Framing and selling global education policy: the promotion of public–private partnerships for education in low-income contexts

Abstract

Public–private partnerships in education (ePPP) are acquiring increasing centrality in the agendas of international organizations and development agencies dealing with educational affairs. They are designed as an opportunity to correct inefficiencies in the public delivery of education and to mobilize new resources to increase the access to and cost-effectiveness of education in low-income contexts. This article explores the emergence of ePPP as a ‘programmatic idea’ and, in particular, the semiotic strategies by means of which this idea has been located in the global education agenda and promoted internationally among practice communities by a network of policy entrepreneurs. The analysis is supported by extensive fieldwork and by a new approach to the analysis of the framing and mobilization of new policy ideas, which incorporates literature on agenda setting, policy entrepreneurs, and policy frame analysis. The approach reveals the complex way in which policy ideas, political actors, institutions, and material factors interact to strategically put forward new policy alternatives in developing contexts.

Keywords:

• globalization
• frames
• policy entrepreneurs
• international organizations
• public–private partnerships
• educational change

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the two anonymous referees and to the IS Academie ‘Education and Development’ reading-group (H.K. Altinyelken, M.L.B. Chelpi, D.B. Edwards, R. Huijsmans, T.A. Lopes-Cardozo, M. Poppema, I.M. Soeterik, S. VanderKaaij) for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Ruarri Rogan for his dedication and interest in assisting this research.

Notes

1. The IFC is the agency of the WB group specialized in lending to the private sector.

2. CfBT is a UK charity that provides a wide range of educational services internationally, including school inspection, teacher training, and curriculum design.

3. James Tooley was initially part of this network. However, he became a very ‘uncomfortable ally’ due to the radical nature of his proposals (Tooley has a libertarian and anti-state approach to education), but also due to the perceived lack of rigor of the data sources he uses to build his arguments (Interview ePPP expert 03). As a consequence, he became gradually displaced from the ePPP network.

4. The media impact of the report can be consulted on http://go.worldbank.org/B5NIVIGXN0 (accessed 7 July 2010).

5. It should be acknowledged that other international actors, such as UNESCO (including IIEP-UNESCO) and the World Economic Forum have been theorizing and promoting partnerships with the private sector for education purposes, but from a very different perspective. They focus on the so-called Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships, which conceive the private sector as a philanthropic funder of education, rather than as a school services provider (Draxler 2008).

6. Decisions about staffing, curriculum, didactics, etc. should be taken by the schools in the exercise of their autonomy (CfBT 2008; IFC 2001).

7. Some of them even affirm, ‘if it’s religious schools or nonprofit or private for-profit schools serving people I don’t care. If somebody can come in and do the job then I’m pretty agnostic about it’ (Interview ePPP expert 05).

8. See a similar critique of the vouchers schemes in Levin (1999).

9. For instance, in countries such as India, contract teachers receive salaries that, in some cases, are as low as 10% of those of state-school teachers (Srivastava 2006).

10. The ePPP promoters are aware of this so-called ‘political economy problem’ and suggest that, to prevent opposition, policy-makers should consult with education stakeholders when designing partnerships (Interview ePPP expert 05). They also suggest that it may be ‘useful for policymakers to recruit leading figures in the politics and business communities who understand the potential benefits of PPPs and can use their influence to help to overcome any resistance’ (WB 2009, 5).

11. More recently, CfBT has been working on a ‘three legs’ partnership model that includes government, private sector, and civil society. They claim the importance of the latter (Interview ePPP expert 03), but still exclude organized labor from the model.

12. Mutual learning means that the different parties involved in partnerships should adopt values, norms, and perspectives from each other. For instance, planning skills and an a priori commitment with social cohesion and democracy are some of the values that the public sector could transmit to the private one in the context of partnerships (Linder 1999; Rosenau 2000).

13. In the US context, methodological issues around education quasi-markets studies have even raised heated debates. See Hernandez (2005).

14. The Netherlands case is revealing in this respect. It is spotlighted to show that high levels of private provision, school choice, and autonomy correlate with high levels of students’ performance. Apart from being successful in academic terms, the Dutch system is also considered ‘cost effective, yielding good results at relatively low cost’ (WB 2009, 8). This argument, however, misrepresents the importance of the extraordinary amount of resources that the Dutch government invests in education – €5350 per student per year at primary education, and €7110 at secondary level (Ministry of Education – The Netherlands, 2009), which is far from being invested in the territories where the WB intervenes.

15. In WB (2009), a similar set of benefits is exposed six times. Moreover, a very different emphasis is given to the potential costs or negative effects of ePPP that, when mentioned, are immediately followed by recommendations on how to ameliorate them. In fact, instead of using the concept ‘costs’ (as the antonym of benefits), the ePPP literature usually uses softer language such as ‘concerns’ or ‘challenges.’

16. See UNESCO (2009) and Waslander, Pater, and Weide (2010) for two quite comprehensive literature reviews on education markets.

17. This can be observed, for instance, in the way scholars such as Molnar or Hatcher are quoted in WB (2009).