Commercialization in education

This contribution clarifies the terminology used to describe the reorganisation of public education. In much critical policy sociology the terms marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation are used interchangeably. Our argument is that each of these denotes distinct, albeit related, characteristics of contemporary schooling and the impact of the Global Education Industry (GEI). We define marketisation as the series of policy logics that aim to create quasi-markets in education; privatisation as the development of quasi-markets in education that privilege parental choice, school autonomy and venture philanthropy; and commercialisation as the creation, marketing and sale of educational goods and services to schools by external providers. In this chapter we explain the manifestations of each of these forms and offer two cases of actors situated within the GEI, the OECD and Pearson plc, to outline how commercialisation and privatisation proceed at the level of policy and practice