Can Commercial Companies Provide Quality Education and Maintain Appropriate Standards for Profit? a Critical Analysis of the Involvement of the Private Sector in Providing Educational Services

Can commercial companies provide quality education and maintain appropriate standards for profit? A critical analysis of the involvement of the private sector in providing educational services

Introduction

This paper will present a critical analysis of the increasing involvement of private companies in the provision of aspects of education in England. It will also consider the relevance of the nationality some of the companies involved. The hypothesis behind this paper is that the (already) significant private, occasionally foreign, for-profit investment in the provision of education in England is not widely known or understood (Ball 2007:13). But the export of British educational styles and methodologies has been extensive for many years and is still growing, so the involvement of private British and foreign companies in the UK could be considered a natural and welcome market-driven development which adds considerable diversity to the provision of education in the United Kingdom. Many of the entities involved in British education are charities, and, although the applicability of the charitable status has recently been called into question by the British Government and is currently the subject of a detailed review by the Charities Commission, the principle that education per se is one of the fundamental charitable activities along with, for example, religion, does not appear to be under challenge.

The greater involvement of commercial entities might be viewed as an unwelcome development, motivated by a requirement to profit rather than by the pure and simple aim of offering the best possible quality education and upholding the highest standards. Should the motivation of profit be a cause for concern or could the diversity of approach it brings be considered positively? The burgeoning marketisation of the public sector is certainly no longer in doubt; it was predicted some 10 years ago by White (1998:3) in his review of the Tony Blair’s Third Way: “The... [continues]

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