EDUCATION

Marketization and Privatization of Education System

Marketization and Privatization of Education System

Introduction

Many efforts have been made to replace the “one best system” of education which is state funded and state provided, in all parts of the world. Many recent reforms have tried to disintegrate the central bureaucracies and have created the delegate system of increasing in its place. This kind of system increasingly stresses upon the parental choices and the competition between diversified sort of schools. Such reforms are often described as “privatization” and “marketization” of education. Though, both terms are sued very often and many times are also used interchangeably, both are loosely defined despite being the sources of current changes in welfare provision.

Defining Privatization and Marketization

Although, the term privatization is often used when it comes to define the recent reforms in education, it is loosely defined. According to David Donnison (Whitfield, 2006, pp. 1-4), meaning of term “privatization” is uncertain at its best and is often tendentious. For him, it is also designed to dramatize the conflict and mobilize the support rather than clarifying the analysis. The process of privatization occurs when all or any of the following elements of public assets or services change:

Ownership or rights of public services such as land, organization, buildings, information and intellectual knowledge or equipment are either transferred or sold to the voluntary or private sector.

Accountability and governance of public bodies is diluted or reduced by the organizational structure that is newly developed, for instance the trust model and the use of company.

Investment and finance, for example the introduction of increased user charges or the use of private capital.

The working values and principles are altered to become a sign of commercial and private interest. It ranges from social needs organizations to the stipulation of services.

Public organization management is commercialized and restructured as a channel of applying the above given changes.

Le Grand and Robinson (1984, cited in Whitty and Power, 2000, pp. 55-59) also argues that privatization is a broadly defined term which may include a decline in state provision, more deregulations as well as a reduction of state subsidies along with clear-cut transfer of services from public to private sector. Concept of ideal privatization may include:

Development of the belief that the private sector approach is better than every traditional approach that had been selected in public sector.

Expecting from public sector institutions to function as that of in private sector.

Promoting the private including family/individual decision making rather than the professional and political judgments.

Marketization is the process through which market forces are forced on public services. These public services have traditionally been delivered, planned, and financed by the local and central governments (Whitfield, 2006, pp. 1-4). The process of marketization has five basic elements:

The commoditization of infrastructure and services;

The commoditization of labour such as jobs and work to increase the output and aiding transfer to other employer;

Reorganizing the state for market competition and mechanisms;

Reconstructing the user involvement and democratic liability;

Implanting the business interests and encouraging ...