The impact of privatisation on quality and equity in

education systemsEUROPEAN SECTORAL SOCIAL

DIALOGUE IN EDUCATIONWorking Group meeting on

Private/Public Education5 November 2013Guntars Catlaks

EI Reports

• Hidden privatization in Public Education

S.Ball & D.Youdell, LIoE, 2008

• PPPs in Education, EI Task Force and E.Xhafa Report, 2009

Rationale• Around the world, different forms of

privatisation are being introduced into public education systems

• This trend is hidden under so-called “educational reforms” or “modernization”

• The purpose of EI Reports is to get the trend out into the light

EI position• Public education is a system open to

all, free of charge, publicly funded, managed and evaluated in accordance with the objectives and principles established democratically by public authorities

• Education is not a commodity and should not be privatized

What is privatised education?

Private (both for and not for profit) provision (operation/management) of education both in general public and in formally independent private schoolsEI Study on Political Economy of Privatisation, (upcoming)

This is the public school

This is the same schoolIt will never be the same again

Forms of privatization

• Schools perceived and managed as a Business (endogenous)

• Private Sector coming into Public Schools (exogenous)

Schools operated like Business (endogeneus)

• Quasi-markets• Performance management,

accountability, and performance-related pay for teachers and staff

• The arrival of manager and new public management style

Market• School choice – “right of parents”• Per capita funding (vouchers)• Performance outcomes – “consumer

information” (ratings)• Competition is “rising standards”Is market a value neutral or it possess

a set of “moral values” (effort, self-reliance, independence, risk-taking)?

ManagementThe self-managing school must surveil

and regulate itself. The logic of all of this is that school managers are not necessarily people with experience of teaching at all. In the UK in 2007 a Report by Price WaterHouse Coopers (PWC), commissioned by the DfES, recommended that ‘Schools should be led by chief executives who may not necessarily be teachers’.

PerformanceSchool level: • governments setting benchmarks and targets for schools

and school systems to achieve; • the publication of school performances as ‘league tables’; • tying school funding to performance requirements (NCLB)

Teachers level:• tying teachers’ pay to student outcomes (performance-

related pay); • fixing of pay levels and contract conditions locally at the

level of the school; • the introduction of systems of appraisal and performance

review of teachers

NPM and Changing conditions for teachers

In England the liberalisation of teachers conditions of work like in Education Action Zones and Academies which have allowed for the non-application of national agreements on pay and conditions.

In the case of Academies the employment of non-registered, non-qualified teachers

Performance-related pay schemes for teachers are currently being deployed in the USA, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Israel and Japan and Australia

CompetitionCompetition is expected to have the effect of raising

standards across the system by closing down of ‘poor’ schools which fail to attract sufficient parental choices

NOT THE CASE !side-effects of choice and competition are: • An increase in time and expenditure on marketing

and promotional activities• Deterioration of teachers working conditions

through cost-saving and performance management• Increased inequalities in access to quality

educationNo proof of better overall academic results

Socio Economic BackgroundWithin countries, schools that compete for students may have higher performance levels, but this is accounted for by the higher socio-economic status of students in such schools, suggesting that in such cases, socio-economically disadvantaged students end up in lower-performing schools, leading to an unequal education system. OECD PISA 2009 Vol.4

Maxima of equity‘successful school systems provide all students, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, with similar opportunities to learn’, and thus cannot be systems in which high levels of school choice, privatisation and vertical and horizontal division of students are the order of the day. OECD PISA 2009 Vol. 4

Michael Fullan on ‘re-culturing’schools

• Moral purpose is more than passionate teachers trying to make a difference in their classrooms. It's also the context of the school and district in which they work.

• That means principals have to be almost as concerned about the success of other schools in the district as they are about their own school

Private Sector in Public Education(Exogenous)

• Public education for private profit• Contracting out services to private

provider• Contracting out schools to private

operator• Public Private Partnerships (PPP)• International Capital in public education• Cola-isation or commercialization

“Education Services Industry”• The Reform of the public service sector is a

massive new profit opportunity…”(FT, 1992)• Fast growth in the local government and

education outsourcing is certain now (Gresham Trust, 1998)

• ESI is growing at the rate of 30% per annum (Capital Strategies, 2000)

• I believe that schools will be putting all their back office services into the private sector within few years…everyone will want to earn a reasonable margin” (Graham Walker, Arthur Andersen, 1998)

Private Public Partnerships• Construction of schools and

operation of them• Testing and examination• Curriculum development• Excluded students• Management and office services• Professional development• Quality assurance

How widespread?

PPPs worldwide

Impacts

PPPs in Germany and France• The County of Offenbach and city of Cologne in

Germany both have large PPP schemes involving over 90 schools in the former and 7 in the latter. The first part of the Offenbach scheme was awarded to a subsidiary of French construction company Vinci, the rest of the scheme and the Cologne project went to Germany company HOCHTIEF. The companies will run the Offenbach schools for 15 years and the Cologne schools for 25 years.

• The first French school PPP was completed in 2007, le college de Villemandeur in Loiret, and a number of colleges in les Haute-de-Seine are being renovated by the same method of private financing.

Contracting out schools in Columbia

In Colombia, the City of Bogotá has introduced the Colegios en Concesión (Concession Schools) programme, under which the management of some public schools is turned over to private institutions

• In 2004, there were 25 schools, serving over 26,000 students being operated by private managers under this model

• school management is evaluated on results• Failure to meet educational outcome targets such as

standardized test scores and drop-out rates for two consecutive years can result in the cancellation of the contract

Contracting out excluded students in New Zealand

In New Zealand, under the Alternative Education (AE) programme, the schools can contract with private providers for the delivery of education in non-school settings for students who have become alienated from the education system. www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/publications/contracting_education.pdf

Cross border expansionEducation companies are beginning to operate

internationallySome of the key companies are: SERCO,

CAPITA, Nord-Anglia, Prospects, GEMS(Dubai-based), Edison (and Edison Schools UK), Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Kindercare, Phoenix [Apollo] , de Vry, Bond, Cambridge Education (now part of Mott Macdonald), Kaplan, ABC Learning (an Australian child-care company), Bennesse (Japan), NIIT (India) and Pysslingen (Sweden)

Bankruptcy hits major Swedish free school firm

A the end of May, JB Education sent shockwaves through Sweden's free school establishment when it announced it would be quitting its primary and secondary school operations in Sweden due to a drop in the number of students.The firm, which had been a pioneer in Sweden's free school movement, added that it would sell its adult education operations to Academedia, Sweden's largest education company. Staff members within JB Education's administrative roles have already been let go."We were hit by a drop in the number of

upper-secondary school students over recent years; the numbers in our school almost halved," CEO Ander Hultin told the TT news agency."The owners, Axcel, came to a point

where became meaningless to continue." The Local, 12 June 2013

Education worth more to British exports than banking.

Education is worth more to UK exports than financial services or the automotive industry, according to a report published by the British Council. A total of £28bn in 2003-4 was earned from overseas students by a sector ranging from world famous universities to small English language colleges, from independent schools to publishers and broadcasters.

(Donald MacLeod, Education Guardian 18.09.07)

Cola-isationCommercial companies targeting their

products/brands at child/youth consumers trough schools in exchange for sponsorships or access to technologies

“Shoe schools” in USA (free sports shoes by Nike and Puma)

Global Patterns• Unintentional drift• Intentional escalation• Linear process (developed countries)• Selection/imposition (developing

countries)Policy patterns:• “Cafeteria style” in USA• “Fixed menu” in Europe

Privatisation Conditions in World Bank and IMF Loans

• The World Bank promotes the private provision of basic services through interlocking conditions on aid and debt relief to poor countries

• A 2006 study of 20 countries receiving World Bank and IMF loans found that privatization was a condition in 18 of them, an increase compared with previous years. (Emmett 2006 p. 11)

• The conditions of the loans offered as aid in the aftermath of economic crisis in CEE, have same old fashioned restrictions on public spending as part of governments debt reduction

Impacts (identities)• Head teacher to manager• Teacher to technician• Student to output asset or liability• Collective agreements to individual

contracts• Unions to …

Transforming Labour Relations and Teachers’ Work

• Performance related pay• Short-term individualized contracts• Employment of non-qualified teachers• Outsourcing• “Flexibilization” of work• New management culture• “Casualization” of profession

Unions reactions• Member organizations are evenly divided as to

whether or not privatisation provide needed financial and technical support,

• But most reject the other arguments advanced by governments, such as greater discipline in procurement, improving educational quality or saving public money

• On the other hand, many education unions feel that privatisation change the role of teachers and change the ethos of public education (EI PPP report 2009)

ConclusionThere is every reason to see

privatisation in education as the profit seeking enterprise

There is no evidence that privatisation in education provide long-term cost savings or improve overall quality of education

Thank you for attention!Guntars CatlaksEducation InternationalResearch co-ordinatorGuntars.catlaks@ei-ie.org+32 2 224 0651http://www.ei-

ie.org/research/en/index.htmPlease, visit!