It is recently more often that the public character of school is being put into question, becoming  – again – one of the key problems for educational theory (cf. Masschelein & Simons 2010; Cornelissen 2010; Higgins & Abowitz 2011). Phenomena like charter schools, educational vouchers, or the New Managerialism policies of making schools accountable while becoming domesticated seem to announce the decline of the traditional, welfare state model of public schooling, where schools are being funded, run, controlled, and evaluated by the state bureaucracies (cf. Ball 2007; Burch 2009). However, it seems that in this discussion ‘the public’ is way too easily identified with ‘the state’, as well as the private-public difference is simplified as concerning purely the type of property and of governance. Taking the conceptualisation of the difference between oikos and polis given by Arendt (1958) as the starting point, I follow Habermas (1989) in his research on the modern universalisation of the public as a sphere where things important to all (i.e. a public things) can be determined, and where the dispersed, plural, multi-perspectivist rationality of all can be used to work out a valid to all decision about these public things (cf. Habermas 1996). The link between Arendt and Habermas allows me to indicate the main aspects in which one can examine the title question in relation to the tension between the counterfactual sense of the public (as introduced by Habermas) and the empirical phenomena that seem to threaten the very existence of the public.

It occurs that three different aspects of the public character of school can be distinguished. Juridical aspect refers to the instance responsible for a school. Taking the diversity of the national legal systems, it seems that still the state or a local government are privileged in taking responsibility for a school. This legal status quo is confronted with the pressure for the privatisation of schooling (Mazawi 2013). Institutional aspect refers to mechanisms, devices, and practices that (re)introduce the public into the institution of school. The example of Giroux’s (1983) idea of making schools into alternative public spheres will be referred to the phenomenon of the new form of bureaucratisation of schooling stemming from the hegemony of the audit culture (Power 1997). Performative aspect refers to practices that make school happen. I refer here to Masschelein & Simons (2013) idea of school as a free time (scholè) which appears when a thing is put on the table so that everyone in the (class)room could study it, think about it, exercise with it. This means, that the appearance of school is preceded by the practice of making a thing public. This aspect seems to be threatened by the phenomenon of the commodification of education and the colonisation of education by the language of learning (Cf. Biesta 2010).

Finally, the analysis sketched above will allow me to indicate three meanings of the public character of school. Firstly, public school refers to equality, and hence it goes beyond the differences between humans and focuses on their universal ability (viz. Rancière 1991). Secondly, public school refers to responsibility, that is, to the task of understanding school within the realm of polis, i.e. in the scope of an ethical obligation of the existing generation to give the new generation a chance to begin with the world anew (Arendt 1961). Thirdly, public school refers to publicity (Öffentlichkeit) (Habermas 1989) as it requires the courage of sincerity and exposure of the self for the possibility of transformation.

Philosophical analysis involving empirical data, as well as philosophical and educational concepts and theories.

The aim of the study is to indicate the dimensions of the answer to the title question "What does it mean that school is 'public'?". This is first analysed in relation to the necessary layers of the intersection of school and the public (juridical, institutional, performative). The outcome of the analysis - as stated in the overview - is the description of the three meanings that are involved when speaking of a 'public school': equality, responsibility, and publicity.

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