BOULDER, CO (February 27, 2025)—From Lahore to Lagos to Lima, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have assumed a growing role over the past generation in delivering basic education. This surge in growth has been spurred in large part by the World Bank, which in 2002 launched the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, rebranded in 2011 as the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Involving nearly 60 developing nations, the GPE brought together philanthropic foundations, multilateral organizations, donor and recipient governments, and private companies.
To the World Bank and other advocates, this movement fills a void caused by state failure. But a new working paper from the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization (ISPEP), an NEPC initiative, warns that PPPs fall far short as a remedy and end up doing more harm than good.
The paper explains that such harm derives from a range of causes: insufficient oversight invites profiteering; scripted curricula blunt authentic teaching and learning; substandard facilities and staffing impede appropriate accommodation of students with disabilities; and fees, however nominal, surpass the means of many poor families. Making matters worse, inferior pay at such schools has been documented to lead teachers to pressure parents into hiring them as after-hour tutors. Moreover, even where PPPs cover fees, significant evidence indicates that affiliated schools focus on test preparation to boost results in prominent subjects to secure contract renewals.
Each of these concerns is explored in the new IPSEP working paper authored by Frank Adamson, Anjela Taneja, and Jo Walker. Adamson is an associate professor of education policy at California State University, Sacramento, and an NEPC fellow. Taneja is a policy analyst with Oxfam International. And Walker is an independent consultant.
In Demystifying Education Public-Private Partnerships: What Every Policymaker Should Know, Adamson, Taneja, and Walker methodically lay out how PPPs are negotiated, what governments should consider before entering PPPs, why many PPPs have not lived up to expectations, what governments may do to extricate themselves from disappointing PPPs, and how other paths to school improvement stand to be much more effective. Among those paths—which are drawn from school systems in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America—are participatory governance, high-quality teacher training, more teacher autonomy, and greater equity in school funding.
Working in collaboration with members of the Privatisation in Education and Human Rights Consortium, the authors critique PPPs in plain terms and with substantial documentation. Their analysis should serve at once as a valuable research document and call to action for policymakers, scholars, and concerned citizens.
Find Demystifying Education Public-Private Partnerships, by Frank Adamson, Anjela Taneja, and Jo Walker, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/ipsep-working-paper-2