Under neoliberal educational governance, many schools are subject to the global discourse of school choice and competition, and thus market themselves (DiMartino & Jessen, 2018). Schools aim to persuade potential customers (parents and students) of the value of their education. Greater enrollment of students can yield higher income, while inadequate enrollment can force the school to lose income or close. For instance, UK schools with low inspection scores risk further downgrades or school closure, so they publicise themselves to avoid losing their students. While it is understandable that schools need to consider their survival and prosperity, such entrepreneurial acts, and resultant hierarchy among schools, often have a negative impact on schooling and students, e.g., reproducing the existing inequitable structure, marginalisation of disadvantaged students, or mission drift (e.g., pursuing profit at the cost of genuine student learning) (Chiu & Walker, 2007; You & Choi, 2023).

School competition and marketing occur across the globe, especially in the contexts of change and uncertainty. Some leaders of state-funded schools (aided schools) in Hong Kong partly in response to the public’s equation of the private with quality, turned themselves partly private collecting fees (e.g., Hong Kong’s direct subsidy schools) (Zhou et al, 2015). In Nepal, private schools teach in English, which parents perceive to be superior to public schools’ lessons in native Nepali, and became more popular than public schools (Choi & Poudel, 2024). Schools in both regions use social media to build their image and recruit potential students.

However, past studies have not documented schools’ marketing strategies on social media, their effectiveness or impact on schooling. Nor did they investigate their interactions with socio-historical contexts (Choi, 2022; Takayama, 2012). So this study begins to address these research gaps. Informed by privatisation studies (e.g., You & Choi, 2023), marketing studies (e.g., Khan & Qureshi, 2010), and a comparative thematic analysis of Facebook posts of 18 case schools in Hong Kong and Nepal in the 2022-23 academic year, this study examines how the schools appeal to the potential local customers. Using the contrasting case contexts of Hong Kong (epitome of neoliberal educational system) and Nepal (democratic polity that prioritises social justice in governance), we explicate localised enactment of school privatisation via marketing.

Past studies categorised schools’ marketing activities by audience and directness (Khan & Querishi, 2010) or audience and marketing aspects (Chen,  2008). While such studies provide a good foundation of broader marketing, they lack in-depth understanding of schools’ online marketing, which differs to other face-to-face marketing, e.g., immediate responses from the stakeholders, unbound by time or space, but mediated by digital literacy and resources. Nor did they study their potential impact on schooling as public good. To shed light on these phenomena, this study analysed Facebook posts (most widely used by schools) by schools and by parents. The following research questions guided this study:

1. What contents are prioritised in schools’ online marketing via Facebook posts?

2. To what degree do schools’ Facebook posts show neoliberal ideology (e.g., school choice, entrepreneurialism)?

3. What other factors affect their posting type and content?

Understanding the answers to these questions will help understand the political manoeuvres in which schools engage in this digital era in order to take the delicate balance between the neoliberal entrepreneurship and providing education as a public good.

This study adopted a qualitative approach for data collection and analysis. Qualitative study enables us to explore issues around people’s and institutions’ practices (Creswell & Poth, 2016). We draw on the empirical data on school marketing in Hong Kong and Nepal, focusing on the schools’ use of Facebook. The selected schools adopt Facebook as one main social media platform to distribute information, form their public image, and connect with the public. To trial the data collection and analysis, we first collected data in Hong Kong in 2020, then in Nepal in 2022. We purposively selected 18 schools that follow the national curriculum across school types, prestige groups, and mediums of instruction: 9 Hong Kong schools (two government schools, four aided schools, and three direct subsidy scheme [DSS] schools) and 9 Nepal schools (seven public schools and two private schools). We gathered schools’ Facebook accounts,their posts, responses to posts, emojis, likes, comments, and any other relevant information. We used thematic analysis both inductively and deductively to identify, analyse and report patterns or themes within data we gathered from the schools’ Facebook posts (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Thus, while guided by the research questions and relevant literature, we were also open to exploring any emergent themes. For instance, in understanding schools’ neoliberal positioning, the literature which looks into key manifestations of neoliberalism in schooling, e.g., entrepreneurship, change of student-teacher/school-community relationship to customer and service providers, etc. (Ho, Lu & Bryant, 2021) was referenced in creating the coding book, as well as being open for any new themes.

The preliminary findings showed that schools' Facebook posts in both Hong Kong and Nepal reflect the neoliberal logic of competition and commercialisation, both directly and indirectly. Some schools were more actively presenting entrepreneurial selves, conducting diverse business transactions in selling their education or brand and working with educational businesses. For instance, some hired a toy company to create and sell their school souvenirs. While some took such neoliberal identity of their own initiative, presenting themselves as innovative and entrepreneurial, others were positioned as such by outsiders. For instance, the Hong Kong government positions schools as service providers rather than educational institutes (e.g., “The Vice Principal…received the Education Bureau’s Outstanding Customer Service Award.”). In general, however, the schools’ social media posts will show business as usual, but schools participate in the competition among schools mostly reporting their positive features. Such practice was observed both in public and private schools. The commercialisation of schooling was more obvious in Hong Kong—perhaps reflecting its long history of the privatisation of education (Bates et al, 2021). While these schools’ social media partially reflect neoliberal practice, others promote the public good nature of schooling. Irrespective of their fee-collecting status, they promote equality and diversity (e.g., [School name] strives to develop multicultural education and cultivate our students’ multicultural values and global horizons…”). As well as of their initiative, such a motion originates from the government and other stakeholders (e.g., “[Student names] were awarded the Harmony Scholarships Scheme, organised by the Home Affairs Department, [which] recognises students’ participation in… activities promoting racial harmony”). The findings show that the discourses that bring out different identities of schools (entrepreneurs vs. protectors of social justice) coexist and govern schools, and point to the need to investigate the nuanced influence of neoliberalism on schooling as a public good.

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