Recommendations

We recommend that policymakers:

1. Take more seriously the provisions in their statutory and other national statements concerning the purposes of education and take steps to ensure that economically oriented objectives do not supersede more holistic ones in practice. Where purposes are framed almost or wholly economically, we recommend that policymakers take inspiration from other regional statements, for example, Antigua and Barbuda’s educational purposes, as set out in its 2008 Education Act. 2. Prioritise the funding of public education such that supplementary private funding is not required. Emphasis on ActionAid’s 4 Ss of public education funding (Share, Size, Sensitivity and Scrutiny) is instructive in this regard (Ethiopia Study, 2021). For the Caribbean, ensuring that education sector plans prioritise investing in the teaching workforce and cater to the most vulnerable children demonstrate commitment to and greater likelihood of improving education quality for the most critical beneficiaries of education funding (Education Commission, 2019; Ethiopia Study, 2021; WDR, 2018). 3. Create a policy narrative that centres on and foregrounds education as a public good, and challenges the ways in which this notion has been problematised (Daviet, 2016). While it may be quite alluring within a neoliberal climate for governments to shift from delivering education services directly to functioning as “contractor, monitor and evaluator of services provided by a range of providers” (Ball & Youdell, 2007, p. 59), they are encouraged to not lose sight of their responsibility to: (1) protect the rights of all learners to quality education and (2) ensure that education contributes to personal development, social cohesion, as well as economic development that benefits all citizens. 4. Engage with research that highlights the limitations of privatisation as a means of enhancing public services (e.g. Lubienski, 2003). Education sector planning informed by such evidence assists in bolstering public education against the negative effects of education privatisation, such as increasing inequalities and inequity created by education markets.

5. Cease selection to enter secondary-school level (where this happens) and make all secondary schools non-selective. End the implicit (as well as explicit) hierarchisation of secondary provision. 6. Regulate private-sector involvement in public education so as to ensure equitable access to education that fulfils the rights of all Caribbean children and young people/students. A tax on profits generated by private companies from contracts with the public education sector could be invested back into education, for instance in achieving the United Nations’ (2021) sustainable development goals (SDG) for education. If left unregulated, public education may become susceptible to unscrupulous private sector schemes that at the onset may appear beneficial, but in the end result in little or no educational improvement or, in the worse case, a trail of destruction as was the case with “leaseback” agreements or public-private partnerships (PPP) in Canada (LaRocque, 2008) and in Belgium (DeRynck, 2005 cited in Verger et al., 2016) and the voucher system in Chile (Carnoy & McEwan, 2003). 7. End the use of temporary teaching contracts where the role is permanent. 8. Ensure all teachers are professionally qualified.

We recommend that teachers’ unions:

1. Increase awareness of endogenous forms of education privatisation in particular and their effects so that their membership in turn can be better informed and more strongly represented. 2. Deploy existing positive images and political narratives of teachers, education systems and educational leadership that are predicated on education as a public good in campaigns, so that teachers can visualise an alternative to privatisation. 3. Create and use “public-education champions” in each school to articulate amongst teachers the impact on public-ness of a given policy, local or national and to suggest alternatives or amendments. 4. Work in partnerships with other like-minded organisations to amplify counter-arguments to privatisation and enhance the potential for impact.

We recommend that future researchers:

1. Conduct cross-regional surveys in the Caribbean that enable comparisons between nation states, education phases and

schools in different socio-economic contexts that can contribute to enhanced strategic education sector analysis and planning for the region. Investigate further the exploratory findings emerging from this report by seeking a broader sample group. 2. Explore the ‘who’ of privatisation; this research suggests that key actors in privatisation may not resemble those found in other contexts, and so a comprehensive mapping is required. 3. Use qualitative approaches to generate a deeper perspective on the embeddedness of dispositions favourable or antagonistic to privatisation in key stakeholder groups.