Introduction
1. Our starting point in considering the role of
private sector organisations in the management of publicly funded
education is that children deserve a good education. Where they
do not receive a good education it is important that all steps
are taken to address any weaknesses in the education system which
prevent standards from improving. Both the present and previous
administrations have introduced a number of initiatives which
seek to improve the standard of education in under-performing
local authorities and schools, especially in areas where traditional
forms of support have not secured improvement. As Box 1 shows,
many of these initiatives have included interaction between public
and private sectors. In each of these cases there has been a desire
to provide external sources of support, advice, management expertise
or service-provision for under-performing schools or local authorities.
Box 1: Range of public and private sector interaction in education
LEA Intervention—ranging from consultancy support, to improve particular services, to large scale outsourcing of LEA services
Voluntary Outsourcing by LEAS
Education Action Zones
Excellence in Cities initiative
Private Finance Initiative
Private sector delivery of careers services and supply teachers
City Technology Colleges
Establishing new Foundation schools supported by private, church or voluntary
sectors
Allowing existing private schools to become part of the publicly funded education system
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2. There is a long history of interaction between
public and private sectors in education. Schools and local authorities
have always purchased services from a private companies. These
include, for example, the supply of goods such as educational
textbooks as well as other school supplies, the provision of services
such as building maintenance and the supply of temporary teaching
staff. Currently, the most extensive interaction is through number
of private finance initiatives between local education authorities
and private companies. Our inquiry, however, has focussed on one
particular type of interaction between public and private sectors:
the management of state-funded education services by private
sector organisations. This is a more recent form of relationship
between the public and private sectors in education. Our inquiry
has considered the involvement of private sector organisations
in the context of local democratic control of public education,
the value for money of public funds invested in the education
service and a requirement for agents for change in the drive to
raise standards in areas where expectations of the education service
are not being met. This is a rapidly evolving area, indeed during our inquiry a number of local authorities
began the first stage of contracting out some of their services.
The Government also announced an initiative to develop partnerships
between individual schools and private sector organisations. Our
work has focussed on the principles which we believe should underpin
partnership between public and private sectors in education.
