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PRIVATISATION OF EDUCATION - Coggle Diagram
PRIVATISATION OF EDUCATION
involves the transfer of pupils assets such as schools to private companies
education becomes a source of profit for capitalists in what BALL calls the 'education services industry' (ESI)
BLURRING THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE BOUNDRY
Many senior officials in the public sector such as directors of local authorities & head teachers, now leave to set up or work for private sector education buisnesses
These companies then bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities
POLLOK notes this flow or personnel allows companies to buy 'insider knowledge' to help win contracts as well as side-stepping local authority democracy
PRIVATISATION & GLOBALISATION OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
Many private companies in the education services industry are foreign-owned
The exam board EDEXELs owned by the US educational publishing & testing giant person, and according to Ball some Pearson GCSE exam answers are now marked in Sydney and Iowa
Similarly, according to BUCKINGHAM & SCALLION, the UKs 4 leading educational software companies are all owned by global multi-nationals (Disney, Mattel & hambro etc)
many contracts for educational services in the uk are sold only the original company to others such as banks and investment funds
in a globalised world, these are often brought by overseas companies
Conversely, some uk edu-buisnesses work overseas - e.g prospects has worked In china,macedonia, and Finland
often, private companies are exporting UK education policy to other countries (e.g offset type inspections, and then providing the services to deliver the policies
as a result, national-states are becoming less important sin policymaking 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 eg through vending machines on school premises and the development of brand loyalty through displays of logos and sponsorships
This process has been called the colonisation of schools
MOLNAR states schools are targeted by private companies because 'schools by their nature carry enormous goodwill and can thus confer legitimacy on anything associated with them'
in other words, they are a kind of product endorsement
HOWVER the benefits to schools and pupils of this private sector involvement are often very limited
e.g according to BALL, a cadburys sports equipment promotion was scrapped after it was revealed that pupilsnwould have to eat 5440 chocolate bars just to qualify for a set of volleyball posts
BEDER states uk families spent 110000 in Tescos in return for a single computer for schools
EDUCATION AS A COMMODITY
BALL concludes that a fundamental change is taking place in which privatisation is becoming the key factor in shaping educational policy
policy is increasingly focused on moving educational services out of public sector controlled by the nation-state to be provided by private companies instead
in the process, eduction is being turned into a 'legitimate object of private profit-making', a commodity to be bought and sold in an education market
privatisation means hat he state is losing its role as the provider of educational services
For Ball the overall effect is that: more and more areas of education are now subject to business practices and financial logics
similarly, marxists such as HALL see conservative governments policies as part of the long march of the neoliberal revolution
HALL sees academies as an example of handing over public services to private capitalists such as educational buisnesses
In the marxist view, the neoliberal aim that privatisation and competition drive up standards is a myth used to legitimate the turning of education into source of private profit
POLICIES ON GENDER & ETHNICITY
GENDER
In the 19th century, females were largely excluded from higher education
more recently under the tripartite system, girls often had to achieve a higher marathon boys in the 11+ in order to obtain a grammar school place
since the 1970s however, policies such as GIST have been introduced to try to reduce gender difference sin subject choice
ETHNICITY
Policies aimed ar raising the achievemnt of children from minority ethnic backgrounds have gone through several phases:
ASSIMILATION:
policies in the 1960/70s focused on the need for pupils from MEGs to assimilate into mainstream British culture as a way of raising their achievement
especially by helping those for whom English wasn't their first language
However critics argue that some minority groups who are at risk of underachieving e.g African Caribbean pupils, already speak English and the real cause of their underachievement lies in poverty or racism
MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION:
MCE policies through the 1980sand into 1990s aimed to promote the achievements of children form minority ethic groups by valuing all cultures in the school curriculum, therefore raising these pupils self-esteem & achievements
HOWVER MCE has been criticised on several grounds:
STONE argues that black pupils dont fail for lack of self-esteem, so MCE is misguides
critical race theorists argue that MCE is mere tokenism: I picks out stereotypical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum, but fails to tackle institutional racism
the new right criticise MCE for perpetuating cultural divisions- they take the view that education should promote shared national culture and identity into which minorities should be assimilated
SOCIAL INCLUSION: - social inclusion of minority ethnic groups and policies to raise their achievement became the focus in the late 1990s
policies include:
detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity
amending the race relations act to place a legal duty on schools to promote racial equality
helps for voluntary 'Saturday schools' in the black community
English as an additional language programmes
HOWVER MIRZA sees little genuine change in policy
she argues that instead of tackling the structural causes of inequality such s poverty, educational policy still takes a soft of approach tat focuses on culture, behaviour and the home
GILLBORN argues that institutionally racist policies In relation to the ethnocentric curriculum, assessment and streaming continue to disadvantage minority ethnic group pupils