Privatisation of and in education Flashcards
What does Privatisation mean?
Services that were once owned and provided by the state are transferred to private companies.
According to the Treasury in 2015, how much is spent on education a year?
£88 billion.
What is privatisation in education also known as?
Endogenous privatisation.
Name the different ways in which privatisation is operating endogenously?
1) Private companies providing day-to-day ancillary services to schools and companies.
e. g. continuous professional development and supply teachers. Ball says this comes to around £600 million a year.
2) Delivering national education programmes
e. g. Teacher’s TV, Connexions and Teacher’s Pension Scheme.
3) Companies have been involved in infrastructure modernisation; school buildings and IT programmes.
- Buildings for the Future (2005) aimed to renew/rebuild every secondary by 2020.
= private partner had to be selected to help carry out the work and project management.
- Labour academies required to have a sponsor who would contribute £2 million to build a school.
- PFI have been deployed to deliver new school buildings; 86 projects covering around 500 schools.
4) Providing a great deal of specialist and supplementary education: e.g. pupil referral schools and post-compulsory programmes of work-based learning.
- Private tutoring,
= e.g. in 2009, 11% of parents said that their child received private tuition in an academic subject.
= Sutton Trust 2011, estimated that 38% of children in London have received private tuition.
5) Being brought in to run a small number of local education authorities and schools where existing providers were judged to be failing.
= e.g. Edison Learning in 2010 won a contract to run the failing Salisbury School in Ensfield, now renamed Turin Grove School.
What is privatisation of education also known as?
Exogenous privatisation.
Name the different ways in which privatisation is operating exogenously?
1) School services such as staff training and development, school meals and transport etc.
2) Management of schools; e.g. Academies Enterprise Trust.
3) School inspections with private companies; e.g. Tribal Inspections were employed by Ofsted.
4) Branding of schools; e.g. logo development to give a school a distinct identity to compete in the educational market.
5) Forming educational policy; private companies providing advice, consultation and research.
6) Running the exam system; Edexcel is owned by the multi-national company Pearson PLC.
What are the arguments for privatisation?
1) Business like and efficiency means more education for less cost = better for everyone.
2) More choice for parents.
3) Profit-motive may encourage private companies to provide schools and improve ‘failing’ schools in areas of poor educational quality
What are the arguments against privatisation?
1) Money drained from system; taken out by private investors?
2) Cherry picking best schools that can be easily improved the most?
3) Equality of opportunity and quality of education under threat
= money overriding needs of chilldren e.g. hard to teach pupils.
