The new private educational sector in Chile:entrepreneurialism and competition

公共教育的私有化是全球关注的问题。它得到了广泛的研究，特别是在过去十年私人参与教育提供、决策和资助增加的国家。除了明显的例外，关于公立/私立教育的研究议程主要集中在所谓的公立/私立学校绩效的生产函数评估：公立/私立学校标准化考试对学习收益的相对影响。这个项目有一个不同的重点：旨在理解“创业”和“竞争”的行动逻辑，以及它们可能如何根据私营部门的扩张和最近的政策法规进行重塑。智利有一个庞大的私立教育部门，目前正在通过一系列重大改革重塑这一部门。2008年，每个学生的固定学券州金额发生了变化，变得与学生的经济背景有关。2009年，在学生示威后，出台了两项关键政策：(1)资助私立学校被迫只经营一项业务，以确保专注于教育，而不是其他经济部门；(2)禁止招生到6年级，这是私营部门允许并广泛使用的。目前，国会正在进行突破性的改革，明确旨在改变私营部门的做法。这三项改革是：新的招生政策，取消营利性特权，取消共同支付。在这一背景下，本研究项目旨在解决以下问题：公私关系法规的变化是否(如果是)改变了私营部门在创业和竞争方面的行动逻辑？这些变化将如何影响私营部门和公共部门之间的关系？该项目将具有强大的经验基础。自2008年以来，它将重点关注新的私立教育提供者，在不同的实地工作地点使用混合方法，以了解地方一级私立教育部门在非经济领域的作用，特别是它与公共教育、家庭和当地社区的关系，并阐明政策变化和市场转型之间的关系。该项目是智利天主教大学和曼彻斯特大学的合作项目，为比较研究这两个国家的私有化进程提供了机会。

Privatisation of public education is a global concern worldwide. It has been extensively studied particularly in countries where the private involvement in educational provision, decision-making, and funding has increased in the last decade. With notable exceptions, the research agenda on public/private education has been mainly focused on what can be called the production function assessment of public/private performance: the relative effect on learning gains in standardized tests of public/private schools. This project has a different focus: aiming to understand 'entrepreneurial' and 'competitive' logics of action and how they may be being reshaped in the light both of private sector expansion and recent policy regulations. Chile has a large private educational sector which is currently being reshaped by a series of major reforms. In 2008, the fixed voucher state amount per student was changed, becoming relative to student economic backgrounds. In 2009, after student demonstrations, two key policies were introduced: (i) subsidised private schools were forced to run just one business in order to ensure a focus on education and not on other economic sectors; (ii) student selection was forbidden until 6 grade, which was permitted and widely used by the private sector. Currently, ground-breaking reforms are going through Congress which aim explicitly to modify private sector practices. The three reforms are: a new policy on admissions, the elimination of for-profit prerogatives, and the removal of co-payment.In this context, this research project aims to deal with the following questions: are (and if so how are) the changes in regulations of the public/private relationship transforming the private sector regarding the entrepreneurial and competitive aspects of its logic of action? How will these changes affect the relationship between the private and public sectors?The project will have a strong empirical base. Focusing on new private providers since 2008, it will use a mixed methods approach in different fieldwork sites to gain understanding of the role of the private educational sector at local level in non-economic spheres, particularly its relationship with public education, families, and local communities, and to shed light on the relationship between policy changes and market transformation. The project is a collaboration between the Catholic University of Chile and the University of Manchester and offers the opportunity for comparative persectives on the evolution of privatisation in these two countries.