In sheep’s clothing: Philanthropy and the privatisation of the ‘democratic’ state
Clause 12 could also signal a first step towards a bold new experiment: a middle ground that merges the best of public and private education. Elsewhere in the world, schools that are privately managed, but state-financed and quality-assured, have shown promise. […] The greater autonomy and improved efficiencies arising from privately delivered models, when paired with rigorous quality assurance and accountability measures, can deliver better learning outcomes more cost-effectively than the top-down state system. Such an arrangement in India, offered to exceptional operators, could be a powerful vehicle for change.117 According to Ark, in addition to the local government of Delhi where the vouchers programme was tested, two Indian state governments have also shown interest in such kinds of initiatives.118, 119 It is not coincidental that Ark has chosen to support the PPP element of the RTE Act 2009. The use of vouchers is a privileged mechanism to encourage parental choice, as mentioned, a key policy technology in the establishment of education markets. Evidence is contested, but research in Chile (see Treviño et all, 2018), Sweden (see Sørensen, 2017) and Milwaukee (USA) (see Ford and Andersson, 2016), the classic examples of the use of school vouchers, generally shows that standards (as measured by test scores) have not risen markedly. The Ark-commissioned Rigorous Review of the Evidence on Public-Private Partnerships in Education in Developing Countries recently concluded that, on the issue of vouchers, “the body of evidence for the relationship between voucher provision and learning outcomes is mixed and inconclusive, and therefore insufficient” (emphasis in original) (Aslam et al., 2017, p. 33). Justin Sandefur, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Development acknowledged in the foreword to the review that “There is a growing consensus in the US literature that private school voucher programs have often failed to raise learning levels (Leonhardt, 2016)” (Aslam et al, 2017, p. iii). Despite this lack of convincing evidence on private school improvement, Ark has been plainly invested in supporting both a market diversification of provision as well as the expansion of parental choice in India through the support for both supply and demand side initiatives (such as the SDMC Partnership schools and the strengthening of the voucher programme legislated in the RTE Act 2009, through the ENABLE lottery). The findings from the ENABLE study have not been published but a recent ‘note’ by Susannah Hares (Hares, 2018), former head of Ark EPG, writing as Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development, revealed that the ENABLE voucher lottery has had no effect on the winners:
117 Hares, S. (2013, 13 March). Education in India: Time for a Bold New Experiment, Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/education_in_india_time_for_a_bold_new_experiment 118 Center for Education Innovations (n.d.). Ark Education voucher program. http://www.educationinnovations.org/ program/ark-education-voucher-program 119 Dixon, P., Humble, S. and Counihan, C. (Eds.) (2015). Handbook of International Development and Education, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, p. 382.
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