POLICY BRIEF article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1621331
This article is part of the Research TopicThe right to education and addressing inequalities: Examining new forms of privatisation, impact of digitalisation and learning in crisis situationsView all articles
Examining “Privatization” and Protecting Equal Rights
Provisionally accepted
- Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States
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This opinion piece examines, and resists, the term "privatization" in describing non-state actors in education. First, since the late 18th century, governments have often relied on civil society to deliver education, and on private industry to create the "goods" that make public education possible. Second, the presence of non-state actors in education can work either for or against equality of access and equality of excellence. It depends on 1) the fairness of the enabling processes, 2) transparent accountability systems; 3) equity-oriented regulations, especially around admissions policies; and 4) full funding by governments, with support calibrated to students' specific and variable needs. Third, "privatization" derives from U.S.-centric debates that depend on unhelpful binaries. We need better ways to describe the participation of non-state actors.
Keywords: Educational pluralism, Civil society, non-state actors, Privatization, human rights doctrine
Received: 30 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Berner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ashley Rogers Berner, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States
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