MSc SOAS/PhD UCL: A POLITICAL ECONOMY ANALYSIS OF THE ORIGINS AND EFFECTS OF THE RISE OF PRIVATE LOW FEE SCHOOLS IN EDUCATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

1+3: MSc SOAS & MPhil/PHD at UCL
The research will critically assess current aid policies that promote and strengthen the role of the private sector in education in developing countries, such as those associated with the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), United Nations (UN) agencies, the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). This will take into consideration the political, economic and socio-cultural context within which policies are formed as well as deploy a gender lens to consider ways in which effects of privatisation can be understood and are commonly evaluated. The study will engage explicitly across a set of different terrains of research. It will foster an interdisciplinary approach across education, gender studies and political economy that will benefit from practitioner perspective. The latter will result from collaboration with Action Aid, a key practitioner in the field of development policy.

The proposed research project is intended to further support an investigation into the origins and effects of privatisation, particularly with regard to girls' education and gender equality, with related work offering positive solutions around expanding the sustainable financing of free public education, in line with SDG targets. Through the deployment of a gender lens in the appraisal of both the origins and the impact of the increased promotion of low fee private schools across developing countries, the current research will then draw on and contribute to a rich literature on gender dimensions of education realities (Monkman and Hoffman, 2013; Monkman and Webster, 2015; Unterhalter, 2016). This will be anchored more broadly in political-economy analysis of imperatives and interests that underpin changes in aid and development paradigms, including bearing on education.

The overarching research questions are:
1. How has the role and influence of private sector actors in global education and gender policy emerged and evolved since 2010?
2. What are the implications of this for redressing inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa, including gender inequality?
3. How are the prospects for a publicly funded education system that incorporates gender equality affected by the increased role of private actors in education?

Methodologies
The first strand of the research will unpack through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews how and when representatives of the private sector came to play a role in global policy making around gender and girls' education and it will critically assess the forms of evidence that are deployed. A second strand of investigation will place the particular history of work on girls' education within an analysis of the imperatives and interests associated with the articulation and implementation of aid policy, with a specific focus on International Financial Institutions (e.g. the World Bank). This includes a critical appraisal of the Bank's role as Knowledge Bank and leader in development, including education policy. A third strand will focus on outcomes of a specific set of initiatives promoting low fee private schooling in developing countries. This will entail looking at a range of demographic data, national accounts, administrative data drawing out some key gender dimensions of provision. This also involve overseas fieldwork for a period of 3-6 months in Nigeria and Kenya or Uganda (not confirmed) during year two of the PhD programme.