Privatisation and Commercialisation in Public Education

Privatisation and Commercialisation in Public Education asks how publicness is being redefined through the restructuring of nominally public school systems. Over the past few decades, governments have engineered a wave of reforms in their public systems opening them to privatisation and commercialisation. In public education systems competition, choice and autonomy have become entrenched vectors of these reforms. This edited collection carefully examines the difference between privatisation and commercialisation and traces the varying effects privatised and commercialised policy reforms have had in different educational contexts. Many countries have approached the thorny issues of school choice and school autonomy in different ways, and this book investigates the impact of these agendas across the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and India. This book brings together contemporary, international perspectives from high-profile policy academics on both privatisation and commercialisation in public education systems under the provocation of how the 'public' nature of schooling is changing. This is essential reading for those interested in the idea that current education policy reforms are reshaping what might be considered core educational practices in public schooling.

Anna Hogan is a Senior Lecturer of Education at the University of Queensland. Greg Thompson is an Associate Professor of Education Research at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

Introduction: The 'Publicness' of Schooling Anna Hogan & Greg Thompson Part I: Privatisation 1. What 'Good' is Schooling? The New Edu-Philanthropies and Education Reform Chris Lubienski 2. Charities and State Schooling Privatisations in Aotearoa New Zealand John O'Neill & Darren Powell 3. Mobilising Neoliberal Discourse and Fostering New Subjectivities: The Eclectic Role of Philanthropy in Contemporary Global Education Governance Carolina Junemann & Antonio Olmedo 4. Interrogating the Private in Public School Outsourcing in Liberia Curtis Riep & Mark Machacek 5. Hybrid Models of Delivery: State-Mandated Public-Private Partnerships in India Radhika Gorur & Ben Arnold Part II: Commercialisation 6. Edu-Business in Finnish Schooling Piia Seppänen, Martin Thrupp & Sonia Lempinen 7. High-Stakes Accountability Pressures in the Expansion of a School Improvement Industry: Evidence from Chile Lluís Parcerisa, Antoni Verger & Alejandra Falabella 8. The Flow of Public Funding to Private Actors in Education: The Swedish Case Linda Rönnberg, Malin Benerdal, Sara Carlbaum & Ann-Sofie Holm 9. Teacher Concerns Regarding Commercialisation Greg Thompson, Anna Hogan, Paul Shield, Bob Lingard & Sam Sellar Part III: Publicness 10. Nationhood, Sex and the Family: Neoconservatism and the Moral Dilemmas of Privatisation in Schooling Jessica Gerrard 11. Buying and Selling the Public School in the Market: The Politics of Space and Boundary Crossings for Urban School Choosers Emma Rowe 12. Explaining Publicness: A Typology for Understanding the Provision of Schooling in Contemporary Times Nicole Mockler, Anna Hogan, Bob Lingard, Mark Rahimi & Greg Thompson Conclusion: Beyond Publicness Anna Hogan & Greg Thompson