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- Title
How Kenyan initiative helped to regain education as a public good over for-profit education in low-fee private schools.
- Authors
Adick, Christel
- Abstract
While in the so-called Global North private education is mostly associated with elite-type schools requiring tuition fees, whereas government schools are free, the private schools’ sector in many countries of the ‘Global South’ has experienced the expansion of a new type of private schools besides also existing denominational or elite schools: low-fee (or low-cost) private schools, often profit-oriented. These schools are provided by private enterprises – individuals or companies, including some large transnational school chains – on the financial basis of collecting rather low amounts of fees so as to attract pupils from low or lower middle-income backgrounds. Often claiming to fill a gap because of lacking governmental provisions as well as answering local demands, these schools have in the last decade come under heavy attack from a wide range of state and especially non-state organizations ranging from local to national, continental and international levels, who object such schools because they counter the very principles of national education systems which are to provide basic education for all for free, at a good quality and with equal access, if not by, then surely under the auspices of the government. Have such protest and critique which have become a major focus of concerted actions of national and international CSOs (Civil Society Organizations) been successful? The answer in the following article is: Yes, since some recent developments indicate that education has re-gained its logic principles as a public good. This thesis will be discussed in the following article, first by defining education as a public good in contrast to education as a private and to education as a common good, as well as locating low-fee schools in the sectors of private education. This will be followed by exemplifying developments in Kenya where CSO activism led to a rather effective, evidence- based campaign against the Bridge International Academies (BIA) low-fee schools as a part of a broad and massive international concerted action to foster the universal principles of free and quality state-controlled education as they have last been declared in the SDGs (Sustainability Development Goals) of the United Nations Agenda 2030.
- Subjects
KENYA; PRIVATE schools; ACTIVISM; PUBLIC education; PRIVATE education; COMMON good; ELITISM in education
- Publication
Zeitschrift für Internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik, 2021, Vol 44, Issue 4, p4
- ISSN
1434-4688
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.31244/zep.2021.04.02