Privatisation, Education and Social Justice

Geoffrey Walford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138954397
• eBook ISBN: 9781317356592
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Privatisation in and of education is a process that takes many different forms, and is deeply controversial. While the shift in who pays is certainly an important dimension of privatisation, there have also been changes in the management, provision, and delivery of schooling. In most of the economically developed world, discussion about the privatisation of education is now several decades old, and yet new forms of privatisation are still being developed and old forms being applied to new situations.

This book examines the concept and nature of privatisation, and explores the impacts of privatisation in terms of social justice. The authors extend various arguments about the processes, and provide new research and critique. Some believe that privatisation can lead to increasing social justice for the poor, while others argue the exact opposite. This volume contributes to theoretical conceptions of social justice and education as well as providing up-to-date research results.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Oxford Review of Education.

Privatisation, education and social justice: Introduction

Geoffrey Walford

University of Oxford, UK

In practically all countries the division between the private and state sectors of education has never been firmly fixed. In most countries schooling originally developed through fee-paying schools provided by entrepreneurs, charities and religious groups, but for the last 200 years or so state-funded and provided schooling gradually developed for children from families that could not afford to pay fees. In the decades after the Second World War the near universal trend was increasing state provision and funding for schooling and for private schooling to decrease in scale, but in the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century there has been a reversal, with privatisation in and of schooling being a common feature in many countries. This privatisation has been highly controversial for private schooling has traditionally been associated with elitism and privilege, and many have questioned the effects of such changes in terms of social justice.

Privatisation in and of education is a process and a direction of travel, and it is one that takes many different forms. It is not simply about whether the state or families pay for children’s schooling, for there are several dimensions along which there can be more or less non-state involvement. While the shift in who pays is certainly an important dimension of privatisation, there have also been changes in the management, provision and delivery of schooling. The process can be gradual or rapid; it can be instigated by central governments or started by the acts of individuals or families. In most Western societies, the provision of tables and chairs, or textbooks and photocopiers, or blackboards and electronic whiteboards has long been done by profit-making companies in the private sector. But recently there has been an expansion of private involvement. In England, for example, many schools have privatised the service provision of food, cleaning or security, and some local authorities have employed external profit-making companies to plan and manage their whole schooling provision. Temporary replacement supply teachers are often now provided through for-profit companies. Highly controversial Public–Private Partnerships have allowed private companies to build and manage government-funded schools for substantial long-term profit. City Technology Colleges, Academies and free schools have allowed companies, charities and community groups into the management and provision of individual schools even though the funding is still predominantly from the state.

In most of the economically developed world discussion about the privatisation of education is now several decades old. Yet, new forms of privatisation are still being developed and old forms applied to new situations. In developing and middle-income countries there has often remained a heavy dependence on schools that charge fees and it is only in a very few communist states, such as Cuba, that all education has been under the complete control of the state. In countries such as India, Pakistan and many areas of Africa, privatisation has been largely from the bottom-up as families have come to believe that the state-provided, managed and funded schools are failing their children. There has been a dramatic growth in low-fee private schools, usually owned by entrepreneurs, which aim to provide schooling that is slightly better than the nearby government schools but at a very low cost.

There has been considerable debate about the effects of privatisation on the poor and on social justice. The World Bank has been a dominant force for the extension of privatisation schemes and believes that the expansion of private schooling will increase equity and help various countries meet their Education For All targets and Millennium Development Goals. In contrast, many researchers and commentators have argued that the effects of privatisation have been in the opposite direction.

This collection of papers is linked to the Privatisation in Education Research Initiative (PERI) funded by the Open Society Foundation’s Education Support Programme. That Initiative funded several research studies in South Asia, South East Asia and Africa and the results of these studies are appearing elsewhere. Several of the contributors have been involved with that Initiative, but the driving force behind this collection is the desire to examine in more depth the concept and nature of privatisation and to explore what might be meant by the concept of social justice, and the impacts of privatisation in terms of social justice.

Privatisation in education is deeply controversial and these papers extend various arguments about the process and provide new research and critique. The collection does not attempt to try to cover the complete diversity of forms that privatisation has taken in many countries, nor does it present a single viewpoint. Some contributors believe that privatisation can lead to increasing social justice for the poor, while others are much more sceptical. The collection contributes to theoretical conceptions of social justice and education as well as providing up-to-date research results.

In the first paper Susan Robertson and Roger Dale explore both the privatisation and globalisation of education. They argue that a traditional Rawlsian view of social justice is limited. Much discussion of social justice has focused on the re/distribution of educational inputs and outputs which, although important, fails to pay sufficient consideration to wider structural aspects that produce these distributions. They draw on the work of Marion Young and her concept of ‘the basic structure’ and use her ‘social connection model’ to develop a relational account of social justice at a time of rapidly changing governance in and of education. They then apply this model to the cases of shadow schooling and Public-Private Partnerships focussing on the outcomes as well as the outputs of such privatising practices.

The following paper by James Tooley uses the example of low-fee private schools to question definitions and realities of social justice. He shows that low-fee private schools are greatly expanding in poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and elsewhere, and that they are serving a majority (urban and peri-urban) or significant minority (rural) of the poor, including significant proportions of the poorest of the poor. Tooley challenges the Rawlsian framework of social justice based on ideas of the need for equal opportunity that is held by many educational philosophers and researchers. Instead he wishes to follow the work of Amartya Sen who argues for a comparative approach, grounded in the practicalities of human behaviour. Rather than seek the Holy Grail of educational equality of opportunity (and hence of social justice), Tooley argues that we should try to help the least advantaged. Following Sen, he sees social justice as not merely about trying to achieve—or dreaming about achieving—some perfectly just society or social arrangements, but about preventing manifestly severe injustice. This means that those interested in social justice in situations of grassroots privatisation, such as low-fee private schools, should help improve access to, and quality in, the low-cost private school sector, rather than focus on the public education sector. Paradoxically, this could be true even for those whose ideal is an egalitarian public education system.

Sally Power and Chris Taylor’s discussion is in terms of the complex relationship between social justice and education in the public and private spheres. Their paper challenges the neat representation of the public and the private spheres being aligned on either side of a battle between left and right, the state and the market, and where social justice is commonly seen as the prerogative of the public sphere. It shows how the language of what counts as public and private in education is historically specific, culturally contingent and ideologically loaded. They also argue that, just as the public and private spheres are multi-faceted, so too is social justice. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, they distinguish between the three dimensions of social injustice—economic, cultural and political—and their respective politics of redistribution, recognition and representation. They suggest that, even when it is possible to distinguish clearly between the public and the private, their relationship with social justice is still not straightforward and are related differently to each of the three dimensions. They argue that while the state may be able to promote social justice along some dimensions, it may exacerbate social injustice along others, and show that this complex, and sometimes contradictory, relationship may be fostered or hindered through increasing or decreasing public or private sector involvement in the areas of funding, provision and decision-making.

This is followed by a paper by Mark Bray, who in the last decade has become the most significant researcher into private supplementary tutoring, or ‘shadow schooling’. Once almost ignored by educational research, private tutoring has now been shown to be a major feature of many education systems. Bray charts the scale and nature of private supplementary tutoring around the world, highlighting its existence in both high-income and low-income countries. He then examines social justice through the lens of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document still underpins the work of the United Nations and its collaborators, and is a core component of the Education for All (EFA) movement of which UNESCO is the lead agency. In particular, the Declaration states that everyone has the right to education and that education should be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. While much advocacy and even some national constitutions continue to espouse these principles, behind the façade of fee-free public provision of education are increasing volumes of private supplementary tutoring. In some societies, investment in tutoring has in effect become obligatory for families with visions of even modest social advance. Bray reviews the extent to which UNESCO and its counterpart bodies recognise the existence of this tutoring and build it into their advocacy and operational agendas. The paper then discusses whether this clause of the UN Declaration of Human Rights still has pertinence in contemporary times and, if so, what should be done about it.

Christopher Lubienski’s focus is on American Charter Schools. Over the last two decades, US policymakers have advocated this particular form of independently managed school in the hopes of fostering more equitable access to quality educational options, particularly for disadvantaged children, through increased market competition. The paper first discusses the ways in which charter schools can and cannot be seen as privatisation. While critics see charter schools as a form of privatisation, proponents argue that they are public schools because of government funding and accountability procedures and because they believe that they will lead to greater equity and public good.

The paper reviews the empirical evidence on charter schools and shows that the marketised environment that they are intended to nurture serves as a route for profit-seeking strategies. Lubienski argues that there is de facto privatisation in function if not in form, in that these schools often act like profit-seeking entities. Over time, the competitive conditions cause many schools—including those established with a social justice ethos—to adopt practices that limit access for disadvantaged students. Charter schools find themselves with conflicting goals and serve as entry points for private organisations seeking to penetrate the publicly funded education sector. Of even greater concern is that charter schools are an example of the privatisation of policymaking. Public policymakers are outsourcing policymaking to non-governmental organisations and elite individuals and undermining the democratic process.

The paper by Henry M. Levin, Ilja Cornelisz and Barbara Hanisch-Cerda provides a framework for analysing quasi-markets in education and for considering the potential effects of privatisation. It then applies this framework to the Netherlands, a school system where two thirds of the schools are privately sponsored. The paper takes the view that social justice in education refers to the expectation that the education system provides fairness in its access to opportunities and results. The authors conclude that the Dutch system, thanks to a series of policies and regulations in place, performs relatively well on social justice, when looking at freedom of choice and overall productive efficiency. However, for equity and social cohesion, despite clear policy efforts, the privatised system seems to undermine social justice for certain groups in the population. They then highlight the dilemma found in this example that some private benefits of education must be compromised to achieve greater equity and social cohesion. The extent to which these tradeoffs are made is a central question for policy makers.

The contribution by Geoffrey Walford compares two schemes designed to help the poor in very different countries. Section 12 of the Indian Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (the RTE Act) enforces the reservation of 25% of the entry-level seats in all private schools for students from economically and socially disadvantaged families. The Indian government will pay schools a per-child fee, or the actual school fee if that is lower. This substantial funding, and accompanying ideological support, for private sector schools is justified mainly in terms of the need to meet Education for All targets. This paper argues that there are many similarities between this scheme and the Assisted Places Schemes that ran in Great Britain from 1980 until 1997. It examines the similarities and differences between the two schemes and draws conclusions about the potential effects of the Indian scheme on social justice based on the evaluations of the British scheme.

The final paper from Joanna Härmä examines schooling in Lagos, which is home to over 12,000 private schools catering to families from the ultra-rich to the relatively poor, with many schools targeting those of lower socio-economic status. Government schools were intended to provide a just and equitable option for all; however, they have not kept pace with demand in terms of both capacity and quality, causing concerned parents to look elsewhere. This paper draws on original household survey data to investigate why parents living in slums are prepared to pay a high proportion of their incomes to access fee-paying primary education for their children, and discusses the equity implications of this situation. The paper uses data from the first comprehensive private school census conducted in Lagos during the school year 2010–2011. It is found that parents choose private schools because government schools are perceived to be failing (or too far from home), but that these parents have higher expectations than can be met by private schools run on incredibly tight budgets with often untrained teachers. It is thus highly questionable that under such circumstances social justice can be served through this scenario.

The social justice implications of privatisation in education governance frameworks: a relational account

Susan L. Robertson and Roger Dale

University of Bristol, UK

This paper explores the social justice implications of two, ‘linked’, governance developments which have been instrumental in reshaping many education systems throughout the world: the ‘privatising’ and ‘globalising’ of education (Klees, Stromquist, & Samoff, 2012). We argue that such education governance innovations demand an explicit engagement with social justice theories, both in themselves, and as offering an opportunity to address issues of social justice that go beyond the re/distribution of education inputs and outputs, important though these are, and which take account of the political and accountability issues raised by globalising of education governance activity. To do this we draw upon Iris Marion Young’s concept of ‘the basic structure’ and her ‘social connection model’ of responsibility (Young, 2006a,b) to develop a relational account of justice in education governance frameworks.

Introduction

Social justice in education … not only concerns equality in the distribution of an education service (important as fair distribution is). Social justice concerns the nature of the service itself, and the consequences for society through time. (Connell, 2012, p. 681)

The structures, processes and practices of education governance frameworks matter, because they shape the form, pattern and scope of education policies and practices, the opportunities they provide, and the outcomes they enable. Education governance frameworks, therefore, both intrinsically and necessarily, have social justice implications in that they structure, and are ‘strategically selective’ (Jessop, 2005) of, some interests, life chances and social trajectories over others. The power and reach of education lies in the fact it is the only formal institution (aside from the family) that all individuals in societies are required to pass through. And as Connell (2012, p. 681) reminds us: ‘… schools and colleges do not just produce culture, they shape the new society that is coming into existence all around us’. This makes it all the more important that as far as possible education is a ‘just institution’ (Rothstein, 1998).

This paper explores the social justice implications of two, ‘linked’, governance developments which have been instrumental in reshaping many education systems throughout the world: the ‘privatising’ and ‘globalising’ of education (Klees et al., 2012). Current forms of privatising and globalising in and of education are connected together by a common political project—that of neo-liberalism. This is important in two ways. First, the ‘private’ in education is increasingly constituted out of market relations. This, in turn, redefines the nature of individuals, and their relationships to each other and to institutions. Second, changes in the scales from which education is governed, with growing power being concentrated in globally-influential actors and agencies, raises questions around where decisions are made, and where and how obligations and responsibilities might be negotiated and adjudicated.

We will be arguing that such education governance innovations demand an explicit engagement with social justice theories, both in themselves, and as offering an opportunity to address issues of social justice that go beyond the re/distribution of education inputs and outputs, important though these are, and to take account of the political and accountability issues raised by globalising of education governance activity. To do this we draw upon Iris Marion Young’s concept of ‘the basic structure’ and her ‘social connection model’ of responsibility (Young, 2006a, b) to develop a relational account of justice in education governance frameworks.

The paper is developed in the following way. We begin by outlining a relational approach to social justice drawing on the work of Young. We then suggest a way of looking at education governance as a set of distributional/relational practices and the selectivities that are promoted as a result of neo-liberalism as a political project. The final section of the paper explores the social justice implications of several different forms of privatisation in education governance frameworks as a means of illustrating what a relational account might offer.

A relational justice approach

In her seminal paper on ‘mapping the territory’, Sharon Gewirtz sets out the basis of an engagement between education policy and social justice theories, noting that social justice in education tends to be taken as synonymous with distributional justice—that is, the fair distribution of relevant resources (Gewirtz, 1998, p. 470). Such distributional justice arguments underpinned the Education For All (EFA) campaigns launched in the 1990s, and the subsequent Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at making education ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Privatisation, education and social justice: Introduction
• 2. The social justice implications of privatisation in education governance frameworks: a relational account
• 3. Challenging educational injustice: ‘Grassroots’ privatisation in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa
• 4. Social justice and education in the public and private spheres
• 5. Behind the façade of fee-free education: shadow education and its implications for social justice
• 6. Privatising form or function? Equity, outcomes and influence in American charter schools
• 7. Does educational privatisation promote social justice?
• 8. State support for private schooling in India: What do the evaluations of the British Assisted Places Schemes suggest?
• 9. Access or quality? Why do families living in slums choose low-cost private schools in Lagos, Nigeria?
• Index