Soft privatisation: mapping an emerging field of European education governance

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of 'soft privatisation'. Departing from a review of the literature examining the growing participation of private sector actors in the provision of public education across Europe, the paper investigates how privatisation has emerged in the context of the European Union as a phenomenon embedded in, rather than a replacement of, public education. Through analysing the creation of a European education areaand the move of European education from being a driver for economic growth to becoming an Economy in itselfthe paper argues that privatisation in Europe is deeply imbricated with the network modes of public education governance characteristic of the European Union and the Bologna Process. These entanglements have implications both for the transparency and political accountability of private sector actors involved in public education.

COVID-19 and its effects: On the risk of social inequality through digitalization and the loss of trust in three European education systems

“…The sovereign rule became more visible in the lockdown in March, however. In addition to these procedures, to which higher education institutions were unaccustomed, the integration and embedding of private services in public higher education and administration was accelerated during the lockdown (Cone and Brøgger, 2020; Williamson and Hogan, 2020), blurring the traditional conception of public education as a state-operated service.…”

Governing education in times of crisis: State interventions and school accountabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This reconfiguration can be explained in part by the growing influence of, and significant consensus between, international and regional organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Bank and the European Union (EU), whose programmes, initiatives and frameworks have set the standard for ‘quality education’ in a global economy (Grek, 2010; Lewis, 2020; Mundy et al, 2016; Ydesen, 2019). Concomitantly, in many EU Member States, neoliberal processes of decentralisation, deregulation and privatisation have enabled new networks of public, private and civil society actors to enter local and national education policy arenas (Cone and Brøgger, 2020; Milner et al, 2020; Winchip et al, 2019). Understanding the workings of education today therefore requires sensitivity to these multiple scalar agents, and the data, technologies, knowledges, instruments and discourses that constitute and are constituted by the complex, interconnected spaces in which they interact (Christensen and Ydesen, 2015; Robertson, 2018).…”

Referentiality mechanisms in EU education policymaking: The case of the European Education Area

“…The study presented in this article is the closest in its scope to the study by Cone and Brogger (2020) because it also explores the EEA's international level of policymaking and draws parallels between EEA and EU governance. The difference is that while Cone and Brogger (2020) demonstrate the similarities of how the EEA and the EU more widely are governed through such similar mechanisms as interest groups, stocktaking and benchmarking, the study presented in this article, explores a new angle by uncovering the reasons of EU policymakers to develop the EEA and how they link to the crafting of the EU project more widely. This is accomplished through the adoption of referentiality as an original lens for this analysis.…”

“…The literature specifically on the EEA is limited. The EEA has been explored from the following angles in the scholarship: digitalisation of education in the EU (Decuypere & Simons, 2020; Salajan, 2019) and student mobility within the EEA (Grinberga‐Zalite et al., 2018), national responses to the initiative illustrated by the case of Croatia (Kasap et al., 2018), the governance of the EEA which resembles the governance of the EU through the creation and expansion of interest groups that coordinate stocktaking and benchmarking (Cone & Brogger, 2020). The first two topics are similar in the sense that they focus on two policy initiatives within the EEA, linked to its action lines.…”