The new private educational sector in Chile:entrepreneurialism and competition

公共教育私有化是一个全球性的问题。在过去十年中，特别是在私人参与教育提供、决策和资金增加的国家，人们对其进行了广泛的研究。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共/私立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，以及它们如何在私营部门扩张和最近的政策法规的情况下被重塑。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进行重塑。2008年，每个学生的固定代金券金额被改变，与学生的经济背景相关。2009年，在学生示威之后，政府出台了两项关键政策：(i)受补贴的私立学校被迫只经营一项业务，以确保重点放在教育领域，而不是其他经济领域；（ii）在六年级之前禁止选拔学生，这是私营部门允许和广泛使用的。目前，国会正在审议旨在明确修改私营部门做法的突破性改革。这三项改革是：一项新的招生政策，取消营利性特权，以及取消共同支付。在此背景下，本研究项目旨在处理以下问题：公共/私人关系法规的变化是否（如果是，如何）在其行动逻辑的创业和竞争方面改变了私营部门？这些改变会如何影响公营及私营机构的关系？这个项目将有很强的实证基础。着眼于2008年以来新的私立教育提供者，它将在不同的实地考察地点使用混合方法，以了解地方一级私立教育部门在非经济领域的作用，特别是其与公共教育、家庭和当地社区的关系，并阐明政策变化与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之间的合作，为这两个国家私有化的演变提供了比较迫害的机会。

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.