The process of privatising services historically provided by the state has blurred the boundaries between what is considered to be 'private' and 'public'. However, few efforts have been made in the educational arena to develop tools to measure this process. Most of the previous research has relied on narrow definitions about what is private and…

This article offers unique insights into the relationship between education policy and teachers' work. It considers how globally pervasive responsibilising regimes make teachers' work more burdensome. Drawing on interviews with 15 school teachers, this article shows how China's 2021 Double Burden Reduction Policy has reconfigured educators'…

In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the 'Double-Reduction' policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the…

This paper critically examines parents' and service providers' reception of the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS), which was designed to enhance the quality of early childhood education in Hong Kong. The PEVS was a universal voucher policy that was designed to harness market forces and increase direct governmental control of quality in a…

Private supplementary tutoring (PST) is a worldwide enterprise that comes in a variety of forms and with a growing number of students. Sweden, together with the other Nordic countries, has a relatively short history of large-scale organised supplementary education, which can be explained by its confidence in regular mainstream education. In recent…

Along with the dramatic expansion of private tutoring around the world, a significant body of literature has been produced to understand this phenomenon. While many studies consider the issue of geographic location, the spatial dimension tends not to be a central focus of private tutoring studies. In contrast, the present essay applies mobility…

Driven by a desire to improve academic outcomes and transform "failing" schools, governments around the world have often turned to the development of new forms of state-funded school. This paper looks at three such instances of the introduction of new forms of schooling, within three urban localities (academy schools in London; charter…

With its shift to a market economy gathering speed from the 1990s, the Chinese Government embarked on an agenda that brought neoliberal forces into almost all sectors including education. The policies underpinned China's spectacular economic growth, but in education have had consequences that arguably are problematic. Drawing on a mixed-methods…

With strong intention to enhance the global competitiveness of their higher education systems, the governments of Singapore and Malaysia have made attempts to develop their societies into regional hubs of education; hence transnational education has become increasingly popular in these societies. In order to attract more students from overseas to…

In Spain as in other European countries, policies on school choice have been implemented in tandem with the channelling of public resources into private education. Given the application of public money to private schooling, the primary objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which Spanish families enjoy equality in their ability to…

A low-cost private education sector is acknowledged to be serving the poor in developing countries, including India. However, it is widely accepted that this sector cannot provide a route towards "education for all". This conclusion is explored in the light of case study evidence from low-income areas of Hyderabad, India. Private…

Examines how the incidence of parental choice in Scotland (of both private schooling and among state schools) varies according to family background and local choice options. Local availability strongly affected the kind of choices made. Better educated and higher-social-class families were more likely to choose the private sector and choose within…

Analyzes interest groups' role within current Spanish educational policy, highlighting historical and structural factors. The historical educational dualism and political opposition between public and private education explains the emergence and political position of each education actor, and the interactional dynamics involved in influencing…

This articles deals with the question why Dutch upper-middle-class parents resort to fee-paying private education, a tiny, recently developed sector of the Dutch educational system. The research is based on interviews with 37 parents and 20 students attending private schools, and on a survey among 376 parents involved in private schooling. From…