Private actors in New Zealand schooling: the path to saturation

ABSTRACT

This article sets out to demonstrate the considerable extent to which the New Zealand school system has become saturated by private interests, and to explain this development over time. It is the first such overview of the privatisation of schooling in the New Zealand context. The analysis illustrates that the rise of private actors has involved some long-term factors such as demographic and cultural features of New Zealand society as well as market and managerialist politics that have reduced state resources to schools and to the agencies that support them. More immediate enablers have been created by moments of crisis and the needs of particular policies. The article concludes by arguing that further attention needs to be paid to the complex histories of private sector involvement in education, especially when the conditions supporting private actors have often been piecemeal, uncertain, and serendipitous.

KEYWORDS:

• History of schooling
• private actors
• private interests
• New Zealand

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 http://www.businesshistory.auckland.ac.nz/asb_bank/timeline.html

2 https://www.martinjenkins.co.nz/about-us/our-story/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland: [Grant Number 310242].

Notes on contributors

Martin Thrupp

Martin Thrupp is Professor of Education at the University of Waikato. His research interests are in education policy, with a particular focus on school reform as it plays out in different national and local settings.

John O’Neill

John O'Neill is Director of the Institute of Education at Massey University. His research interests are in the relationships between education policy and teachers' work and learning.

Darren Powell

Darren Powell is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland. His research focuses on the ‘childhood obesity epidemic' and the ways in which corporations (especially those of the food and drink industry) and charities are now re-inventing themselves as ‘part of the solution’.

Philippa Butler

Philippa Butler is Research Officer at the Institute of Education at Massey University. Her research interests are in research methodology and ethnic identity.