Session Information
23 SES 03 D, Politics and Policy Making in Education
Paper Session
Contribution
In most OECD countries, schooling in primary and secondary education is provided by public institutions. On average across the OECD countries, almost 89% of primary students, 86% of lower secondary students and 81% of upper secondary students were enrolled 2012 in public schools (OECD 2014, 416). Nevertheless, in the last years in many OECD-countries there has been a boom of private schools and moreover new arrangements of financing private schools. The private school landscape in England and Germany is undergoing a radical transformation. Since 2010, England is facing a rapid expansion of independent academies run by private companies and funded directly by central government (West & Bailey 2013). Germany is experiencing a significant increase of private schools since 2000, in particular at the primary school level (Ulrich & Strunck 2012).
In the political science literature the partisan foundations of private school politics remains an open question. A strong focus lies on the influence of partisan politics on education spending (Ansell 2010, Busemeyer 2007, Jensen 2011, Schmidt 2007, Wolf & Zohlnhöfer 2009) and as well on the formation of education and training systems (Ansell & Lindvall 2013, Busemeyer 2015). The few studies investigating party preferences in education, in particular educational expansion and inequality (Ansell 2010, Busemeyer, Franzmann & Garritzmann 2013, Jakobi 2011), neglect the field of private schooling.
In our paper we will show that private schooling is a salient issue in political debates, especially in election campaigns in England and Germany. We analyse the development of private schooling as a political issue and the party preferences in party manifestos since the 2000s years. For understanding the preferences, programs and policies of political parties, the analysis of parties` election programs plays a significant role (Klingemann, Hofferbert & Budge 1994). The paper aims to answer the following research questions: Is private schooling a consensual or a contested partisan issue? What are their arguments in favouring or defending private schools? What approach is adopted by the parties in regard to financial contributions for private schools? We will concentrate on social democrats and conservatives parties: the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in England and the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) in Germany.
Our theoretical perspective refers to the main conflict dimensions that are assumed to be significant for party differences: capital versus labour (Lipset & Rokkan 1967, Pappi 1984, Pappi & Shikano 2002). Left parties tend to represent the interests of lower income groups and to expand the welfare state and the public sector. Conservative parties represent (higher) middle and upper income classes and they prefer market-oriented policies. We argue that left parties are less likely to expand private schools than conservative parties. Left parties oppose educational markets, because they criticise them for increasing long-term socio-economic inequalities. We also argue that policy legacies and contexts play a crucial role over private schools.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ansell, B. W. (2010): From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education. New York. Ansell, B. W. & Lindvall, J. (2013): The Political Origins of Primary Education Systems: Ideology, Institutions, and Interdenominational Conflict in an Era of Nation-Building. American Political Science Review, 107, 505-522. Busemeyer, M. (2007): The Determinants of Public Spending in 21 OECD Democracies, 1980-2001. Journal of European Public Policy, 14, 582-610. Busemeyer, M. (2015): Skills and Inequality. Partisan Politics and the Political Economy of Education Reforms in Western Welfare States. Cambridge. Busemeyer, M. R., Franzmann, S. T. & Garritzmann, J. L. (2013): Who owns education? Cleavage structures in the partisan competition over educational expansion. West European Politics, 36, 521-546. Jakobi, A. P. (2011): Political Parties and the Institutionzalization of Education: A Comparative Analysis of Party Manifestos. Comparative Education Review, 55, 189-209. Jensen, C. (2011): ‘Capitalist Systems, Deindustrialization, and the Politics of Public Education’. Comparative Political Studies, 44, 412-435. Klingemann, H.-D., Hofferbert, R. I. & Budge, I. (1994): Parties, Policies and Democracy. Boulder. Laver, M. & Garry, J. (2000): Estimating Policy Positions from Political Texts. American Joumal of Political Science 44, 619-634. Lipset, S. M. & Rokkan, S. (1967): Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments: An introduction. In: Lipset, S. M. & Rokkan, S. (Hrsg.): Party Systems and Voter Alignments. New York, 1-64. OECD (2014): Education at a Glance. Paris. Pappi, F. U. (1984): The West German Party System. In: Bartolini, S. & Mair, P. (Hrsg.): Party Politics in Contemporary Western Europe. London, 7-26. Pappi, F. U. & Shikano, S. (2002): Die politisierte Sozialstruktur als mittelfristig stabile Basis einer deutschen Normalwahl. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 54, 444-475. Schmidt, M. G. (2007): Testing the Retrenchment Hypothesis: Educational Spending, 1960-2002. In: Castles, F. G. (Hrsg.): The Disappearing State? Retrenchment Realities in an Age of Globalisation. Cheltenham, Northampton, 159-183. Stern, J. (2000): Programme versus Pragmatik. Parteien und ihre Programme als Einfluß- und Gestaltungsgröße auf bildungspolitische Entscheidungsprozesse. Frankfurt a.M. Ulrich, H. & Strunck, S. (Hrsg.) (2012): Private Schulen in Deutschland. Entwicklungen - Profile - Kontroversen. Wiesbaden. West, A. & Bailey, E. (2013): The Development of the Academies Programme: `Privatising` school-based education in England 1986-2013. British Journal of Educational Studies, 61, 137-159. Wolf, F. & Zohlnhöfer, R. (2009): Investing in Human Capital? The Determinants of Private Education Expenditure in 26 OECD Countries. Journal of European Social Policy, 19, 230–244.
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