From bake sales to million-dollar school fundraising campaigns: the new inequity

ABSTRACT

This study examines the changing style, scale, and scope of raising private funds to provide resources for public schools. In particular, we focus on school fundraising, especially the role of discourse in scaling up school fundraising practices to facilitate education privatisation. Drawing from Stephen Ball’s policy sociology, and employing Maarten Hajer’s discourse analysis approach, we analyze a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign in one secondary school in a Canadian province. Our analysis shows how a discourse-coalition has emerged around Public Private Partnership Fundraising (PPPF) to legitimise an increasingly privatised effort to fund school infrastructure. In conclusion, we raise questions about the problematic nature of large-scale school fundraising, specifically, its impact on inequality between schools with different levels of community wealth.

KEYWORDS:

• School fundraising
• public private partnership
• discourse
• education privatisation
• neoliberalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ee-Seul Yoon is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. Her research aims to understand the patterns and processes of educational inequity with a focus on the marketisation and privatisation of education. Her work can be found in journals including British Journal of Sociology of Education, Journal of Educational Policy, Education Policy Analysis Archives, and Educational Researcher among others.

Jon Young is a Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba.

Emily Livingston is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. Her research aims to understand inequalities in the education system, with a particular focus on how neoliberalism is impacting education funding patterns and budget practices. She previously completed her Master of Science in Higher Education Administration degree at Northwestern University in Illinois.