The privatisation of education

• privatisation


  • involves the transfer of public assets like schools to private companies
  • in recent years, there has been a trend towards privatisation of important aspects of education both in the UK and globally
  • in the process education becomes a source of profit for capitalists in what Ball calls the 'education services industry' or ESI
  • private companies in the ESI are involved in activities in education like building schools, providing supply teachers, Ofsted, career advice and running entire local education authorities
  • these ESI activities are very profitable, according to Ball 2007 companies involved in such work expect to make 10x as much profit as they do on other contracts
  • however local authorities are often obliged to enter into these agreements as the only way of building new schools because of a lack of funding by central government
• blurring the public/private boundary

  • many senior officials in the public sector like headteachers or local authority directors leave now to set up or to work for private sector educational businesses
  • these private companies then bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities
  • Pollack 2004 notes this flow of personnel allows companies to buy 'insider knowledge' to help them win contracts as well as side stepping local authority democracy
• privatisation and the globalisation of education policy

  • Many private companies in the education services are foreign-owned
  • Some UK education businesses work overseas, privatising and exporting UK education policy for sale abroad
  • Nation-states are becoming less important in policy-making, which is shifting to a global level and which is also often privatised
• the cola-isation of schools

  • The private sector is also penetrating education indirectly for example through vending machines in schools and the development of brand loyalty through logos, sponsorships and voucher schemes.
  • this process has been called the 'cola-isation' of schools
  • However, the benefits to schools and pupils of this private sector involvement are often limited
  • for example according to Ball a Cadburys sports equipment promotion was scrapped after it was revealed that pupils would have to eat 5440 chocolate bars just to qualify for a set of volleyball posts
• education as a commodity

  • Ball concludes that a fundamental change is taking place in which privatisation is becoming the key factor shaping educational policy
  • policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services out of the public sector controlled by the nation-state into a private one
  • in the process education is being turned into an object for private profit-making- a commodity that's bought and sold in an education market
  • academies is an example of giving public services to private capitalists
• gender policies

  • Since the 1970s, policies (like GIST - Girls Into Science & Technology) aim to reduce gender differences in subject choice
• ethnicity policies (assimilation)

  • policies in the 1960s and 70s focused on the need for pupils from minority ethnic groups to assimilate into mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement especially by helping those from whom English was not their first language
  • a related policy is that of compensatory education
  • however critics argue that some minority groups who are at risk of underachieving such as African Caribbean pupils already speak English and that the real cause of their underachievement lies in poverty and racism
• ethnicity policies (multi-cultural education)

  • MCE policies inn the 1980s-90s, aimed to promote ethnic minority children's achievement by valuing them in the curriculum-raising their self-esteem and achievement
  • however it has been criticised on many grounds
  • Stone 1981 argues black pupils don't fail due to low self-esteem, so MCE is misguided
  • Critical race theorists say MCE is tokenistic - picks out stereotypical features about minority cultures for inclusion, but fails to tackle institutional racism
  • The New Right criticise MCE for perpetuating cultural divisions as they take the view that education should promote a shared national culture and identify into which minorities should be assimilated
• social inclusion policies

  • became the focus in the 1990s to raise ethnic minority achievement
  • policies included the following
  • monitoring exam results by ethnicity
  • changing the Race Relations Act to legally ensure schools promote racial equality
  • help for voluntary 'Saturday schools' in the black community
  • EAL programmes
  • Mirza criticises these policies and says she sees little genuine change in policy
  • she argues hat instead of tackling the structural causes of ethnic inequality such as poverty and racism, educational policy still takes a 'soft' approach that focuses on culture, behaviour and the home