Public good over private profit

This toolkit is intended as a resource for civil society coalitions and organisations with a rights-based understanding of education, who want to better understand the development and impact of privatisation in the education sector in their country, and who may be thinking about, or have already embarked on, advocacy against the harmful effects of privatisation. While reflecting primarily the context of the Global South – both low- and middle-income countries – the toolkit draws on experiences and examples from around the world, and should provide useful background, insight and ideas for activists in any context or country.

GCE recognises that the right to education implies both that states have a responsibility to ensure access to equitable, quality education, and that education should be free. Recent experience of our members and allies has raised concerns about ways in which growing privatisation and commodification in and of education systems has worsened inequity in education, deepened broader economic inequality, threatened progress towards quality education for all and undermined the delivery of quality public education.

Given this, GCE has been working with members to track developments relating to public and private education around the world, and understand their impacts. Since 2013, GCE members have undertaken research on the impact of private provision on the right to education, and GCE has produced a report, Private Profit, Public Loss, focused largely on ‘lowfee’ private schools. In this toolkit, GCE draws on member experience and expertise to produce a resource that can be of wider use in supporting the GCE movement, and civil society in general, to challenge those aspects of the privatisation of education that threaten to undermine the achievement of the right to free, public quality and equitable education for all.