THE PRIVATISATION OF EDUCATION

Question 1

What does privatisation involve?

Answer 1

It involves the transfer of public assets such as schools to private companies

Question 2

What is Ball’s ‘education service industry’?

Answer 2

Where education has become a source of profit for capitalists

Question 3

Ball (2007)

Answer 3

Companies involved in projects such as PPPs expect to make up to 10x as much profit as they do on other contracts

Question 4

Blurring the public/private boundary:

Answer 4

a. Senior officials leave to set up work for private sector education businesses. These companies then bid for contracts to provide services to schools and local authorities
b. Pollack (2004); this flow of personnel allows companies to buy insider knowledge to help win contracts

Question 5

Privatisation and the globalisation of education policy:

Answer 5

a. Many private companies in the education serives industry are foreign-owned
b. Examples:
1. Edexcel is owned by the US educational publishing and testing giant Pearson
2. Ball, some Pearson GCSE exam answers are now marked in Sydney and Iowa
c. Buckingham and Scanlon (2005); the UK’s four leading educational software companies are all owned by global multinationals: Disney, Mattel, Hambro and Vivendi
d. Many contracts for educational services in the UK are sold on by the original company to others such as banks and investment funds

Question 6

The cola-isation of schools:

Answer 6

a. Examples of the private sector penetrating education indirectly:
- Through vending machines on school premises
- The development of brand loyalty through displays of logos and sponsorships
b. Molnar (2005); schools are a kind of product endorsement
c. Benefits to schools and pupil are often very limited:
- Ball, a Cadbury’s sports equipment was scrapped after it was revealed that pupils would have to eat 5,440 chocolate bars just to qualify for a set of volleyball posts
- Beder (2009), UK families spent £110,000 in Tesco supermarkets in return for a single computer for schools

Question 7

Education as a commodity:

Answer 7

a. Ball; a fundamental change is taking place in which privatisation is becoming the key factor shaping educational policy
b. Education is being turned into a commodity to be bought and sold in a education market
c. Hall (2011, Marxist); academies are an example of handing over public services to private capitalists.
d. Marxist view: the Neoliberal claim that privatisation and competition drive up standards is a myth used to legitimate the turning of education into a source of private profit

Question 8

Ethnicity:

Answer 8

a. Assimilation Policies;
- Focus on the need for pupils from minority ethnic groups to assimilate into British culture as a way of raising their achievement
b. Multicultural Education;
- Valuing all cultures in the school curriculum, thereby raising minority pupils’ self-esteem and achievement
c. Criticisms of MCE;
- Stone (1981); black pupils don’t fail due to low self-esteem
- Critical Race theorists; MCE is mere tokenism. It picks out stereotypical features of minority cultures for inclusion in the curriculum, but fails to tackle institutional racism
- New Right; MCE perpetuates cultural divisions
d. Social inclusion Policies;
- Detailed monitoring of exam results by ethnicity
- Amending the Race Relations Act to place a legal duty on schools to promote racial equality
- English as an Additional Language programmes
e. Mirza (2005); educational policy still takes a soft approach that focuses on culture, behaviour and the home
f. Gillborn; minority ethnic pupils still disadvantaged despite these policies due to the ethnocentric curriculum and streaming