We Need Public Education to Help Us Address the Challenges We Face, But It’s Under Threat

Over the past few decades, humanity has embarked on an unprecedented trajectory of providing public education to learners in schools and learning centers across the globe. Collectively we have accepted the challenge of managing a large-scale, complex, and adaptive learning system. In 2020, it was estimated that more than 80 percent of students worldwide received at least some basic education. In the United States accessibility to public education has vastly improved, with over 10 million more children being enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools in 2021 compared to 1985, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Yet as we stand on shifting sands, with multiple, interlocking challenges reshaping the way we live and relate, this momentous global progress is at risk. From social and environmental deterioration to political systems straining under the contestation between democracy and autocracy, to the health and economic crises, to a significant uptick in social unrest and conflict—a pendulum of negative impact spreads outward from the global stage to nation-states.

Too often, the answer suggested in response to our collective challenges is not a strong focus on strengthening the public sector but an increase in the role of private actors.

Globally, the number of private actors in education is growing. Though public education expenditure is woefully inadequate, the sector is still vast and holds powerful profit potential, attracting “predatory capital,” which prioritizes private interests and profit over people.

This increase in private actors is strongly related to the decline in public funding in the education sector. While quality public education requires robust and sustainable financing, low- and lower-middle-income countries face an annual shortfall of nearly $100 billion to reach their educational targets, according to an April 2023 UNESCO paper.

One of the key commitments from the Transforming Education Summit (2022) is to address this funding deficit through action on tax, austerity, and debt. To this end, tax justice movements and education stakeholders must work collectively, holding governments accountable for progressively increasing domestic financing of public education systems.

While education underfunding in the United States differs from state to state, the picture for the nation looks bleak. The failure to return education spending to what it was before the 2007-2009 recession in 39 states resulted in schools having $360 billion less to spend between 2016-2021 than they would have had, stated a 2024 report “The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems.” Notably, the impact of education underfunding is most acutely felt by African American students, who are twice as likely than their white counterparts to live in districts with sub-optimal funding levels, and 3.5 times more likely to be in “chronically underfunded” districts.

The push for private education is rooted in the assumption that enhanced school choice will encourage educational institutions to engage in healthy competition and improve their quality and services. The reality, however, is more complex. In the United States, like elsewhere in the world, market-based approaches produce winners and losers. Unfortunately, those most marginalized or impoverished too often lose in this competitive landscape, bearing the maximum burden of school privatization.

While almost everyone recognizes the challenges faced by public education, not everyone is willing to make the effort required to ensure that all learners have access to free and quality public education. Advocates for privatizing education offer a supposedly easier path of outsourcing education to governments but stand to profit from the funneling of public money to private school operators, management organizations, or technology companies.

These advocates often create a narrative of failure. This narrative is supported by the chronic underfunding of public education and creates a fertile atmosphere for fevered attacks on public education, as seen in the United States in recent years. The impact of this attack is borne out in the choices of those who have the economic means to leverage them—with wealthier families, a cohort usually comprising political decision-makers, opting out of public education. This exodus in turn reinforces a vicious cycle in which a lack of political responsibility in public education leads to decreased investment, thus paving the way for privatization to be hailed as the solution for improving the educational system.

Yet, standing in stark contrast to these narratives is the reality that privatization does not lead to better quality education for all. Extensive evidence demonstrates that the privatization of education does not improve quality and access but rather diminishes education equity. It creates large gaps between the access and attainment of education for different genders and between people of different racial and ethnic origins, social classes, and levels of physical ability. The most powerful way to address these inequities is through public education.

Crucially, privatization is not something that the public at large wants. Eighty percent of U.S. citizens supported public education, according to a 2021 UNESCO study. This figure aligns with the global picture, in which a 2016 survey showed citizens of 35 countries supported and recognized the value of public education, from increasing health care access and job opportunities to its capacity for transformative social change.

Despite narratives to the contrary, steered largely by private interests, public education can and does work; in many places, it works well despite limited resources. Examples from countries such as Brazil, Namibia, Vietnam, and many others, show that locally relevant public education motivated by social justice and sustained investment has driven powerful social transformation through enhanced quality and inclusion. These examples further highlight the importance of teachers, who serve as catalysts for change when valued, trained, and empowered, and the value of communities and participatory accountability systems for improvement in education quality.

Over the past decade, civil society organizations have worked together in informal networks, like the Privatisation in Education and Human Rights Consortium (PEHRC), to advance the understanding and implementation of the human right to free, quality public education and to hold governments and institutions accountable for delivering these standards. PEHRC opposes education privatization because evidence has shown that it does not work.

We know that nation-states, including the United States, face their specific challenges against a shifting global social, political, and economic landscape, and designing and delivering public services is not easy. But we also know that without access to quality public education, the future looks bleak. Public education “creates a public”—one that can be strong, cohesive, and well-equipped to meet the challenges we currently face.

We believe this is the time to create a movement that reclaims public education. Our movement calls for action in five key areas:

1. Prioritize the public; We call on all education actors to prioritize quality, public, inclusive, and free education for all.
2. Robustly fund public education.
3. Stop funding education privatization.
4. Regulate and enforce regulations on private actors.
5. Create a narrative change.

Public education is a human right. It must be defended at all costs to secure a better educational system for all.

---

AUTHOR BIO: The Privatisation in Education and Human Rights Consortium (PEHRC) is an informal network of national, regional, and global organizations and individuals who collaborate to analyze and respond to the challenges posed by the rapid growth of education from a human rights perspective and propose alternatives.