School Choice and Marketisation

Abstract

The increasing number and influence of global trade agreements is evidence that education has not been commodified in one fell swoop, but progressively over many years. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify several significant milestones on the road to commodification. In 1944, finance ministers met in Bretton Woods, USA, for the United Nations Financial and Economic Conference. Within two years, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the ‘World Bank’) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been established. Today, the latter operates through ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ — economic advice packages put together by IMF advisors — which typically impose public sector cost-cutting measures on governments through the privatisation of expensive public services and which critics suggest causes problems because it creates systems copied from outside in countries facing financial difficulty without proper acknowledgement of local traditions.