25 years, the English education system has experienced a substantial growth in alternative provision, that is, publicly funded schools that accept students from the general population without selection, but provide an educational setting different to the traditional, locally provided schools. Introduced in 2000 by the Labour Party, academies are the most significant example of current alternative-provision policy. Debates over the academies programme and subsequent reforms have invoked numerous references to foreign examples, most frequently citing Swedish friskolor and US charter schools. In an effort to answer the question "how did we get to where we are now?", this paper applies existing policy borrowing research in order to understand the role of the foreign example in these debates. Findings suggest that while it is often asserted that ideas are borrowed from Swedish and US examples, the resulting English policies are not identical to those in either foreign country. Thus rather than serving as a model for English policy development, foreign examples are used to legitimise policy decisions in the English context.