How can we realise the right to free, quality, public education?

While we invest substantial resources in education globally, public education still suffers from egregious underfunding, exacerbated by inequitable distribution. UNESCO estimated an annual financing gap of almost $100 billion in 2023. Funding shortfalls stem from tax injustice, aid conditionalities, austerity, and other issues described as “50 Years of Failure,” marking a half century of using neoliberal economic policies in and through international aid.

Global South countries often face financial pressures resulting from tax injustice, including tax evasion and avoidance, financial secrecy, and the burden of debt. Illicit capital flows between states thrive within an international financial architecture designed decades ago and no longer fit for purpose. Every country loses from tax abuse and financial secrecy – even global north countries who lose much more in absolute terms than lower income countries. 

While lower income countries lose less funding in absolute terms, they suffer disproportionate damage to public services such as education. Multinational companies and wealthy individuals benefit from tax injustice by offshoring profits and wealth to low or no tax jurisdictions, with the scale of lost government tax revenue estimated at $472 billion. 

This tax context, combined with aid conditionalities imposed by financial institutions, forces governments in low-income countries to establish regressive taxes which deepen inequality. Within countries, disenfranchisement and segregation along social, economic, and ethnic lines often mean that marginalised learners receive a smaller share of the already shrunken tax base for education. Conflicts of interest also lead to inequities in funding and resource distribution.

Our organisations have long demanded to bring global tax justice and education actors together to advocate for sustainable, progressive increases in domestic financing of public education systems. Furthermore, the education finance call to action from the recent Transforming Education Summit included a focus on increased, more equitable investment. And regarding education finance, the UNSR has stated that

“Such international assistance must not lead to undue influence by international actors or other States on domestic educational policy concerns, particularly with respect to austerity measures and the privatisation of the educational sector. Austerity measures exacerbate inequality, including in education, and predictably lead to an exponential increase in the privatisation and commercialisation of education.”

The 2021 Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) entitled Non-state actors in education:Who chooses? Who loses? addresses the rationale of ‘school choice’ that underpins the privatisation of education. This market-based theory assumes that if students must choose schools, then schools must outcompete each other for customers (students), with this competition yielding higher quality education. 

In particular, those advocating for market-based approaches often propose different forms of public-private partnerships (PPPs), from subsidies to private schools, private management of publicly-funded schools, and vouchers that follow the student. Unfortunately, these programs can incentivise organisations to game the system, from conflicts of interest where decision-makers have financial stakes in schools to the process of cream-skimming students, (selecting high-performing students instead of serving all students). 

The GEMR describes the collateral damage of competition, noting that “non-state actors may increase cost-efficiency by hiring young or unqualified teachers” or that “non-state providers may be tempted to reduce inputs by focusing on subjects whose results are measured, which may matter for their funding.” At a fundamental level, market-based approaches do produce winners and losers—more often for students than for schools—leaving marginalised and impoverished children that often experience segregation with little or no access to education.

The Covid-19 pandemic illustrated the inherent problems with a marketised approach to education. Private schools lacked capacity to face the crisis due to fee-dependency, profit pressure, and poor management. Many non-state schools either requested government support or ceased operating, stranding both students and families and exposing the lack of protection for teacher labour rights. The Covid-19 responses, or lack thereof, reveal the indispensable need to build a human rights-aligned, non-market education sector that guarantees equal services for all, even in cases of contingency. 

As The Future Is Public global manifesto states:

“Public services can neither be left to the market nor subject to austerity. Unlike a commodity, their value is determined by the role they play in fulfilling people’s inherent dignity, rather than their market position or the opportunity for profit.”      

Delivering quality public education is hard enough without the distraction of competition, so States and stakeholders should focus on the principal task of supporting public education.

Finance industry members estimate global education expenditure at around $7 trillion.  Although insufficient and inequitably distributed, the sheer amount of resources spent on education still make it a potentially profitable target. Profit making can occur in many ways in education, so we focus on three main areas: commercial schools, public-private partnerships, and education technology.

For the past eight years, PEHRC members have raised concerns in particular about companies operating commercial schools, such as Bridge International Academies (BIA), rebranded as NewGlobe Inc. In 2015, PEHRC members questioned World Bank President Jim Kim’s praise for this for-profit, fee-charging chain of private primary schools. The statement, with 199 signatories, details how charging fees to already poor families serves to “entrench inequalities and create deep educational segregation.”

Further work by PEHRC members led to a 2019 statement signed by 88 civil society organisations calling attention of investors to concerns about BIA regarding the quality of education, lack of transparency, poor labour conditions, high fees and lack of respect for the rule of law in host countries. In 2022, 38 signatory civil society organisations highlighted limitations and urged caution in interpreting findings of a new study on BIA’s education model. And in 2023, the Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE) released a research report detailing BIA’s lack of transparency and accountability and its “questionable labour practices” and poor learning conditions.

Various coalitions of PEHRC members have also brought attention to the role of different international organisations regarding education finance. In 2019, PEHRC members (173 CSOs) wrote to the World Bank to ensure development aid for education supports public provision. In 2020, PEHRC members endorsed the International Finance Corporation (IFC) decision to move away from for-profit education investments. 

PEHRC members have since supported decisions by the IFC to stop investing in fee-charging private schools and the GPE and the European Parliament to end funding of for-profit schools. The UNSR also “welcomes the shifts by the World Bank International Finance Corporation and the Global Partnership for Education, which have resolved not to provide funding to fee-charging or for-profit private education providers.”

Another source of profit occurs in the form of PPPs in which governments face pressure, both from within and outside, to partner with private entities, as described in the Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education’s report. A 2022 report from Eurodad explains that, while promoted by a “wide range” of international institutions, PPPs have a high fiscal and human impact that “are rarely justified by proven efficiency gains” and make access to services “increasingly dependent on citizens’ capacity to pay, which transforms rightsholders into consumers.”

Finally, in addition to private actors closing schools, the Covid-19 pandemic also saw a surge in technology in education. In a recent report entitled An Ed-Tech Tragedy?, UNESCO notes that while some claim that COVID accelerated a necessary move towards digitalization of education, 

“the global evidence reveals a more sombre picture. It exposes the ways unprecedented educational dependence on technology often resulted in unchecked exclusion, staggering inequality, inadvertent harm, and the elevation of learning models that place machines and profit before people.”

This comprehensive (654 page) and cautionary evaluation should make the education community give serious pause for multiple reasons as emergent research shows that “screen-based technology may present neurobiological risks to growing brains.”