RIGHTSI Capitalism makes cows mad - but the system needs more than reforms The aim of the powerful American and European international services corporations is to turn education into a commodity to be sold for profit. After the privatisation of public utilities, education, along with health, is one of the few services still remaining largely in the public sector.
The global education market is estimated to be worth $2000 billion a year. One huge potential market sector is the less developed contries, where educational colonialism is booming. The other potential market is the leading industrial countries.
The key to opening up public services throughout the world to private companies is GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services). Negotiations are currently taking place among governments under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation. expand the reach of the GATS. The be concluded by January 1st 2005. education services are national government regulations including state funding of schools, colleges and universities, nationality requirements of students and teachers, and the nonrecognition of equivalent qualificaremove these obstacles: ment granted to any foreign service be granted to all others. In other demand equivalent access. This rule tation is still to be tested. As with all GATS panel, not by governments. trade in services'. This rule also already exists but its application is currently being negotiated.
• The 'National Treatment' rule treatment that is given to domestic providers to foreign services and providers. or providers. GATS would remove any internal government restrictions on the provision of public services. March 31 this year is the deadline to make initial offers to current round of negotiations is due to The obstacles to the liberalisation of
government authority. tions. The GATS rules are designed to
• The 'Most Favoured Nation' treatment rule requires that the best treat(including electronic) or provider must words, if a foreign company was grant- In denial ed a contract, other companies could already applies to all members under the existing treaty, though its interprethe rules, disputes will be settled by a
• The rule on 'Domestic Regulation' ensures that government measures do not constitute 'unnecessary barriers to states that it is: requires members to extend the best
the UK is limited".
• The rule on Market Access prohibits limits on the number of services
In short, governments would not be able to protect state provision or give more favourable treatment to state provision than private provision. For example, foreign universities establishing branches in the UK would be entitled to award UK degrees and to receive government funding. There has been a lot of debate about two questions - can GATS apply to state education, and will it apply?
Those who say that it can't apply to state education appeal to Article 1:3 of the agreement, which excludes 'services supplied in the exercise of
These are defined as any services (including electronic services) which are not supplied either on a commercial basis or in competition with one or more service suppliers. But almost every country's education system -and certainly the UK's - has elements of private provision, which means that they are not excluded from GATS. The British government has attempted to deny that state school education is at risk. A document published by the Department of Trade and Industry in October 2002 entitled Liberalising trade in services - a new consultation on the World Trade Organisation GATS negotiations,
"Our firm view that the state school education system is outside the scope of the GATS (except potentially in noneducation related activities where . competition already exists), we believe that the potential impact of further liberalisation of educational services in
But this is a smokescreen in response to opposition from the antiglobalisation movement. The existence of the private school sector, and
the ever-increasing provision of
LEA and government education
services by private companies,
makes it impossible to exclude
the state school system from
GATS. So the debate is not about
whether GATS can apply, but
whether it will. GATS will only
apply to services which governments have decided to 'commit. The European Commission negotiates in the WTO on behalf of all
the EU member states.
Education is currently 'uncommitted' by most countries, but
those that have include the EU
the US and Japan. Nearly 30
countries have made commitments in primary and secondary education, including the EU and Japan but not the US. The EC has
also committed higher education
and adult education. The EC commitments only apply
in general to 'privately funded education services'. Some EU countries have imposed restrictions such as nationality. Unsafe Does this mean that state education in the EU is safe from private predators? That is certainly what the EC would like us to believe. In February 2003 Pascal Lamy, the European Trade Commissioner who leads the EU's GATS negotiations, announced that the EC would not further commit Europe's education sectors to the free market rules of GATS.
Again, this should be treated as bluff, for two reasons.
• The first reason is that the GATS negotiations are a slippery slope, with their own logic. GATS forces countries to engage in successive rounds of negotiations offering more sectors each time, and it is designed to be irreversible. So what is a sticking point today will not be tomorrow.
• The second and more fundamental reason is that European governments, and especially the British government, are committed to opening up public services for profit.
However, liberalisation is a two-way street. As Pascal Lamy said in a speech to the US Council for International Business in June 2000:
'If we want to improve our own access to foreign markets then we can't keep our protected sectors out of the sunlight....That means some pain in some sectors but gain in many others... However, liberalisation is a two-way street. Foreign competitors are equally keen to move into the UK market. •For information on GATS see the websites of the World Development Movement, GATSwatch and People & Planet.