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Privatisation of Education - Coggle Diagram
Privatisation of Education
Increasing Privatisation
Private companies in ESI are increasingly involved in education: building schools (e.g. co-op academies), providing supply teachers, work-based learning, careers advice, OFSTED inspection services, food catering, even running entire LEAs.
Public-private partnerships:
private sector companies provide funding to design, build and operate educational services. Large-scale school building projects often involve PPPs.
Recent trend towards privatisation of important aspects of education in the UK and globally. Education has become a source of profit for capitalists in the Education Services Industry (ESI)
Ball (2007)
Many of these activities= very profitable. Companies involved expect to make 10x more profit than on other contracts.
LEAs often "forced" into these agreements as it's the only way to build new schools (lack of funding from central government)
Blurring the public/private boundary
2 companies set up like this hold 4/ 5 national contracts for school inspection services
Pollack (2004)
: this flow of personnel allows companies to buy "insider knowledge" to help win contracts, as well as side-stepping local authority democracy.
Many senior officials in
public
sector (directors of local authorities, headteachers) are leaving to work for
private
sector education businesses. These companies compete for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities.
Cola-isation of Schools
Molnar (2005):
schools are targeted by private companies because they have a valuable reputation that gives legitimacy to brands associated with them- they are a form of product endorsement
Private sector is also indirectly infiltrating schools:
vending machines on school premises
development of brand loyalty through displays of logos and sponsorship e.g. on textbooks, uniforms, technology
Globalisation of Education
Foreign Ownership
Contracts for educational services in the UK are often sold by the original company and bought by overseas companies= many private companies working in the education sector are foreign-owned.
Buckingham and Scanlon (2005):
UK's 4 leading educational software companies are all owned by global multinationals.
Edexcel is owned by Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries and generates approximately 60% of its sales in North America
Global Educational Policy
Countries are becoming less important in policy making, it is instead shifting to a global level:
Private companies are exporting UK education policy (e.g. OFSTED-type inspections) to other countries and providing the services to deliver the policies.
Hancock
: UK economy makes £18 billion per year from exporting their education services abroad e.g. Dubai
Foreign countries have influenced British policy e.g. Free Schools were first set up in Sweden, now over 557 in the UK. Michael Gove has also claimed his new curriculum combined the best educational practices of Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland and USA.
Global Competition and Economy
PISA (2000):
an international assessment that measures 15 year old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy in countries across the globe and ranks their performance
New Labour 1998-2010:
Introduced National Literacy and numeracy strategy to boost UK standing on PISA
Govs argue that education should produce workers who are able to compete in a global economy by giving them the skills necessary to be economic assets in a global market. e.g. New Vocationalism introduced so students would have the skills to be more equipped for the labour market when they leave school. Since most unskilled factory work has all moved abroad, British workers need to be better educated in order to get jobs at all.
The British education system has become increasingly shaped to compete in the global economic race against other countries. Schools now compete in a global league table e.g. PISA.
Economic globalisation has meant increased competition from abroad. British students today expected to spend longer in education (e.g. increased school leaving age to 18, New Labour encouragement of pupils to stay on to HE).
Establishment of global ICT companies such as Google and Apple= a part of economic globalisation. These institutions are now involved in writing curriculums, providing online learning materials to various governments around the world= education is increasingly shaped by Transnational Corporations who make a profit out of providing such services.
Migration
Increased migration= education is now more multicultural:
All schools teach about the "six world religions" in RE.
Rise in faith schools in the UK- no longer only cater to Christianity but also serving Muslim and Jewish students.
Recently schools have had to respond to increasing number of Eastern European children entering primary and secondary schools: creation of assimilation policies.
Education as a Commodity
(against privatisation)
Education is being turned into an object of private profit-making- a commodity to be bought and sold in an education market.
Marxists, Hall (2011):
Conservative gov policies are part of the "long march of the neoliberal revolution". Their claims that privatisation drives up standards is a myth used to legitimise the turning of education into a source of private profit.
Ball
: Privatisation is becoming a key factor shaping educational policy. Policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services from public sector to private sector.
Policies on Ethnicity
Multicultural Education
evaluation
Stone (1981):
black pupils do not fail for lack of self-esteem, so MCE is misguided
Critical race theorists:
MCE is tokenism as it picks out stereotypical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum, fails to tackle institutional racism
New Right:
MCE perpetuates cultural divisions, Education should promote a shared national identity/ culture into which minorities should be assimilated
MCE policies in 1980s and 90s aimed to promote achievements of ethnic minority pupils by valuing all cultures in the school curriculum= raising their self-esteem and achievement.
Assimilation
However: some minority groups at risk of underachieving e.g. African Caribbean pupils, already speak English- the real cause of their underachievement is poverty and racism.
Policies in the 1960s and 70s focused on the need for ethnic minority pupils to assimilate into mainstream British culture in order to raise achievement, especially by helping those who didn't have English as a first language (e.g. through compensatory education)
Social Inclusion
Detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity
Amending the Race Relations Act to place a legal duty on schools to promote racial equality
Voluntary Saturday schools in the black community
English as an Additional Language programmes
1990s focused on social inclusion of ethnic minorities and policies to raise their achievement:
evaluation
Mirza (2005):
there is little genuine change in policy- instead of tackling structural causes of ethnic inequality, this takes a soft approach, focusing on culture, behaviour and the home
Gillborn
: institutionally racist policies in ethnocentric curriculum, assessment, and streaming continues to disadvantage ethnic minority pupils.