Markets In Education

Education market advocates frequently argue that socioeconomically disadvantaged students could be the main beneficiaries of privatization and market policies. However, the international evidence has shown how privatization and pro-market policies have a negative impact in terms of equity, which particularly affect socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, increase school segregation and stratification, and foster educational inequalities. The main objective of this paper is to analyze how the responses developed by educational providers in marketized environments especially impact poor populations and can act as mechanisms of exclusion. In this context, Chile is an optimal case study due to the extreme version of privatization and market policies it adopted four decades ago. Based on the case study of two municipalities in Chile, which represent two local education markets, the presented evidence combines in-depth interviews with school principals and families. The paper analyses how schools’ responses in the context of a competitive environment produce, among other effects, processes of exclusion affecting students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, foster school segregation and increase educational inequalities. Finally, the paper elaborates on the limits of education markets and privatization policies, as well as market regulation reforms, in providing better educational opportunities to socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

This paper presents the findings of research focused on schools' responses to competitive environments. Using the Chilean education market as a case study, the paper analyzes not only the responses developed by schools in different domains in the face of competitive incentives but also their diversity, as well as motivations, rationalities and objectives behind these responses. The findings also show how different mediating factors at the school and local levels are essential to any understanding of the capacity of market-oriented policies to alter the behavior of schools and obtain the expected results in terms of equity.

Australia has two sectors of tertiary education: a vocational education and a higher education sector. While it does not have the highest level of private expenditure on tertiary education, it has, in recent times, led Anglophone countries in implementing markets in tertiary education. Equity and social inclusion are promoted by Australian Federal and State governments as normative reasons to support markets. This paper will outline the nature of marketisation in tertiary education in Australia, and it will consider the impact on equity on participation in, and outcomes of, tertiary education. It will examine the way the discourse of the public good has been mobilised to support markets. The dynamic underpinning the higher education and vocational education markets respectively will be explored, as will the impact of the higher education market on the vocational education market.

The use of school inspections by educational authorities in the Arabian Gulf countries is rapidly becoming a chosen practice to ‘ensure’ good quality schooling in their private sector schools. Simultaneously, there is an emerging trend of linking inspection judgements with school fee increases. Advocates of this policy suggest that this form of ‘reward for good performance’ encourages poorer performing schools to improve, thus narrowing the gap in access to good quality schooling.
In this context, where public schooling is exclusive to a minority of the population and the majority compulsorily choose from a spectrum of fee charging private schools offering different curricula, most parents are faced with the challenge of purchasing the best quality schooling for their children at prices they can afford. Additionally, policy makers are faced with the challenge of ensuring that market forces within the private sector do not widen access to good quality schooling. A premise of this model of market-provided schooling is that markets optimise the quality of schooling at a given price. This study focuses on the private schooling sector in Dubai as an example of a context in which school fee hikes are linked to school inspection outcomes. It examines the effects of different variables such as school fees and the curriculum offered on the quality of schooling provided.
This study employed quantitative and qualitative techniques. Data on the quality of schooling, was obtained from inspection reports for the fifth year of inspections (2012/2013), in addition to data on fees charged which were obtained from official sources. The affordability of schools' fees was assumed to be an indicator of students’ socio-economic status.
The findings of this study confirm the premise of the neo-liberal, market-provided approach to schooling. It suggests that students of a lower socio-economic status are more likely to receive an inferior quality of schooling than those of a higher socio- economic status when controlling for other factors. Thus, this study concludes by primarily suggesting that policy makers pursue alternative methods of both determining and rewarding good quality schooling.

Outward Collaborative Provision, or`franchising' , has been a growth area in further education (FE) provision in England, yet has received little scholarly interest. This article draws on national and college-level evidence to discuss the development of such provision within the sector. We describe the incentives for providers and clients, present information on the scale of such operations, and consider issues of quality and access. The uneven and volatile nature of`franchised' work are noted, as is the signi® cant difference between`franchising' practised in FE as against that in business. Nevertheless, such provision is a predictable and plausibly defensible outcome from increased reliance on markets in education. We argue that such developments in the sector are best understood using the principles of the market.