The new private educational sector in Chile:entrepreneurialism and competition

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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.