Education Privatization: Expanding spaces and new global regulatory trends in educational privatization (original) (raw)

Abstract

Education privatization and marketization are interconnected and globalizing phenomena. In the last three decades, numerous governments have adopted a broad range of pro-market reforms in the education sector, including freedom of school choice and competitive funding formulas, and private school provision has expanded in all world regions. However, pro-market policies are not the only driver of educational privatization. Far from being a univocal policy process, in education, privatization springs from a diverse range of mechanisms that go from the demand-driven expansion of private independent provision to government-initiated Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) with the private school sector. Furthermore, why and how privatization has advanced and sedimented in so many educational systems vary significantly across national and sub-national contexts. After decades of educational privatization and marketization, the impact of these trends continues to be a source of controversy. Nevertheless, in the past few years, a wide consensus about the negative effects of privatization on equity has crystallized. Comparative analysis and case studies conducted in different places have repeatedly demonstrated that the expansion of private provision tends to increase school segregation and social stratification (Alegre & Ferrer, 2010; Macpherson, Robertson & Walford, 2014). Faced with such evidence, key international organizations and civil society initiatives have advocated for adopting regulatory frameworks that allow combining the supposed benefits of private provision and school choice with certain equity standards (OECD, 2017; UNESCO, 2017; World Bank, 2017). Even civil society organizations that tend to be hostile to the very presence of private provision in educational systems consider that the public regulation debate needs to be encouraged (see The Abidjan Principles, 2019). As Rizvi (2016) points out, the current international debate 'is no longer whether private actors should be allowed in education, but rather, to what extent and how should their activities be regulated, and to what end' (p. 2). However, whether and how this

Key takeaways

AI

1. Privatization policies in education often exacerbate social stratification and inequities across different national contexts.
2. Key international organizations advocate for regulatory frameworks balancing private provision benefits with equity standards.
3. Countries like Chile and Sweden illustrate diverse motivations and political economies behind education privatization.
4. Regulatory reforms have shown modest effects on equity, facing resistance from stakeholders benefiting from the status quo.
5. The complexity of education privatization requires addressing structural transformations beyond regulatory adjustments.

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