¡No lucro! … from protest catch cry to presidential policy: is this the beginning of the end of the Chilean neoliberal model of education?

Abstract

This paper surveys the delivery of school education in Chile over the last half-century. It focuses on evidence provided by recent academic studies on the impact of neoliberal education policies introduced by the military regime in the 1980s, and continued by successive democratic governments. It offers insights into recent popular critiques of the neoliberal model, as reported in the Chilean press, and reflected by significant popular support for student protest movements demanding the end of for-profit schools, and the revitalisation of the public school system – encapsulated in the protesters’ catch cry of ¡No lucro! It considers possible consequences of the adoption, as policy, of that catch cry, by the recently elected Bachelet government.

Keywords:

• Chile
• neoliberal education
• student protests
• for-profit schools
• free quality public education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Christopher Tome teaches in the Master of International Education (School Leadership) program of Charles Sturt University. He has a long association with Chile, first visiting in 1982 as the neoliberal policies of the military government pushed the country into one of the biggest economic recessions ever. He has returned frequently, most recently for the entire year in 2013.

ORCID

Christopher Tome http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5074-7423