Between Privatization and Globalization: The Reform and Provision of Education in Honduras

• In Event: Globalization, Privatization, Marginalization: Assessing Connections and Consequences in/Through Education

Abstract

Though Honduras has since the country’s origins been caught between the forces of privatization and globalization, there is scant literature that addresses how either of these dimensions have affected the education system, let alone studies that bring them together to show their interrelationships. The underlying research for this paper sought primarily to document the advances that privatization has made in the country since the year 2000. However, it became apparent that a full consideration of privatization also meant investigating the ways that international organizations have privatized the education policymaking process by structuring and facilitating key events and research studies through which the reform agenda is set and the education policy strategy documents are elaborated.

This paper documents and analyzes the above-mentioned developments in the Honduran education through the theoretical lens of Critical International Political Economy (CIPE) (Edwards, 2018). This conceptual approach to the study was appropriate because it drew attention to the way that the Honduran education sector is intimately engaged with and conditioned by the financial and political leverage of influential international organizations. At the same time, the “political economy” orientation of this perspective drew attention to non-traditional domestic actors (e.g., philanthropies, low-fee private schools, corporations) who have increasingly made in-roads in the education sector and who have either engaged in the direct privatization of education services or else who have promoted the incorporation of business-logic into the governance strategies of the education sector.

Case study methods guided the study. Data sources include interviews with 42 key actors from the education system, review of policy documents and existing literature, and school visits with urban and rural schools to obtain a “vertical” perspective on how privatization is affecting the local level in addition to national politics.

The findings, first, specify how policymaking itself has been privatized and then details seven privatization trends that have emerged in recent years. Among other things, these trends are related to the provision of pre-basic education by private foundations, the emergence of low-cost private schools, the collection of fees for families with children in public schools, the incursion of companies in education through corporate social responsibility, and the growing participation of non-governmental organizations and for-profit organizations subcontracted by international cooperation agencies.

Ultimately, the value of this study is that it goes beyond a consideration of what private actors are doing to further privatization to consider, as well, the conditions to which they are responding. The paper concludes by turning the gaze back on the Honduran state to consider, from the perspective of CIPE, why globalization and privatization are able to be so influential in the first place. These reflections lead us to highlight the limitations of the Honduran state itself and the way it has evolved over time, as the result of a dialectic that is caught between globalization and domestic political interests. These concluding reflections extend the analytic focus beyond what is typically found in studies of privatization trends and help to explain why privatization is happening, as opposed to describing what is happening.

Authors

• D. Brent Edwards Jr., University of Hawaii - Manoa

• Alejandro Caravaca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Mauro Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona