This article offers a brief introduction to governmentality studies and the conceptual tools that it provides to help English educators recognise the ideas and practices that education policies mobilise to steer our professions towards particular values, norms and outcomes. After a short overview of governmentality, it offers a short discussion of neoliberal or advanced liberal governmentality, the economic aims of today's education reforms, and the key policy technologies that seek to transform how English educators understand and conduct themselves. This scholarly approach might prepare academics, teachers and professional organisations for more informed and strategic engagements with the governmental regimes of data-based performance management and free markets that drive today's education policies.