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E D U C AT I O N I N T E R N AT I O N A L
FORMS OF PRIVATISATION IN AND OF PUBLIC EDUCATION ■ Schools
being business-like or like-businesses: ‘endogenous’ privatisation
Quasi-markets The ‘market form’ is the key device of hidden privatisation in education. The development of what are often known in critical literature as quasi-markets rests primarily upon the introduction into the state education system of forms of school choice – the right of parents to choose between schools. Choice is facilitated by moves to diversify local education provision alongside the introduction of combinations of: per-capita funding; the devolution of management responsibilities and budgets to schools; the provision of school ‘vouchers’ for use in public or private schools; the relaxation of enrolment regulations; and the publication of ‘performance outcomes’ as a form of market ‘information’ for parent-choosers. That is, the removal or weakening of bureaucratic controls over school recruitment, school funding tied to this recruitment, and support for and encouragement for choice and movement around the system. These are ‘quasi-markets’ in that there is no clear price mechanism involved, although some voucher schemes, especially those which allow the voucher to be used for private sector schools, as in Chile or Milwaukee, USA, come very close.
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An outcome that policy makers seek from these moves is the production of competition between schools, competition that in principle is expected to have the effect of raising standards across the system; either through the closing down of ‘poor’ schools which fail to attract sufficient parental choices or by raising the performance of these ‘poor’ schools as a result of the competition for choices. Advocates of competition either see the market as simply value-neutral, as a mechanism for the delivery of education which is more efficient or responsive or effective or they present the market as possessing a set of positive moral values in its own right - effort, thrift, self-reliance, independence and risk-taking, what is called 'virtuous self-interest'. Those taking the latter view see the market as a transformational force that carries and disseminates its own values. That is, it is argued that competition does not only make