The Alberta Teachers’ Association

ILLUSTRATION BY MATEUSZ NAPIERALSKI

A look at the privatization of education in Canada

NEOLIBERALISM IS A term often “used to refer to an economic system in which the ‘free’ market is extended to every part of our public and personal worlds. The transformation of the state from a provider of public welfare to a promoter of markets and competition helps to enable this shift” (Birch 2017, para 4). Neoliberalism is associated with a strong belief that individuals and societies are best served when governments are small and the free market takes over state responsibilities. Neoliberals also emphasize the role of the private sector in the delivery of public services because the private sector is thought to be more efficient, cost effective, innovative and responsive than the public sector. 

CHALLENGES TO EDUCATION AS A PUBLIC GOOD

Public education in Canada has been impacted by this political and economic ideology as neoliberalism has been influential in political circles for many decades. As Stephen Crump observes, “the development of educational policy in the 1980s was dominated by an idealized perception of schools as able to operate like a marketplace, able to express practices of competition, choice diversity and market driven funding” (1992, 416). The injection of free-market principles into Canada’s public education system moves the focus from the public good to private considerations. As Stephen Ball and Deborah Youdell point out, “privatisation tendencies are at the centre of the shift from education being seen as a public good that serves the whole community, to education being seen as a private good that serves the interest of the educated individual, the employer and the economy” (2008, 15–16). 

The commodification of public education to reflect private interests rather than the common good has evolved over time through purposeful strategies, many of which are outlined below.

THE PRIVATIZATION PLAYBOOK

In a public lecture at the University of Toronto in 2011, Noam Chomsky pointed out that there is a “playbook” for privatization of the public good. He noted that “the standard technique of privatization [is to] defund, make sure things don’t work, [and when] people get angry, you hand it over to private capital” (2011). The privatization playbook is multipronged because in addition to destabilization through funding cuts fuelled by diminishing government revenues caused by corporate tax cuts, there are well-organized attempts to influence the public’s narrative about public services. 

The public’s dissatisfaction with diminished public services is accelerated by think tanks that “adopt a tone of scientific inquiry and publish policy briefs and appear in the media” to reinforce the notion that public services, including public education, are failures that can only be remedied through privatization (Berliner and Glass 2014, 7). The concerted efforts of conservative think tanks have shaken trust in public institutions and services, paving the way for governments to privatize using regulatory changes as well as contracting out to private providers. 

Ball and Youdell (2008) explain that there are two main ways to privatize public education. The first way is to import business strategies into public education, a technique called endogenous privatization. This is accomplished through competition between schools, high-stakes testing, competitive funding models and performance management of teachers and school leaders. The second technique is privatization of public education, or exogenous privatization. This form of privatization facilitates “the opening up of public education services to private sector participation on a for-profit basis and using the private sector to design, manage or deliver aspects of public education” (Ball and Youdell 2008, 10). 

Beyond ideological considerations, what do corporate interests have to do with education? Simply put, public education represents an opportunity for corporations to make money. “Education services are now ‘big business’ and an increasing number of national and international firms are looking to make profits from selling services to schools and governments and from the delivery of state services on contract” (Ball and Youdell 2008, 104). However, without decades of denigration of public education and the teaching profession, privatizers would have a difficult time selling their wares to the state, so the promotion of free market principles in education remains important to corporations that wish to influence the public’s opinion. 

WHY SHOULD PUBLIC EDUCATION REMAIN PUBLIC?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has held up public education in Canada, particularly in Alberta, as well as public education in such countries as Finland, Estonia and Singapore as having high marks for its success in providing high-quality educational opportunities to students (Schleicher 2018). This raises the question, why would privatization hold appeal for any policymaker in Alberta? Simply put, privatization promises inexpensive educational “solutions,” promotes elitism and appeals to those who see education as a commodity. 

The net result of privatization strategies, such as the introduction of charter schools run by “edu-businesses” and voucher systems in educational systems like Chile and the United States, has not led to discernable improvement and, in some cases, has led to greater societal fragmentation and lower educational outcomes. Finally, because privatization requires a focus on making a profit, logic dictates that the attention of businesses striving to sell their products will prioritize profit over students and community. This is not the case for public education because the profit motive is not a consideration—that alone ought to give us pause when policymakers insist on privatizing the public good. 

References

Ball, S J, and D Youdell. 2008. Hidden Privatization in Public Education. Brussels: Education International. https://campaignforeducation.org/docs/privatisation/Endogenous%20Privatization%20Stephen%20Ball_ENGLISH.pdf (accessed Aug. 13, 2021).

Berliner, D, G Glass and Associates. 2014. 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Birch, K. 2017. “What Exactly is Neoliberalism?” The Conversation, November 2. https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755 (accessed Sept. 6, 2021).

Chomsky, N. 2011. “The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival.” Text of lecture given at the University of Toronto, Toronto, April 7. https://chomsky.info/20110407-2/ (accessed Sept. 7, 2021).

Crump, S J. 1992. “Pragmatic Policy Development:Problems and Solutions in Educational Policy Making. Journal of Education Policy, 7, no 4: 415–25.

Schleicher, A. 2018. World Class: How to Build a 21st-Century School System. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264300002-en (accessed Sept. 23, 2021).