Education privatisation and marketisation have become increasingly complex and plural phenomena. Not only are market arrangements making inroads into new territories, but they are also continuously transforming, giving way to new configurations. This growing plurality of forms and contexts is paralleled by a diversification of the rationales and forces driving such phenomena, and of the responses and outcomes they generate.

Grappling with the increasing complexity and plurality of education privatisation and marketisation remains an important task, as well as one that requires revisiting conceptual, analytical and methodological frameworks underpinning this research field. While such phenomena have been extensively analysed, research has tended to focus on a few countries, such as the US, England, Australia, Chile, Belgium and the Netherlands (Belfield & Levin, 2002; Ball & Youdell, 2008; Edwards & Whitty, 1992; Koinzer et al., 2017; Lubienski, 2009; Vandenberghe, 1999). Attention has also concentrated on a few outcomes, mainly educational performance and school segregation (Hoxby, 2003; Woessmann, 2005; Alegre & Ferrer, 2010). Finally, despite the study of education privatisation and marketisation cuts across different fields, sociological and economic approaches stand out in their scholarly production around such topics. Accounting for the evolving nature of these phenomena requires expanding research horizons and strategies.

This Panel Discussion aims to stimulate a debate around such questions – reflecting on the latest theoretical, analytical, and empirical developments in education privatisation and marketisation scholarship, as a necessary step to inform new research possibilities. Particular attention will be paid to the European context, which poses a series of relevant research questions and challenges. While market arrangements have a long-standing tradition in different European countries, research on their origins remains more limited. Likewise, market policies are currently being reshaped in several European countries as a result of complex problematisation processes leading to different forms of policy change.

The panel will build on the insights brought by the Research Handbook on Education Privatization and Marketization (Edward Elgar, 2025). Featuring 30 contributions addressing a range of emerging or under-examined trends from diverse disciplinary angles, the volume is expected to serve as an invitation to interrogate and rethink research approaches to education privatisation and marketisation. To this end, the panel will bring together the editors of the handbook in conversation with leading experts in the field, offering their perspectives and extensive experience in studying such themes. The discussion will be organised along four critical areas:

• The emergence of new modalities of privatisation and marketisation, including new policies and modes of delivery, such as fiscal instruments (Hackett, 2019) or homeschooling (Jolly & Matthews, 2018). 

• The potential of incorporating theoretical, analytical and methodological frameworks from disciplines such as geography (Yoon et al., 2020) or political science (Gingrich, 2011) to better capture the complexity of privatisation and marketisation.

• The increasing diversity of actors and analytical dimensions relevant to understanding the impacts of privatisation and marketisation, with an emphasis on underlooked outcomes -e.g. effects on teachers (Fredriksson, 2009), students with disabilities (Waitoller, 2020) or public opinion (Busemeyer et al., 2020).

• The evolution of privatisation and marketisation arrangements, with particular attention to recent processes of problematisation and redesign (D’Agostino et al., 2024), and episodes of resistance and rollback.

By reflecting on such themes, this panel seeks to advance the field of education privatisation and marketisation research in two ways: first, by taking stock of recent theoretical and empirical developments; and second, by identifying relevant research gaps and potential new lines of inquiry. In so doing, the discussion will contribute to expanding our understanding of these phenomena as they continue to evolve in education systems across Europe and beyond.

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