Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’

Abstract

This paper explores some particular aspects of the privatisation of public sector education, mapping and analysing the participation of education businesses in a whole range of public sector education services both in the UK and overseas. It addresses some of the types of privatisation(s) which are taking place ‘of’, ‘in’ and ‘through’ education and education policy, ‘in’ and ‘through’ the work of education businesses. This entails a traversal of some of the multi‐level and multi‐layered fields of policy: institutional, national and international. Such an approach is important in demonstrating the increasing diversity and reach of some of the education businesses and their different kinds of involvements with different institutions and sectors of education. It also makes it possible to set local rhetorics, such as ‘partnership’, within the context of corporate logics of expansion, diversification, integration and profit.

Keywords:

• politics
• state
• privatisation
• policy
• education business
• public sector

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Meg Maguire, Patricia Burch and Miriam David for their helpful comments on the previous version of this paper. I would like to thank Evi Markou for her help with some of the searches on which the paper rests.

Notes

1. I am grateful to Patricia Burch for emphasising this point to me.

2. All the quotations used come from company brochures or website documents and these were accessed during 2005 – for examples of full documents see: http://www.cocentra.info/gateway/uploads/panda%20leaflet.pdf; http://www.edisonschools.co.uk/; http://www.prospects.co.uk/data_page.asp?pageID=97&mid=4

3. Patricia Burch suggested the important point to me that in these ‘reculturing’ solutions ‘there is little or no reference to the role of deliberation, collective input into the policy process’ (personal communication 21 January 2008).

4. Some of these companies are also Inspection contractors; they derive income from both sides of the Inspection process, in effect working for transparency and opacity at the same time.

5. Primary Review says there is no evidence to back Government claim that testing raises standards. Children's reading standards have barely improved in 55 years, despite ministers spending £500 million on the National Literacy Strategy, the biggest inquiry in primary education in 40 years has been told (TES, Warwick Mansell, 2 November 2007: www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2456685).

6. ‘KPMG is committed to helping shape education at both the local and national level. We are involved in both policy discussions and implementation to ensure that employability issues are well represented’ (Mike Rake, Chairman of KPMG International and Senior Partner of KPMG in the UK). KPMG is Co‐Sponsor with City of London Corporation of an Academy and a Supporter of Every Child a Reader.

7. PriceWaterhouseCoopers worked with 100 primary, secondary, nursery and special schools across England and Wales to investigate the full range of teachers' and head teachers' jobs. In 2002 PWC produced a report for DfES on the costs of pupils with additional educational needs.

8. The aim of the evaluation is to assess the overall effectiveness of the initiative, in terms of its contribution to educational standards, and to examine the impact of key features of Academies including sponsorship, governance, leadership and buildings.

9. The DfES contracted PricewaterhouseCoopers to produce four separate reports on five children's services markets. The markets are: Children's Homes and Fostering (two separate but very closely linked markets); Parental and Family Support Services; Positive Activities for Young People; and Childcare. The objectives of this report are twofold: to identify the cross‐cutting issues common to the markets; and to put forward suggestions for improvement as inputs into DfES policy thinking.

10. We need to focus here on the ‘stone‐cutting’ (Foucault 1979, 139): the detail as well as on the architecture of the system through the techniques of business accounting – and I paraphrase Foucault here – a new object is being formed!

11. A plurilateral request on higher education has been tabled at the WTO by New Zealand supported by 5 other countries, targeting Argentina and 13 other countries for access to the delivery of private higher education services. The GATS rules on public services state that once any service is delivered nationally by non‐state providers then access by outside providers cannot be denied. With private providers at higher education and school level, Argentina and many of the other countries named would appear to have no grounds for restricting the entry of overseas for‐profit providers to their systems.

12. The complexity of these roles, relationships, models of working and underpinning principles makes it difficult to distinguish between public and private in a simple way.

13. The new policy communities emerging within education policy are both routes of influence and access for business organisations and business‐people and new ways of realising, disseminating and enacting policy.