Overcoming barriers to learning and raising standards of achievement are central efforts in education. In the UK the government has made education its leading domestic priority and it has made education the center of its drive to improve public services by using the private sector to bring about improvements in performance and to break the status quo. Likewise, throughout the world private interests are now impinging heavily upon how state education is perceived; the 'educational apartheid' between state and private is diminishing across schools and local authorities. This book provides an incisive commentary on this rapidly changing phenomenon through clarification, analysis and evaluation of a variety of policy initiatives and implementation issues in the UK and by assessing parallel developments elsewhere in the world.
The ways in which change is being forced along in a range of guises from public partnerships to private company deals are illustrated with many real and contentious examples. Partnership arrangements, sponsorships, new categories of state independent schools and private sector take-overs of schools and education authorities form the patchwork of how state education is becoming privatized. Will these changes bring more choice and improved standards? How valuable to parents is the information presented in league tables and inspection reports? How will this impact on the future of education? This provocative and critical book moves forward this highly topical debate by providing a direct, in-depth and jargon free commentary on what is happening under the banner of privatization.

Anyone who wants to know what is really happening in schools - behind all the hype and political rhetoric about the privatizing reforms in education - should read this book. It clarifies how private interests are influencing the public education process and investigates Labour's successes and failures.

In plain English, it shows how schools are set up, run and held to account through testing and inspection and how they make judgements about the relative merits of different schoolsa (TM) performances. It also indicates ways in which ordinary people can participate in shaping the future of education in order to achieve progress and better standards of achievement from schools and the education service generally.

This is essential reading for all those concerned about the new future of our education system and of our children.