Educational privatization in Latin America during 2013-2023: Trends, resistance, and enabling factors

• In Event: Latin America’s pressing education challenges and possible futures: New privatization trends, public education for all, sociolinguistic tensions, and migration crises

Proposal

Over the last decade, the education sector in Latin America has continued its trend towards greater privatization. Far from evidencing a radical break with the past, the last decade has witnessed an intensification of the processes of privatization initiated decades ago (e.g., Verger et al., 2017; Gentili et al., 2009; Adrião and Pinto, 2016). At the same time, the last decade has witnessed important developments, including a notable diversification in privatization policies and processes. At the same time, various forms of resistance to privatization have emerged, led mainly by civil society organizations of various kinds. These developments underscore a complex and multifaceted picture in the evolution of education in the region, with significant repercussions for equity and educational quality. Based on a systematic review of the literature, this presentation examines the multiple dimensions and consequences of these changes for the period between 2013 and 2023.

The approach to the study of recent trends starts from a perspective that highlights the role of the actors involved in the production of the “global-local conditions of possibility” for the advancement of privatization (Rhoten, 2000). To this end, the analysis offered is based on the need to address current educational policies from a double perspective: “as contemporary constituted policies” and, in turn, as “historically constructed processes” (Rhoten, 2000, p. 593). This perspective underscores that, although these policies may seem recent, in reality, they are the result of an evolutionary process, influenced by historical, political, social and economic factors that operate at local, regional and global scales. This approach allows us not only to identify and analyze current trends in educational privatization, but also to better understand their roots and historical evolution, which is essential for evaluating their long-term impacts, foreseeing possible future developments, and understanding the resistance they generate.

Methodologically, this study is based on a systematic review commissioned by Education International. The review focused on literature published in the Scoups database between 2013 and 2023 on the privatization of education in America Latina. After successive rounds of refinement, 91 documents were selected that make up the final corpus of the research. The literature analysis strategy focused on extracting information to understand the advance of privatization and the response of the movements of resistance in the region. Data analysis involved combining articles by type of privatization and performing cross-study analysis to identify common themes (e.g. types of private actors, privatization policies, effects, contextual factors that have influenced its advancement or inhibition, among others).

The report is structured around the four main documented trends by the literature analyzed. These trends are: (a) privatization through policymaking, (b) public-private alliances (PPP), (c)
autonomy and accountability policies, and (d) resistance to privatization, highlighting movements such as Stop SIMCE in Chile and other student initiatives and teachers who are fundamentally opposed to standardization and schemes of performance-based accountability.
The final portion of the presentation reflects on conditions of possibility that have enabled these trends, and that could potentially disrupt them going forward.

Authors

• Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

• Xènia Gavaldà Elias, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Aya Marie Lorraine Kouao, The University of Hawaii at Manoa

• Carl Moog, University of Pennsylvania