Session Information
23 SES 09 A, Education Privatization
Symposium
Contribution
The privatisation of education in Chile is instructive not only because Chile has one of the most privatised education systems worldwide, but also in relation to the distinctive way in which privatisation has been taking place. This paper will report lack of diversity in the types of providers, weak educational projects, and unconventional market practices of some private actors. Academics have defined privatisation as a government withdrawing from funding, regulating, or providing education (e.g. Brighouse, 2004; Lubienski, 2006). Chile offers considerable funding, weak regulation, and full ownership to a group of non-state subsidised private schools. These have increased dramatically from 15% in 1981 to 57% in 2014. Chilean research into educational privatisation has been uneven. While research has been concerned about the impact of privatisation at system level focusing on school segregation or private/public performance differences (Valenzuela et al. 2013, Carrasco et al., 2015), there has been little research into the subsidised ‘private sector’ itself in Chile. Similarly, while effects on segregation, effectiveness, and family preferences have been well-documented, the educational, market, and local practices of private providers in Chile have been under-researched. The importance of the private sector in education in Chile, as well as policy regulating its participation, demand further research to understand the patterns, dynamics, and development of Chilean education, especially the challenges of offering greater quality and diversity (Wilson, 2016). This paper is part of a large-scale research project and explores the complexity, variability, and nuances of private provision. In particular, the paper reports survey findings from 1800 subsidised private schools using a one-stage stratified sample procedure. Using multivariate analysis, the paper considers relevant dimensions such as owner characteristics, organisation and resource allocation, teacher professional development, internal involvement of community, curriculum emphasis, funding distribution and priorities, and competitive strategies in local markets. The paper will explore the claim that while some private providers might contribute to education achieving public goals, the way in which this takes place is ambiguous, inconsistent, and unrelated to particular structural variables such as size, type of provider or kind of educational project. The findings show a lack of diversity in the types of private provision, weak educational projects and unconventional markets practices of some private actors such as non-competitive practices. The paper will offer insights into the relationship between specific policy regulations and the emergence of some non-conventional private providers when compared to international patterns of educational privatisation.
References
Brighouse, H. (2004). What’s Wrong With Privatising Schools? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(4), 617-631. Carrasco, A., Seppänen, P., Rinne, R. & Falabella, A. (2015). Educational accountability policy schemes in Chile and Finland. In P. Seppänen, A. Carrasco, M. Kalalahti, R. Rinne & H. Simola (Eds.). Contrasting Dynamics in Education Politics of Extremes: school choice in Chile and Finland. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 53-80. Lubienski, C. (2006). School Choice and Privatization in Education: An Alternative Analytical Framework. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies JCEPS, 4(1). Wilson, T. (2016). Contesting the Public School: Reconsidering Charter Schools as Counterpublics. American Educational Reserach Journal, 53(4), 919–952 doi: 10.3102/0002831216658972
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