How and Why Policy Design Matters: Understanding the Diverging Effects of Public-Private Partnerships in Education

• In Event: Situating the Paradoxes of Market-Driven Educational Policies Within a Human Right to Education Framework

Abstract

Objectives and purposes
This paper aims at identifying patterns of effects of the main PPP modalities on education (namely vouchers, charter schools and public subsidies for private schools) by considering the mediating role of policy-design variables – specifically, decisions relative to profit-making, tuition-fees, and schools' autonomy on student selection. Our paper thus addresses the question of how these policy design variables moderate the effects of PPPs in several dimensions, with a focus on learning outcomes and equity.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The study departs on the assumption that our understanding of PPP effects is limited by the prevalence of generalist analyses that fail to acknowledge the exceptional heterogeneity of policy frameworks in which PPPs crystallize. We assume the need to pay greater attention to the moment of policy design – understood as a key phase in policy formulation in which policy interventions are operationalised in concrete sets of tools (Jordan & Turnpenny, 2015). According to this approach, despite often being conceived as technocratic, policy-design decisions tend to reflect and respond to political agendas and ideological preferences.
Methods and data sources
Our findings are based on a scoping review - a modality of literature review aimed at mapping and exploring a particular area of inquiry in a brisk, yet systematic, way (Levac, Colquhoun & O’Brien, 2010). The review is informed by 199 impact studies published between 1992 and 2018, selected on the basis of a multi-sequence screening. The corpus of papers included in the review was synthesized following a charting approach so that, for each primary document, key items of information were collected for a selection of main attributes – namely, policy-design variables and assessed dimensions of impact.
Results
The results of our paper show that policy decisions can potentially work as either catalysts or inhibitors of market dynamics in education and, in so doing, they play a significant role in mediating the outcomes of PPP programmes. This is especially the case in relation to equity issues. We find that PPP configurations oriented at the generation of competitive dynamics between providers, or which encourage market-like interactions between schools and families, tend to exacerbate school segregation and educational inequalities. Conversely, those PPP arrangements less conducive to market competition and those that follow an affirmative action rationale (such as targeted vouchers) are more likely to yield more positive effects on learning outcomes than other types of PPPs, without necessarily undermining equity.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The ultimate impact of education PPPs have generated one of the most contentious debates in educational research. This is so as, whilst PPPs have long been promoted as a promising policy approach to address a variety of education challenges (including education access, equity, quality or efficiency) research on their effects yields contradictory results (Waslander, Pater & Van Der Weide, 2010). The results of our work add to this debate by bringing to the fore the centrality of policy design in order to make sense and explain the divergent outcomes of apparently similar policies.

Authors

• Mauro Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Clara Fontdevila, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona