Over the past decade, private sector involvement in education has grown at an unprecedented rate. While private educational provision (through private schools) and the sale of goods and services to schools has a long history, recent years have seen the emergence of a broader educational market, which now spans areas such as assessment services, teaching and learning resources, school improvement initiatives, administrative support and edu-marketing (Verger et al., 2016). A market for instructional services has also been observed, thereby contributing to the privatization of a ‘core technology of schooling’ (Goldring & Ogwa, 2002, p. 7). Moreover, scholars have highlighted the rise of private supplementary tutoring, or shadow education (e.g. Park et al., 2016), which in some contexts is increasingly integrated into publicly funded schools (Elffers et al., 2019).

The above examples do not only signal that private sector involvement in education is expanding, but also that private and public sectors increasingly become ‘entangled’ or intertwined. Indeed, Waslander (2021) argues that the idea of ‘public’ and ‘private’ sectors as separate entities does not provide a sufficient frame of understanding the increasingly complex developments in current education. A more fruitful approach to understanding these developments might be to use the concept of an ‘ecosystem’ (Waslander, 2021) or a ‘hybrid public-private profile’ (Karré, 2011).

Recognizing the complex entanglement of private and public components in education calls for further research, firstly from a more descriptive perspective. What do these public-private constellations look like in the practice of education and schooling? How do these components interact, which changes in the constellations currently take place, and how do educational professionals engage with these developments? What kind of public-private entanglement seems to be promising or risky from which point of view? In addition, further research is necessary from a normative point of view. In the wake of increasing public-private entanglement, concerns have been expressed about whether these developments imply an erosion of the 'publicness of education’ and of public goals and values. Education is widely recognized as a fundamental human right and a public good, which places a significant responsibility on governments and school systems. However, research indicates that the public character of education is crucially shifting as a result of the introduction of various forms of privatization (Burch, 2009; Miron, 2008; Säfström & Biesta, 2023).

With these questions in mind, this double symposium examines the growing, global trend of public-private entanglement in education. The paper presentations cover diverse country-contexts and explore the various forms and multifaceted aspects of public-private entanglements, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of the nature, drivers, and implications of this development in different settings. A central focus is on understanding what recent developments mean for the ‘publicness’ of education systems and whether, how, and under what conditions public values are preserved throughout this process.

The symposium contributes to academic debates on privatization and public-private entanglements in the following ways:

1. We move beyond the increasingly problematic dichotomy of public versus private education, and propose new theoretical arguments and models to explain contemporary dynamics.
2. We adopt a multidisciplinary approach to analyze public-private entanglements, drawing on scholarship from fields such as sociology, public administration and the philosophy of education. This multidisciplinary approach enables a deeper understanding of the drivers behind, as well as the mechanisms and conditions that shape the effects of different forms of public-private entanglement.
3. We highlight recent developments and emerging forms of public-private entanglement (such as the privatization of instruction) that have so far received limited scholarly attention.

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