Only a handful of countries among the United Nations members do not have compulsory education. Since the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, education has been imperative. “Even before the two World Wars, education was seen in the Western world as a solution to numerous social, political, and economic problems” (Besche-Truthe). It is impossible to deny the profound impact that free access to education has had on Western society. It is equally undeniable how challenging it is to provide free and quality education for all. To achieve this goal without consuming enormous state resources, several attempts have been made to find the magic recipe for success, with partial privatization of the sector being one of them.
In 1991, the United States introduced the concept of ‘Chartered schools.’ These institutions were publicly funded but legally autonomous. It was also established that: “In return for this freedom, they were expected to be innovative in their pedagogy and accountable for the performance of their students as set out in their charter” (Gillard). Despite the marginally better academic performance of charter schools (which has been contested due to a higher number of children expelled and a lower number of children with disabilities), they present a growing and alarming pattern of social, racial, and linguistic segregation (Monarrez, Kisida, and Chingos, 2022).
In 2000, after a series of educational reforms in the United Kingdom, the British government introduced the ‘academies’ system, following the American model of charter schools. Since their creation, academies have raised controversy due to mixed results, and because they have the freedom to set admission processes, establish their own curriculum, and control teacher recruitment and salary conditions. According to Dr. Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union:
“Academisation has increased inequality and undermined accountability and fairness in the system. It has meant that communities and staff are increasingly locked out of the system with little say on the future of their schools. And there is no evidence that it has improved school standards or led to better outcomes for children. Indeed, the evidence suggests the opposite” (Bousted).
Considering all these attempts to create a better system with limited resources, it is not surprising that other countries in the developing world have seen privatization of the educational system in so-called successful economies as the right strategy to follow. A recent example is the Liberian Educational Advance Program (LEAP), created in 2016 in response to the effects of a 14-year civil war and Ebola. The Liberian educational system was in disarray, with only 38% of children attending schools and those who were attending were achieving poor results. To improve this situation, the Liberian government selected 487 schools and formed partnerships with for-profit organizations to provide free and good-quality education. Bridge International Academies was selected as one, and it began working with 23 schools, now operating 73% of the total number of schools in the LEAP program. The rationale behind this initiative was to achieve better results in terms of attendance, learning, and lower cost. It is interesting how: “Privatization has been a more common remedy in developed countries, where [the intent is] to raise the quality of output by forcing providers to survive in a competitive market. In addition, the profit motive in the private sector is expected to improve efficiency as entrepreneurs search for lower-cost production” (Rounds Parry,). Several sources have claimed that the partnership had not delivered what was expected in terms of the quality of education. According to one report:
After three academic years the treatment effect is .16σ for English (p-value < 0.001) and .21σ for math (p-value < 0.001). This corresponds to an increase in reading fluency of 4 and 2 words per minute for students enrolled in first and fifth grade in 2015/2016, respectively… Beyond learning gains, the program reduced enrolment and increased dropout for the sample of students originally enrolled in partnership schools. While the program reduced the use of corporal punishment in schools, abuse remains widespread. Despite an influx of new resources and external oversight, sexual abuse did not decline in partnership schools. In addition, some of the advantages given to program schools in terms of staffing in the first year have had long-lasting effects. Finally, Bridge International Academies and More Than Me still spend at least three times as much as the government target.” (Romero and Sandefour)
The attempt by the Liberian government shows an increasing global tendency to privatize education with the illusion that this will allow for a better, fairer, and more efficient system. In explaining Friedman’s neoliberal views on education; Pedró, Leroux, and Watanabe establish that: “This liberal view assumes that private providers operating under market discipline would provide parents with choice, and that competition would lead to ever-increasing quality standards and also drive out of the market those operators unable to provide the service parents want” (Pedró, Leroux and Watanabe)
It is not surprising that in order to provide parental choice and to prove that quality has increased, Charter schools in the USA, Academies in the UK, and Liberia Bridge schools use standardized tests to quantify their success. However, the information that comes from these instruments may fail to mention hidden data points such as school exclusion or higher proportions of students from deprived social and economic backgrounds, creating a system that seems efficient but that is not fair. It is documented that in the USA and the UK, student exclusion in those publicly funded and privately run schools is above average. In the case of the Bridge International Academies, the majority of their students are better off than the average, so they are more likely to stay in school and therefore gets better results in standardized test.
Based on the diverse cases analysed here we can conclude that there is no clear evidence that the partial privatisation of education can deliver Biesta’s purpose of education better and more cheaply than the public sector, whether in advanced or developing economies. Despite this, cash-strapped governments continue to be attracted by the lure of lower cost education rather than focussing on how to deliver a better, fairer education to all.
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