On 1 August 2017, 174 civil society organisations from around the world released this statement calling on investors to cease support for Bridge International Academies, a company running over 500 commercial private schools in the Global South with the support of international donors and investors.
Recently the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) published its much-awaited new General Comment 24 – an authoritative interpretation of international human rights law – on ‘State Obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Context of Business Activities’.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (‘the Committee’) expressed its concerns on the issue of privatisation of education in Pakistan as the state underwent its first ever review earlier this month.
Commercialisation is creeping into our public school system. A new report, Commercialisation in Public Schooling, reveals teachers are concerned about the influence commercialisation is having in schools; on everything from the provision of tests like NAPLAN, through to private providers offering classes in PE, Music, Drama and even professional development courses for teachers.
The report reveals schools are now forced to buy-in a substantial volume of educational products and services that were once provided by education departments.
These include:
Businesses play an important role in the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights, inter alia, by contributing to the creation of employment opportunities and, through private investment, to development. However, the Committee has been regularly presented with situations in which, as a result of states' failure to ensure compliance with internationally recognised human rights under their jurisdiction, corporate activities negatively affected economic, social and cultural rights.
Over the past two decades, a set of globally converging discourses on lifelong learning (LLL) has emerged around the world. Driven mostly by inter-governmental organisations, these discourses have been largely embraced by national and local education systems seeking to reflect local traditions and priorities. This paper argues that these discourses tend to look remarkably alike, converging into a homogeneous rationale in which the economic dimension of education predominates over other dimensions of learning, and in which adaptation takes pre-eminence
On 13-14 March UNESCO hosted the Europe and North America Regional Consultation on the Human Rights Guiding Principles on state obligations regarding private schools. This was the third in a series of regional consultations, part of a broad consultative process to develop the Guiding Principles involving a range of stakeholders including civil society organisations, state representatives, human rights organisations and experts in the fields of education and law, academics, international and regional organisations and other actors.
Of the 57 million children worldwide without access to education, over one third lives in settings of conflict and fragility (UNESCO, 2015). The escalating crisis in Syria has contributed significantly to this out-of-school population, with well over half of 1.4 million Syrian refugee children and adolescents not in school (UNICEF, 2016).
This report addresses the existence and operation of low cost private schools in Kenya. The research was conducted in Homa Bay County, Ndhiwa Sub- County where 11 schools were sampled for the research and over 131 interviews conducted. The interviewees comprised of policy makers, School manager’s/Head teachers, teachers, Parents and Pupils. The research sought to determine the existence, operation and legal status of low- cost private schools in a rural setting.