Push to Privatise Education in Global South Challenged

By Kwame Buist Reprint | | Print |

LONDON, Apr 24 2015 (IPS) - The multinational education and publishing company Pearson PLC was challenged during its annual general meeting on Apr. 24 by representatives of civil society and trade union groups over various profit-driven programmes aimed at expanding private education in numerous countries in the global South. 

As people arrived at the AGM, they were greeted by protesters with placards saying ‘Education is a right, not a commodity’ and ‘Stop cashing in on kids’.

In an open letter to the Pearson board published Apr. 24, civil society groups and trade unions including Global Justice Now, the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) wrote that the company’s “activities around the world indicate its intention to commercialise and privatise education at all levels.

“From fuelling the obsessive testing regimes that are the backbone of the ‘test and punish’ efforts in the global North, to supporting the predatory, “low-fee” for-profit private schools in the global South, Pearson’s brand has become synonymous with profiteering and the destruction of public education.”

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “Pearson’s profit-driven agenda of pushing private education in the global south is at odds with the universal right of education that all children have.

“There is significant evidence to show that private education, even when ‘low cost’, ultimately increases segregation and marginalisation in society because access and quality depend on ability to pay. It’s even more disturbing that Pearson is getting U.K. taxpayers’ money in the form of aid from DfID to subsidise them in this process.”

According to Christine Blower, NUT General Secretary, “Pearson’s activities around the world indicate its intention to commercialise and privatise education at all levels.  Pearson needs to end its involvement with fee-paying private schools in the global South; stops all practices that promote and support the obsession with high-stakes testing; and negotiates with teachers’ unions and others to secure agreement on the appropriate role of edu-business in education.

“Education is a human and civil right and a public good, for the good of learners and society not private profit.”

Mary Bousted, General Secretary of ATL, said: “No one should forget that education is a human right which should not be perverted by the profit motive.  School curricula should not be patented and charged for.  Tests should not distort what is taught and how it is assessed.

“Unfortunately, as the profit motive embeds itself in education systems around the world, these fundamental principles come under ever greater threat leading to greater inequality and exclusion for the most disadvantaged children and young people”.

The Pearson AGM took place on the same day that Global Justice Now published a report titled Profiting from poverty, again: DfID’s support for privatising education and health that accused the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfiD) of using aid money to set up private healthcare and education in Africa and Asia which has benefited British and American companies, including Pearson.

The report uses numerous examples to show DfID’s support for private education and healthcare in the global South including the Girls Education Challenge which claims to aim at helping “up to a million of the world’s poorest girls improve their lives through education and to find better ways of getting girls in school and ensuring they receive a quality of education to transform their future.”

DfiD is said to be spending the equivalent of 540 million dollars on the Girls Education Challenge during 2011-2017 and has devolved management of the project to Price Waterhouse Coopers, with the project portfolio showing private sector involvement in education in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nepal and Uganda.

Under the Girls Education Challenge, DfID is funding a project in Tanzania that also involves Pearson.

Meanwhile, says the report, DfID has chosen to partner with Coca-Cola, which claims it will promote “the economic empowerment of 5 million female entrepreneurs across the global Coca-Cola value chain.”

“Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the United Kingdom,” said Dearden. “So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health and education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality and endangers access.”

According to the Global Justice Now director, “aid is being used as a tool to convince, cajole and compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help big corporations like Pearson, but which detract from the real need to promote publicly funded services that are universally accessible.”

Edited by Phil Harris