Partnerships in education

Partnerships arrangements in education have emerged over the past twenty years or so as a dominant, but often unrecognized feature, in Australia and in many other parts of the world. An obvious illustration of this can be shown in architecture. School buildings, for example, are a readily identifiable feature of most metropolitan and rural town landscapes. In Australia, government authorities have undertaken the construction of the majority of schools where the buildings have been designed by government employed architects and the work supervised by ministerial departments. However, in recent times the financing, construction and operating of schools has been managed by public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements. In New South Wales (NSW) these partnerships are referred to as Privately Financed Projects (PFP) and all new government schools built since 2001 have used these arrangements. However, partnerships in education are not limited to the construction of buildings. At both State and federal levels of government partnerships with the community and business have been promoted to address concerns ranging from fund-raising, improving literacy and numeracy, to finding work after students leave school. Using policy documents and reports, this paper examines the emergence of partnerships as means of financing, constructing and running schools, and in the delivery of certain programs. The paper also explores the global nature of this initiative and the roles of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Bank. In particular, the role of the OECD in promoting a form of governance call New Public Management (NPM) will be considered. The research finds that by adopting global standards of financing and governance, and by entering into partnership arrangements, education authorities in Australia shifted responsibility for schools to corporate entities. This has resulted in the loss of both assets and control.