We are now witnessing a global change that has developed gradually over the past 30 years, leading to more privatisation and commercialisation within public schools. Public education is in its “purest form” built upon social contracts involving the state or government, citizens, and their surrounding communities (Hogan & Thomson, 2021). In Italy and Norway, which form the comparison in this paper, the position of public schools is strong, with more than 90% of the total number of students enrolled. However, changes are evident, among other things, through the increase in “experts” who influence and often take over limited parts of the teaching in schools when the schools do not experience having the capacity to meet their demands. As a result, the complexity of the relationships within the public school system increases in new ways, in policymaking and the educational debate.  

On this background, the first research questions for this paper are: What kind of private and non-governmental actors are involved in lower and upper secondary education in Norway and Italy, and how do they operate? Our next question is: Which factors are essential regarding the involvement of private and commercial actors in the public school system?  

This paper, which represents work in progress, contributes to the literature by examining public schools´ experiences with private and non-governmental actors´ involvement in Norway and Italy. We combine data from qualitative interviews, organisations’ web pages, policy documents, and statistics. There is a lack of knowledge within this area in Norway. Italy shares similarities with Norway concerning the state-centred education governance and high numbers of public schools. However, the countries also have significant contrasts both regarding welfare system and relations with the EU. By comparing privatisation and commercialisation in the two countries, we aim to identify incremental changes concerning “the public” of public education and illuminate questions for further research. 

We find similarities between the countries when it comes to increasing privatization and commercialization in public education. The similarities are represented, for example, by what the external provisions are about, how the private actors seek access to the schools, how the schools receive  the external actors, how decisions are made to involve external parties, what criteria the school uses to sort out who they want to collaborate with, how the schools legitimize the collaboration, and how they integrate external offers into their practice. However, there are differences regarding forms of funding, such as when external offers are free for the schools. There are also differences in the extent to which the offer is seen as limited to the school or whether it is intended to impact the local community. The first has to do with the fact that Italy is a member of the EU and has large foundations that advertise funds for educational purposes, while in Norway, there appear to be many but smaller foundations that offer funding for the activities of external actors. The second has to do with the type of welfare state. In Italy, a southern European welfare state, the relationship between school, family and local community is seen as a closer unit than in Norway, a Scandinavian welfare state, where the school is seen as a unit more separated from family and local communities. 

The study is explorative. Following this, we conducted a "snowball sampling" of, webpages, policy documents, statistics, and informants. We have been mapping the field for commercial and philanthropic providers, what they offer, according to their internet pages and the connection between them. In addition, we have searched for UNESCO and OECD as well as national policy documents and statistics. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with representatives from three schools in both countries, all together 20 informants. The interviews were conducted in person. A report was written after each interview. The main method of the interview analysis is thematic analysis (Brown & Clarke, 2006). For the overall analysis, we are adopting a historical institutionalist approach (Steinmo, 2008), focusing on how different actors' behaviour is influenced following institutional changes, and how institutional changes are underpinned by fundamental ideas. We are also inspired by a model of institutional change developed by Mahoney & Thelen (2010). This model invites to illuminate "gaps" or "soft spots" in the institution (here: schools), in which incremental change can be expected (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010, p. 14). The model further illustrates how different types of change happen in the interplay between the characteristics of the political context and the institution on the one hand and the interplay between political context, institution, and dominant change agents on the other hand. The analyses therefore illuminate the interplay between the content of supra-national and national education policy, types of private and non-governmental actors involved in schools, and schools´ experiences. We also identify who can be considered change agents and what makes them hold the position they do. This approach enables us to spot significant details in the material and invites a deeper analysis of the (possible) gradual institutional change in question.

On a global scale, it is documented how global standardisation (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016), the increased use of numeric data (Grek, 2009; Ozga, 2009), and qualitative examples of success (Lewis & Hogan, 2019) have made it possible for private actors to involve in public education. In the contemporary global governance of education, Elfert and Ydesen (2023) find that the role of multi-stakeholder groups and transnational public-private partnerships is increasingly gaining ground. The new arenas for discussing the role of education in society are networks, forums, and conferences where private actors play a significant role. A rising trend is that the power to define the educational agenda is held not by states or supranational agencies such as UNESCO, OECD, or the World Bank but by those who provide the finances (Elfert & Ydesen, 2023). What this body of research shows is that the influence from private and non-state actors in public education is increasing worldwide and the development takes different forms in different countries (Hogan & Thompson, 2021). Private actors are entering through different types of “soft spots” in the national policy. Our study, where we compare data from Norway and Italy, shows that despite of similarities, the types of funding opportunities available are differing, thus this influences the market for private and commercial actors and, subsequently, how they engage with schools. Our preliminary findings indicate that different welfare states influence the arrangements of the private provisions for schools, leading to private provisions targeting the entity of the school, local community, and families in Italy, while in Norway, the private provisions target schools and students more isolated. Taken together, this study highlights how country specific traits are intertwined with the global trend of privatisation and commercialisation of public education, and that comparative studies can help us crystalize such traits.

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