Theorizing Privatization in Education: Comparing Conceptual Frameworks and the Value of the Capability Approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The past decade has witnessed a notable shift in the international education policy environment, characterized by a rapid growth in private educational provision.In the context of a divisive debate on the role of the non-state sector in primary and secondary education, this paper grapples with the theoretical underpinnings of both advocacy and critique of educational privatization, paying particular attention to a rise in low-fee private schools and public-private partnerships.It is argued that three of the most commonly adopted conceptual frameworks -the neoclassical, social primary goods and rights-based approaches -each have notable shortcomings when applied to an analysis of privatization.In light of this, the overarching aim of this paper is to offer the human capability approach and to argue that it is the strongest and most appropriate framework for understanding and analyzing the complex and multi-faceted issue of private sector engagement in education. Francine Menashy 14Current Issues in Comparative Education sector engagement in education, able to rigorously counter the dominance of the neoclassical approach.This paper structurally borrows in part from Robeyns (2006), who similarly applies conceptual approaches (or "models") to education, but pays particular attention to issues concerning gender.In this article, I first provide a brief descriptive account of recent trends in privatization in education, focusing on the rise of public-private partnerships and low-fee private schools.This is followed by descriptions of the neoclassical, rights-based, social primary goods, and human capability approaches, and their applications to privatization policies.Comparisons are then drawn between the human capability approach and each of the other frameworks.By exposing contrasts with the capability framework, attention is drawn to the shortcomings of the other approaches.Given that privatization policies often rest on the value of parental choice, throughout the paper particular attention is paid to different conceptions of the notion of choice and to what degree individual choice ought to be given primacy in social policy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.066 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.025 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".