Education International
and philanthropic) actors to deliver core public services. While these moves are ostensibly about catering to disadvantaged students, we echo arguments made previously that such provision of schooling is likely to increase inequity, rather than reduce it (Sellar & Hogan, 2019). Online schools might be a cost-effective way to educate masses of students, but are likely to undermine the social purposes of schooling and the ethical obligation societies have to the health and wellbeing of their young people.
4.
New private infrastructures of education
A key way that private sector education businesses and global technology companies have expanded and intensified their commercial agendas in public education is through the provision of digital infrastructure for online teaching and learning (e.g. MS365, G Suite, AWS Cloud). This has consolidated the market share of key private infrastructure providers. For example, in the UK, government support for Microsoft and Google has potentially restricted the market of online learning platform providers, by incentivising schools to opt for platforms that are both free to use and bundled up with government-funded technical assistance. To a significant extent, government investment in Microsoft and Google has seen these companies come to dominate the area of school IT infrastructure. Similarly, in China the state has invested significantly in AI-based edtech during the pandemic, as part of an escalation of its longstanding ambition to create an innovative education system that will enhance China’s long-term geopolitical strengths in AI development and deployment (Knox 2020). The involvement of technology companies in national and international coalitions, such as those led by UNESCO and ISTE, is assisting them to expand their infrastructure business to new geographical spaces, particular in underserved or developing contexts. We can understand infrastructure in a slightly different way, as constituting a shift from the infrastructure of physical classrooms to increasingly online, blended or hybrid systems of education enabled by digital infrastructure. Even when schools re-open, many will have new agreements in place - including hastily agreed consent from parents for technology companies and edtech vendors to provide services and resources. These efforts are part of a larger project to reimagine the infrastructure of public education, in particular by stretching edtech products and services across existing schooling systems as a vital new substratum of pedagogy, management and curriculum provision. For example, Dan Cohen argues that various market reformers and edtech 58