For-profit education is increasingly prevalent within international schooling. The language of client, customer and consumer may not yet be embedded in the classroom, but international school leaders, particularly those operating in for-profit contexts, are having to respond not only to the needs of educational stakeholders but also to the commercial demands of the ‘bottom line’. This article examines the occupational tensions facing international school leaders (specifically Principals and senior managers) as they attempt to master this plural for-profit context. The role of Principals within for-profit school contexts, this article finds, is changing. Principals may define their role in educational terms but this article highlights an emerging commercial narrative, concluding that (for-profit) international school leaders are increasingly required to be personally, philosophically and ontologically at ease with simultaneous educational–commercial discourses, as well versed in the patois of commerce as they are those of education.
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