World Social Forum: Spotlight on free quality public education | WPN World People News

“Another world is possible with free, universally accessible quality public education for all”. This was the crucial message brought by the education community to the 2016 World Social Forum in Montreal, Canada, from 9-14 August.

Education International (EI) affiliates in Quebec – the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), the Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d'université, the Fédération du personnel professionnel des universités et de la recherche and the Fédération Nationale des Enseignantes et Enseignants du Québec – led in the establishment of the first self-managed Education Zone Committeeat the 2016 World Social Forum (WSF). The Zone was an open space for analysis and dialogue between education unions, student associations and other civil society stakeholders around critical issues affecting education. Together with affiliates from over 20 member organisations, EI contributeda union perspective and helped to build solidarity platforms of political action.

Privatisation threat

The growing corporate sector involvement in education financing, management, and regulation came under scrutiny. Its negative implications for governance, funding and the provision of quality public education for all were one of the key issues largely discussed at the Education Zone.

Education International was joined by leading academics at the roundtable entitled The global education industry: Philanthropy, business and the changing roles of government. Researcher Curtis Riep, Professor Prachi Srivastava and Dr Antonio Olmedo unveiled the increasing role of non-state actors in contemporary networked political frameworks with a particular focus on market-oriented philanthropy, public-private partnerships and the global scaling-up of corporate-backed for-profit schooling.

Concerns were raised about the lack of transparency and accountability of these non-state actors impacting democratic decision making, reshaping public sector work and steering education agendas globally for private benefit. The narrowing standardisation of education to produce a reserve army of labour to satisfy corporate interest was the subject of critical debate.

A global response

EI also presented at other roundtables: presenting a case study focusing on companies trying to profiteer from education privatisation at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)-organised panel, Capital Strategies Focused on Education, and also at the CSQ-organised panel, Response to the privatisation/commodification of education and knowledge.

Participants discussed strategies to confront the impact of choice and competition leading to the commodification of knowledge, a deepening inequality and segregation in education and the de-professionalisation of teaching. The need for greater efforts by the union movement to confront the disturbing trends in precarious employment received particular attention.

Recognising the necessity of an adequate revenue base for the achievement of quality public education for all, the importance of tax justice against the backdrop of disturbing evidence of corporate tax avoidance and minimisation was a key topic of discussion.

Other panels on which EI’s member organisations led or participated included: Taking on Hedge Funds, Bankers & Billionaires to Win for Our Communities (AFT); Teachers’ Unions tackling racism in schools and society (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft-GEW/Germany); and Stop Child Labour and Let Children Learn (GEW).

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The WSF, the largest gathering of civil society, emerged in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to contest neoliberal globalisation. Under the slogan Another World is Possible, it represented the transformation of a growing global protest movement into a forum to envisage alternatives. Education, as an essential prerequisite for dialogue and peace, plays a leading role within this movement.

Source: Education International