The infiltration of the profit imperative into education reduces learning to a labour market tool. The logic of the market runs contrary to the emancipatory social imperative in which education should entail. 

The privatisation and marketisation of education has gathered momentum in Europe and has resulted in deteriorating conditions for learners and educators alike. A sector riddled with precarity, underfunding, and archaic working practices coincides with an increase in privatisation and commodification. In this we find the crux of the matter: education for profit cannot dovetail with education for emancipation. The two can’t co-exist.

By favouring profit and efficiency in education, teachers have been transformed into tools preparing learners for the labour market rather than active participants to an educational process that develops learners to adapt to the complexity of our world, allowing them to choose their path in life and develop harmoniously. It is not surprising that at a time when privatisation and marketisation cut through our education systems the teaching profession has lost much of its appeal with a high-level of turnover and career change becoming an increasingly normalised characteristic.

Solidar Foundations’ recent policy paper: The Commodification of Education and the Prevalence of For-Profit Education Stakeholders: Education for all or education for profit?  proposes an alternative to the privatisation logic. In this conception of education we find a new model of governance and implementation of education, one that helps teachers and champions their experience and quality, one that unites informal, non-formal and formal education stakeholders in deciding how education is designed and implemented, and one that places learners before profit.

Take a look at the paper!