THE 'SECOND WAVE' OF THE LOW-FEE PRIVATE
SECTOR IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: MORPHING THE
MARKET
Dr. Prachi Srivastava
Associate Professor, School of International Development and Global
Studies, University of Ottawa
E: prachi.srivastava@uottawa.ca
Twitter: @PrachiSrivas
Keynote on the Global Response to the Commercialisation and Privatisation of
Education, Education International 7th World Congress, Ottawa
23 July 2015
Pearson’s Affordable Learning
Fund Gets $50M Injection
Private Sector,
RTE and ‘Abusive’
Practices
United Nations
Special
Rapporteur on the
Right to Education
86. The commercialization of education and
its uncontrolled liberalization, open to all
operators for lucrative purposes or
objectives, are contrary to international
commitments by States and national values
and must be stopped and sanctioned.”
89. By definition, business is profit-oriented.
Education is all the more attractive since it
denotes a certain respectability, which can be
projected to disguise business interests,
fraudulent practices and corruption […]
90. As regulators, States must sanction
abusive practices by private education
establishments (United Nations, 2014)
Levelling the Playing Field?
The ‘Second Wave’ of the LFP Sector
• Shift from one-off mom-and-pop ‘teaching shops’ to
existence with corporate-backed low-fee private
school chains
• Different from ‘chains’ of the past (cross-subsidisation)
• Shift from micro-ecosystems (e.g. individual villages,
slum communities, and urban neighbourhoods) to a
micro-system within themselves, across geographical
boundaries beyond the local (e.g. across districts,
cities, and countries)
The ‘Second Wave’ of the LFP Sector (2)
• Entry of ‘big’ corporate capital
• Ecosystem of allied service providers (e.g. education
microfinance institutions; rating systems; scripted
curriculum delivery systems; education technology
providers (low- and high-tech), etc.)
• Markers of ‘institutional evolution’ (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1983) of the sector
Two Intertwining Trends
1.
Mobilizing discourse and filtering evidence — in particular,
morphing the metaphor of the market to illogical
consequence
2.
The opening up of domestic formal education spaces
through state-sanctioned public-private partnership (PPP)
arrangements, and framing mental models accepting of the
discourse of ‘partnership’
3. Increasingly opaque, intertwined, and complex sets of
‘new/non-traditional’ non-state private actors operating in
education in the Global South, with direct or arm’s length
corporate connections that operate by blurring the lines
between ‘doing business’, profit-making, and ‘doing good’
(Olmedo, 2013)
Caveats
1. Questioning claims of ‘scale’: total numbers
miniscule as a proportion of state provision
2. Strategic locations of operation: political stability
and economic growth
3. Act of ‘doing good’ different from traditional grant-
making philanthropies in the ‘business of charity’
-‘Type-P’ actors operate with the mental models or the actual
modalities of the ‘business of making money’ with an added
offshoot of ‘doing good’
The Three Muskateers:
branding, competition, and profit
• James Tooley: ‘school chains
with names such as
EasyLearn or Virgin
Opportunity could be as
reliable as, say, Sainsbury’s or
Boots’ (Wilby, 2013)
• Bridge International:
‘Starbucks’ of schools
• Replication and
standardisation
• ‘Assisting the market in the
creation of educational brand
names…is another possible
area for outside action—for
philanthropy, investment,
and aid if required to satisfy
investors of the viability of
the market’ (Tooley, 2009, p.
260).
• ‘competition would be a chief
spur’ (Tooley, 2009, p. 261).
Unbranded or unchained
schools ‘could suffer or go
out of business’
Perversion of metaphor of the market
• Two peculiarities of education as a good: complications of
treating markets as pure competitive (Friedman, 1962)
• ‘Neighbourhood effects’: ‘Circumstances under which the
action of one individual imposes significant costs on other
individuals for which it is not feasible to…compensate…or
yields significant gains to other individuals…[to] compensate
him [/her]’.
• Effects beyond the individual; school closures?
• ‘Paternalistic concern for children and other irresponsible
individuals’: need for the state to be involved where schooling
may not be universal, compulsory and enforcing that
compulsion to RTE
Scaling Up: Tacit ‘Partnerships’ and Privatisation
• Privatization by design not default
• Discourse of Partnership:
‘partnership’ is as ‘ubiquitous as community, evoking much the
same warm mutuality’ (Cornwall, 2007, p. 475), but it is precisely
its ubiquity that renders partnership ‘a floating empty signifier’
(Burgos, 2004).
• Modalities of Action
PPPs: Uganda, India, Pakistan
‘It’s absolutely for profit. But get this right—it’s important to
demonstrate profit because we want other investors to come in’
–Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor PALF, BBC HardTalk
Type-P Organisational Constellations and ‘Doing
Good’
• Narrative of ‘doing good’: borrows from and attaches itself to
philanthropy (notions of benevolence); organisational
modalities and mental models of organisational actors stated
motive to profit
• Effaces distinctions: Type-P and philanthropic actors with more
without regards to capital ROI
• Commercialisation as a key force, and marketization as a key
mechanism of action
• Type-P actors alongside government, not-for-profit, and aid
agencies: complex organisational constellations in formal
government-enabled and informal networks potential
capture by actors with commercial interests