Old and New Markets in Education: Austerity, Standards and ICT as Pushes towards Privatisation(s) in Italy

Abstract

This article deals with the issue of privatisation(s) in the field of education. In doing so, it focuses on three distinct, although interrelated, processes currently being experienced in the Italian education system: (a) the widening of the spaces for private schooling; (b) the ongoing privatisation of policy and the related blurring of the boundaries between public policy-making and the private sector; and (c) the dynamics of new/old markets where commercial actors and edu-businesses sell tools, technologies, knowledge and data, policy programs and recipes that inform educational processes. The work tries to highlight some connections between specific developments in these three processes of privatisation(s) and three distinct policy trends that are increasingly shaping the European education space, namely austerity, standardisation, and digitalisation. The conclusion discusses the actual and potential implications of all of this for both the ongoing transformation of the role of the education state in the post-welfarist scenario, and the restructuring of the societal governing of education, reflecting on the relationship between these specific processes of privatisation(s), the related reshaping of the role of the education state, that seems to shift towards a metagovernance function, and the developing of a new market-like governmental environment informed by the neo-liberal imaginary.

Marketising Slovene adult education policies and practices using mechanisms of the Europeanisation of education

“…In comparison, the number of municipal AEC has decreased (from 42 in 1999(from 42 in /2000(from 42 in to 32 in 2007(from 42 in /08 and 30 AEC in 2014(from 42 in /15, offering 1602. Data from SURS (2015) are slightly 20082010201120122013 The data presented in Graph 3 show that per annum (particularly after the austerity period after the financial crisis), the share of funds from the Ministry of Education decreased to the lowest amount, with decreases in Ministry of Labour funding also found.…”

“…Despite severe criticism to shift from knowledge to the concept of learning outcomes, supported by qualifications frameworks (Cedefop, 2015), learning outcomes are now being provided for European education policies and for all educational subsystems. As critics emphasised (Hussey & Smith, 2008;Luke, Green & Kelly, 2010;Young & Allais, 2011, 2013, the concept of learning outcomes contains false clarity, precision, objectivity and measurability of knowledge and reduces knowledge to standard units that hinder in-depth and creative learning, the epistemological diversity of knowledge and leads to a negation of the importance of powerful knowledge.…”

“…Since 2004, two resolutions were adopted: ReMPAE 2004-2010(approved in June 2004 and ReMPAE 2013-2020 (approved in October 2013). To foster equality for adult access to education through the appropriate distribution of funds, resolutions defined priority areas, goals and measures for implementation (National Assembly, 2004, 2013. Priority areas include I) informal AE, such as programmes for acquiring key competences and literacy skills, education for active citizenship, social cohesion and information and communication technologies (ICT) programmes, II) AE for improving formal education attainment, such as programmes for completion of primary or secondary school or short-cycle higher vocational education and III) AE for the labour market, such as active employment and vocational training.…”

Private companies and policy-making: Ideological repertoires and concealed geographies in the evaluation of European education policies

“…Anderson (2016: xv) argues that NPM 'entered education in many countries through World Bank and OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] reports and private consultancies that too few educational researchers study'. Although the production of research, evaluation and consultancy services at the national level has been the subject of analysis (Ball, 2007;Grimaldi, 2013;Mahony et al, 2004), their production within the EU has received much less attention (Souto-Otero, 2013;2015b), which raises questions regarding their nature. We should not assume that things are the same everywhere.…”

“…We should not assume that things are the same everywhere. There is also a risk that assumptions around the market-state divide prevent us from looking at how actual mechanisms and actors cross this divide, how commercial actors become part of the governmental assemblage of education and reconfigure market-state relations into ‘heterarchical relationships’, where often the state is perceived as ‘only first amongst equals and new private agencies aid government in designing policy’ (Grimaldi, 2013: 441; Simons et al, 2013).…”