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The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries (Studies in Education, 7)

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American readers may be surprised to learn that there is only one private university throughout the length and breadth of the United Kindom, and that is the University of Buckingham. I draw readers attention to this fact more to highlight the paucity of public policy in this area than anything else and to set out the basis of the review that follows.

The Global Education Industry is the summary of some of the results obtained from research carried out for the International Finance Corporation, which is the private sector funding subsidiary of the World Bank Group. Published here in conjunction with the London based, think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, this book is a major contributor to the ongoing debate across the industrialised world concerning the proper level of involvement of the state in education.

Education in England and Wales at least (Scotland has it's own educational sytem) was once the province of the private sector both charitable and for profit. This has been accounted in tremendous detail by E.G. West in his masterly study, Education and the state. Suffice it to say that one of the main, somewhat surprising conclusions of the book was that lower income groups were of the mind that education was a good well worth paying for and contributed significant sums so that their children coul better themselves. Indeed there is a significant tradition in England and Wales of the poor bettering themselves through study (see Rose, J 'The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes). The type of education provided was not good enough fpor the ruling classes who, in 1870, passed the Foster Act which introduced state education though the back door into the country.

Today, there is a small but flourishing private sector still in elementary and secondary education in England and Wales serving some seven per cent of the population to which ordinary people will send their children, often undergoing severe sacrifices to do so, but mostly the pupils are middle and upper incomes. The vast majority of the education sector through a variety of agencies is under the rigid control of the state.

This book, although pointing to the experience of private education in developing countries is primarily aimed at policy makers in the industrialised world, and in particular, Britain. It sets out clearly and categorically the case for the private provision of education in whatever sector that one chooses to select and shows clearly and consistently how high quality education can be provided without the dead hand of the state forcing conformity, uniformity and bureaurcracy upon schools and universities. It highlights the innovative nature of those private sector inn areas of curriculum development and lesson delivery. The focus on the most efficient use of resources also allows for staff development without any cost for staff and students alike.

The Global Education Industry presents an opportunity to public policy makers to improve the supply of education in the so called Western world while freeing up the resources of the state to carry out it's basic functions. It is not an attack on the state sector but a presentation of what can and may be. No doubt this will be opposed by academics and educationalists who have enjoyed a warm and cosy, even lucrative, relationship with the state over many years and who'se minds are closed to the endless possibilities of the market. The book's contents however, tell another story.

The correct title is:The Global Education Industry : Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries (Studies in Education, 7) by James Tooley