Oxford Review of Education

ISSN: 0305-4985 (Print) 1465-3915 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/core20

Social justice and education in the public and

private spheres

Sally Power & Chris Taylor

To cite this article: Sally Power & Chris Taylor (2013) Social justice and education
in the public and private spheres, Oxford Review of Education, 39:4, 464-479, DOI:
10.1080/03054985.2013.821854

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2013.821854

Published online: 22 Jul 2013.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2537

View related articles

Citing articles: 11 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=core20
Oxford Review of Education, 2013
Vol. 39, No. 4, 464–479, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2013.821854

Social justice and education in the

public and private spheres
Sally Power* and Chris Taylor
Cardiff University, Wales, UK

This paper explores the complex relationship between social justice and education in the public
and private spheres. The politics of education is often presented as a battle between left and
right, the state and the market. In this representation, the public and the private spheres are
neatly aligned on either side of the line of battle, and social justice is commonly seen as the pre-
rogative of the public sphere. This paper challenges this representation. It shows how the lan-
guage of what counts as public and private in education is historically specific, culturally
contingent and ideologically loaded. Through drawing on a range of education policies and
practices, the paper demonstrates that ‘public’ and ‘private’ are not simple opposites. Moreover,
it argues that social justice can be conceptualised in ways that have complex and multi-faceted
implications for public and private sphere involvement. The paper concludes that if we are to
enhance our understanding of the relationship between social justice and education we need to
recognise the multi-faceted nature of what counts as private, what counts as public and what
counts as justice.

Keywords: social justice; education policy; public; private; education inequality; Nancy Fraser

Introduction
This paper seeks to unravel the different ways in which social justice in education
might be fostered or hindered through the involvement of the public and private
spheres. Within contemporary analyses of education policy, the politics of educa-
tion is often presented as a battle between left and right, the state and the market.
In this representation, the public and the private spheres are neatly aligned on
either side of the line of battle and social justice is commonly seen as the preroga-
tive of the public sphere.

*Corresponding author. WISERD, Cardiff University, 46 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BB, Wales,
UK. Email: PowerS3@cf.ac.uk

Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis

 Social justice and education 465

However, we argue that this simple demarcation is problematic. What counts as

public and private in education is historically specific, culturally contingent and ideo-
logically loaded. Through drawing on a range of education policies and practices, the
paper demonstrates that ‘public’ and ‘private’ are not simple opposites. Moreover, it
argues that the pursuit of social justice can take different directions which make it
impossible to align claims for social justice to either side of the public/private divide.
In order to reveal the complex and multi-faceted relationship between education
and social justice in the public and private spheres, we begin by showing that the
distinction between the public and private is not straightforward. We argue that
lumping together these different dimensions of the private (and the resulting pub-
lic) spheres and then suggesting that education has somehow become more ‘pri-
vate’ is problematic.1 Fraser (1989, p. 70) argues that one of the problems of
contemporary feminism has been the tendency to conflate the state, the official
economy of paid employment and the arenas of public discourse within the con-
cept of the ‘public sphere’. We want to argue that, for similar reasons to which we
shall return later, the conflation of everything that is not the ‘state’ into the ‘pri-
vate sphere’ is also unsatisfactory. This conflation is particularly unhelpful in rela-
tion to understanding the roots and implications of contemporary developments in
education. We then go on to argue that, just as the public and private spheres are
multi-faceted, so too is social justice. Drawing on Nancy Fraser (2008), we distin-
guish between the three dimensions of social injustice——economic, cultural and
political——and their respective politics of redistribution, recognition and represen-
tation.2 Even when we are able to distinguish clearly between the public and the
private spheres, we suggest that their relationship with social justice is still not
straightforward. Each carries different implications for the three dimensions of
social justice. While action in the public sphere may be able to promote social jus-
tice along some dimensions, it may exacerbate social injustice along others. We
show this complex, and sometimes contradictory, relationship through looking at
how social justice may be fostered or hindered through increasing or decreasing
public or private sector involvement in the areas of funding, provision and
decision-making.
We conclude by arguing that if we are to enhance our understanding of the
relationship between social justice and education we need to recognise the multi-
faceted nature of what counts as private, what counts as public and what counts
as justice. In particular, we stress that shifting from the public to the private
spheres has complex implications for social justice that are not necessarily one-
dimensional or uni-directional.

The public–private in education: beyond a simple binary

There is increasing recognition that the complex changes that are currently taking
place within education systems cannot be adequately grasped though the
conventional distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’——or what Ball (2007,
p. 15) refers to as ‘lazy binaries’.
466 S. Power and C. Taylor

A simple binary is problematic on a number of fronts. First, what counts as

‘public’ and ‘private’ is fluid. The positioning of the boundaries is historically and
culturally specific: ‘a shifting political construction under constant renegotiation,
which reflects both historical and cultural contexts as well as the relative power of
different social groups’ (Lester, 1997, p. 124).
Secondly, as Baker (1999, pp. 12–13) argues, ‘The distinction between the pub-
lic and private spheres is best seen … as socially and politically constructed to
serve an ideological function’. The use of the terms ‘private’ or ‘public’ to distin-
guish one sphere or sector from another is therefore as much political as it is
descriptive. We can see this played out in the labelling of schools. Some supporters
of public education in Australia have made a deliberate point of abandoning the
term ‘government schools’ in favour of ‘public schools’. Similar attempts have
been made in the UK where supporters of private schools almost inevitably refer
to them as ‘independent’ schools.3
Thirdly, the sheer complexity of the ways in which the private sector is
now becoming involved in state education has meant that a simple public-
private distinction is no longer descriptively adequate. For example, the vari-
ous public-private partnerships, the rise of educational philanthropy and the
involvement of voluntary and not-for-profit organisations in education have all
made any clear demarcation between what counts as public and what counts
as private difficult to sustain. In other words, there is no single ‘public’ that
can be contrasted with a single ‘private’. Instead it is more useful to con-
ceive of a complex set of intertwining public and private opposites (Gal,
2002; Weintraub, 1997).
Despite these analytical difficulties, the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘private’ have
been increasingly used to describe and account for changes in the education sys-
tem. However, rather than attempt to disaggregate these various phenomena, com-
mentators have tended to adopt one of three strategies which gloss over the
difficulties. The first is to make little or no attempt at defining these opposites
(e.g. Turner, 2004). The second is to acknowledge the complexities but to utilise
a particular public–private distinction in relation to a specific policy dimension of
the education system (e.g. Hemming, 2011). The third tendency has been to put
them all together as part of a process of more widespread ‘privatisation’. Privatisa-
tion, a bit like globalisation, is presented as a pervading all-powerful force, which
is gradually eroding the publicly funded and provided education that (allegedly)
characterised post-war Britain (e.g. Pring, 1987).
Although we would acknowledge that over time there may be an increasing (or
decreasing) presence of the private (or public) within education, very generic
notions of privatisation (or, as Ball would have it, privatisations) imply there is a
continuum along which degrees of public/private sector involvement can be mea-
sured and compared. We think this is problematic. Attempts to demonstrate such
a continuum within education (Bradford, 1995; Taylor, 2002) have produced little
conceptual clarity or further understanding.
 Social justice and education 467

According to Weintraub (1997), it is not possible to have a public–private con-

tinuum because there are no shared criteria along which an axis can be con-
structed. ‘Public’ and ‘private’ are dichotomous categories with no necessarily
overlapping features. As Gal (2002) points out in her discussion of social science
research funding in the USA, different funding agencies cannot be more public or
more private than each other, they can only be one or the other.4 Moreover, as
Weintraub illustrates, there is not just one dichotomy but many. ‘Public’ can
encompass not only the state, but aspects of social life that are collective and visi-
ble. Similarly, ‘private’ can encompass both the market and civil society, as well as
domestic and personal domains.
It is not our intention in this paper to provide a definitive way or approach to
distinguishing between the public and the private spheres. Instead we simply want
to stress that there are multiple ways in which this can be done. A major conse-
quence of this, we suggest, is that the choice of definition may depend on the ana-
lytical purpose of the distinction. It is also that these different ways of
distinguishing public and private will have different implications for how we see
the relationship between social justice and education. The picture is further com-
plicated when one considers the complex nature of social justice as well.

The multiple dimensions of social justice

As Burchardt and Craig (2008, p. 1) point out: ‘Everybody is in favour of social
justice’. After all, who could be against it? However, social justice, like the public
and private spheres, is not one-dimensional. Over the last two decades a significant
amount of social theory has been concerned to map out what a socially just society
would look like. There is not the space here to cover the various approaches, and
in some ways they mostly share certain common ground——namely that moves
towards social justice will need to address a range of social injustices. For our anal-
ysis, we draw upon the three dimensions identified by Nancy Fraser (2008)——eco-
nomic, cultural and political.
Fraser argues that economic injustices arise from the maldistribution of material
resources. A significant amount of educational inequalities can be attributed to this
maldistribution. It is not only that the children of socio-economically disadvan-
taged parents tend to have lower educational attainment; it is also the case that
the schools they are most likely to attend are also resource-poor. If education pol-
icy is to address these economic injustices then we will need a politics of redistri-
bution through which there is some reallocation of resources from the advantaged
to the economically marginalised. As we shall see in the next section, the public
and private spheres can both lay claim to a politics of redistribution——whether this
takes the form of taxation, sponsorship or the ‘new philanthropy’. Both the public
and the private spheres also contribute to reinforcing the current maldistribu-
tion——again through variable funding regimes and, perhaps most significantly,
through parental investment.
468 S. Power and C. Taylor

Cultural injustices, Fraser argues, do not arise from poverty or material disad-
vantage, but from misrecognition. Misrecognition can include cultural domination,
non-recognition (being rendered invisible) and disrespect (being routinely
maligned or disparaged). Misrecognition in education can be found in the extent
to which access to particular forms of provision privileges some groups over others.
It can also be found in the various subtle ways in which the content of education
reflects particular dominant values and silences or misrepresents the values of
culturally marginalised groups. Just as maldistribution requires a politics of redis-
tribution, cultural injustices require a politics of recognition. Again, and as we
shall discuss in greater detail in the next section, we can see that aspects of the
public and private spheres contribute to both misrecognition and recognition in
education. Home-schooling, religious supplementary schools and maintained faith
schools can all be seen as ways in which groups and individuals have struggled for
a politics of recognition.
Political injustices are less clearly demarcated than economic and cultural injus-
tices. Economic and cultural injustices limit people’s capacity to engage in all
kinds of civic and political activity. However, Fraser (2005, p. 76) contends that
political injustices can exist over and above economic and cultural ones. Political
injustices arise when individuals or groups are denied parity in social interactions
and decision-making processes. It is important to note that this misrepresentation
is not confined only to conventional political arenas. To address this kind of injus-
tice, we need a politics of representation. Olson (2008), who expands on Fraser’s
framework, argues that a politics of representation can have two dimensions——a
relatively narrow reading that includes participation in terms of pursuing individual
projects (choice) and a broader one which involves working towards collective
goals (politics more conventionally defined). These two paths to participatory par-
ity can be pursued along a number of directions, such as increasing citizen choice
and putting in place mechanisms to mobilise greater community participation.
Both of these strategies can be seen in recent education policy and practice and
both involve complex shifts in the locus of decision-making between the public
and the private spheres. In different ways, policies such as parental choice, paren-
tal balloting and demand-led provision (Welsh medium schools, free schools) can
be seen as struggles between elements in the public and private spheres to pursue
participatory parity.
It is important to recognise these different dimensions of social injustice because
they each require different political strategies and interventions: addressing eco-
nomic injustices requires a politics of redistribution; addressing cultural injustices
requires a politics of recognition; and addressing political injustices requires a poli-
tics of representation. Power (2012) has argued that, since the Second World
War, there has been a slow but recognisable shift in the politics of education in
England. A politics of representation has gradually dominated over a politics of
recognition, which in turn replaced a politics of redistribution as the principal
vehicle for tackling educational injustices. However, while different kinds of poli-
tics have come in and out of fashion, they accumulate on top of each other in
 Social justice and education 469

ongoing attempts to try to reduce educational inequalities. This successive layering

of the different political strategies, each of which invoke the public and the private
spheres in education in different ways, has contributed to a complex landscape of
intervention and impact.

Social justice and the public–private in education

We hope we have shown thus far that the distinction between the public and the
private is multi-faceted and complex. There are various ways of distinguishing
between the two spheres, but a common feature of all the possible interpretations
is that they are best defined categorically (or in opposition to one another) rather
than being on some form of continuum. Similarly we have also argued that the
concept of social justice is multi-faceted and includes economic, cultural and polit-
ical injustices. In the next section we look at how social justice (in all its complex-
ity) has been pursued and/or imperilled through shifts between the public and
private spheres in the area of funding, provision and decision-making in educa-
tion.5 Economists have traditionally distinguished between public/private funding
and provision, but more recent analysis has also recognised the importance of
shifts in the locus of decision-making from the public to the private domain
(e.g. Burchardt, Hill, & Propper, 1999; West & Currie, 2008).
The identification of these three different areas of intervention is fortuitous
because they map on to the three dimensions of social justice. Funding is a key
factor in the pursuit of economic justice in education; provision is a key element
in promoting cultural justice in education; and decision-making can be seen as a
key process in achieving political justice in education. Making these connections
enables us to explore how shifts between the public and private spheres can tackle
one kind of injustice but create other kinds of injustice.

Funding in the public and private spheres and a politics of redistribution

Since the 19th century, the UK has seen increasing levels of public funding in
education. Even since 2000, school (per pupil) expenditure has risen by 40% in
real terms for local authority maintained primary and secondary schools in Eng-
land (Holmlund, McNally, & Viarengo, 2009). In short, the overwhelming major-
ity of school education is funded from the public purse, through national and local
taxation. Such funding is raised and spent by the state——and can therefore be
clearly located within the public sphere.
However, a significant amount of funding comes from sources which are less
clearly ‘public’. During 2010–11, £261 million was raised from donations and/or
voluntary funds for local authority maintained schools in England. In addition,
these schools raised a further £823 million of income from facilities and other ser-
vices (DfE, 2012). Overall, local authority maintained schools in England raised
just under 7% of their total expenditure themselves. For some schools this has
been as high as 42% of their total expenditure (BBC, 2011). In addition, just
470 S. Power and C. Taylor

under 10% of all schools in England are independent schools that raise their own
funding through charging fees, and a further 15% of all schools are academies, just
under a third of which are sponsor-led and can therefore be in receipt of addi-
tional non-state funding. More recently, the introduction of free schools, university
technical colleges and studio schools provides the opportunity for (a) additional
non-governmental funding to be raised for individual establishments and (b)
schools to gain greater autonomy in the way in which resources (from public and
private purses) are spent. ‘New philanthropy’ provides a further opportunity for
additional, non-state funding to be sought, which is then often tied to particular
kinds of targeted educational activities.
The largest form of private investment, though, comes from parents themselves
through various forms of tutoring and supplementary education. According to the
ONS (2012) an estimated £14 billion was spent by individual households on edu-
cation in 2011, compared to £16 billion spent on health care and services. During
2010, households in the UK spent £10 on average a week on education, an
increase from £7.906 a week four years earlier (ONS, 2011). However, households
with the 10% highest levels of gross annual income spent more than three times as
much as the average household (£37 per week).
It is clear that the involvement of the private sphere in funding education is not
trivial. Although precise figures on the private sources of funding for schools and
education services generally are not easily obtainable, according to the OECD
(2012), 31% of all education expenditure in the UK comes from either individual
households (i.e. income not raised through public taxation) or other private enti-
ties. In 2008 this amounted to £26 billion. For comparison, total gross school
expenditure was £36 billion. Although these non-state sources of income may not
necessarily be spent on compulsory school-age education, they nevertheless pro-
vide a useful international comparison. For example, these figures compare with
29% of education expenditure in the USA coming from private sources, 18% in
Germany, 13% in France and 3% in Sweden and Finland. Of the data available,
only Chile (41%), Japan (32%) and Korea (40%) have a higher proportion of edu-
cation expenditure from such private sources. In addition, according to the
OECD, a further £10 billion is spent on education in the UK by firms for speci-
fied educational activities or comes from international agencies and other foreign
sources.7
Clearly these patterns of income generation and expenditure demonstrate that
funding is one domain in education where we have perhaps seen the increasing
involvement of the private sphere. Critically, the resulting definition and involve-
ment of the public and private spheres in education funding is directly allied to
economic justice, and the ability of policy and other ‘remedies’ to redistribute
resources and funding where economic injustices exist. The social justice implica-
tions of increasing funding from the private sphere are, at best, patchy. For exam-
ple, the apparently additional funding made available to education through the
new education services, sponsorship and the various private finance initiatives can
have a demonstrable impact on improving school infrastructure in the short-term
 Social justice and education 471

(Hatcher, 2006; Kakabdse, Kakabadse, & Summers, 2007). But there remains
concern about the long-term outcomes of such initiatives, in terms of their overall
costs and social cohesion (Connolly, Martin, & Wall, 2008).
In general, it is difficult to see how increasing the role of the private sphere in
the funding of education is likely to do anything to tackle economic injustices. On
the contrary, economic injustices are likely to increase. If schools, for example, are
to rely more on private investment——either through sponsorship or contribu-
tions——then it is already clear that those schools located in economically advan-
taged areas are more likely to raise additional revenues than schools located in
poorer areas (Bennett & Gabriel, 1999). And as we have seen above, if parental
investment in education is to be more significant then clearly those families with
higher income levels will be able to avail themselves of the best provision. We
already see this in relation to ‘shadow education’ (Bray, 2011).
It could be argued the ‘new philanthropy’ might redress some of these inequali-
ties. Certainly most philanthropic interventions in education are directed at the
disadvantaged and do, therefore, provide redistributive properties from the advan-
taged to the disadvantaged. However, any redistribution of resources through such
means will only have a very minor impact on addressing national economic injus-
tices in education.8
So, it remains the case that the public domain as represented through the state
provides the only systematic means of economic redistribution in education; lar-
gely due to its (national) scale. This also reflects the limits of the private sector in
addressing economic injustices within the funding domain of education. In short,
we would argue, only maintaining high levels of state involvement will enable ineq-
uities of resource distribution to be addressed. The task for social policy here is to
minimise the influence of the private sphere——whether it is businesses or fami-
lies——in educational investment. The Pupil Premium in England and the Pupil
Deprivation Grant in Wales are direct attempts to minimise the economic injustice
of the private (household) sector by directly allocating additional resources to
schools on the basis of the number of pupils eligible for free school meals and with
the principal aim of ‘mitigating the effects that poverty has on educational attain-
ment’ (Welsh Government, 2012, p. 3). Whether these schemes can adequately
compensate for the differential levels of resources available to families and their
children, and whether they can prevent middle-class families from attempting to
maintain an education privilege by increasing their private investments in educa-
tion further, remains to be seen.
In this sense, critics of increasing private involvement in education are correct in
their concerns about the impact on the economic dimension of social justice.
However, the clarity with which such a claim can be made may also be because it
is in the area of funding and the politics of redistribution that the distinction
between the public (here, the state) and the private (generally everything else) is at
its most obvious. Simply, the scale of distributive power offered by the state (cer-
tainly at the national level and to a large extent at the local level of government)
encourages that distinction. However, we are keen to stress that these conclusions
472 S. Power and C. Taylor

are only being applied here to economic injustice; as we will discuss later the
involvement of the private sphere in other dimensions of social justice may lead to
contrary conclusions.

Provision in the public and private spheres and a politics of recognition

Another area where involvement of the private sphere receives much attention is in
the provision of education. For example, in addition to the long-established private
schools and the church schools (which are perhaps an example of the longest
standing public–private partnership in education), England in particular has intro-
duced various new forms of provision——for example, the academies (building
upon the City Technology College initiative) and more recently the free schools.
Although, as we have just seen, funding may come from the public purse, the pri-
vate sphere has responsibility for provision.
The state is responsible for providing the majority of schools in the UK (known
as local authority maintained schools). Furthermore, since 1988 the state has been
heavily involved in the provision (design and control) of the curriculum that is
taught in these and many other schools across England and Wales. In contrast,
private schools have clear autonomy from the state in determining education provi-
sion. Similarly, since 2010, new provision has been encouraged through the free
schools initiative. Although these free schools are funded from the public purse,
they enable a variety of non-state private entities (charities, universities, businesses,
educational groups, teachers and/or groups of parents) to establish new schools in
England. Similarly there are estimated to be up to 150,000 children being edu-
cated within their own home (Kraftl, 2012), outside the provision of the state.
Homeschooling is not nearly as widespread in the UK as it is in the USA, where
many Christian parents reject the secularist values of public education (Jeub,
1994). Instead, in the UK, a rejection of secular education can be seen in the
expanding number of religious supplementary schools (Maylor, Rose, Minty, Ross,
Issa, & Kuyok, 2011). There are an estimated 5,000 complementary and supple-
mentary schools across the UK, many of which are provided by private businesses
(such as the Axis Supplementary Schools in England), by community groups (such
as Madressahs (Islamic schools)), or by educational charities (such as pyramid
clubs across England, Wales and Northern Ireland). In addition to the various reli-
gious supplementary schools, there are organisations, such as the education charity
ContinYou’s National Resource Centre, that support immigrant communities in
providing education in their mother tongue and that seek to preserve their culture
and heritage.
Although Conroy (2010) reminds us that the state is interested in children’s
education wherever and however it is provided, we are primarily interested here in
the provision of these forms of education by entities outside the state or public
sphere. And one thing that supplementary education, free schools, homeschooling
and many independent schools have in common is that they tend to address a
 Social justice and education 473

need for cultural recognition amongst some individuals and groups that does not
appear to be fulfilled by state-provided schools.
Concerns about the cultural injustices within state-maintained schooling have
come from both left and right. In the 1970s there was growing realisation amongst
sociologists of education that the school curriculum was a partial selection of
school knowledge that privileged white, male and Eurocentric values (Whitty,
1985). While various forms of multiculturalism were introduced to try to ‘recog-
nise’ the heritage of children of minority racial and ethnic communities, these were
often seen as superficial (Troyna, 1993) and led to repeated calls from these com-
munities for better provision. Tomlinson (2008) recounts many instances of black
and minority ethnic parents making representations to local authorities and the
government about the quality of provision, availing themselves of alternative forms
of education.
It is possible to argue, then, that increasing activity in the private sphere is, in
part, a response to these cultural injustices——it comprises a kind of politics of rec-
ognition. This is not to say that the public sphere has not attempted to address
cultural injustice within education provision. Clearly the significant presence of
state-funded faith schools, which account for about a third of all schools in the
UK and 1.3 million children, and possibly the presence of single-sex schools,
reflects this. In terms of full-time schooling, the state has recently begun to
respond to pressure from Muslim and Sikh communities to have their own faith
schools, along the same lines that are already made available for Christian (Protes-
tant and Roman Catholic) and Jewish children. In 1997, the first Muslim schools
opened within the state sector. However, these schools were not sufficient to meet
demand, and other faith communities were still excluded. It is only since the intro-
duction of free schools that we are seeing significant growth of separate schools to
meet the needs of these communities. Of the 79 free schools that opened in Eng-
land in 2011 and 2012, about a third are explicitly religious in character, including
Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Transcendental Meditation schools. Some of the others
are run by minority ethnic organisations, such as the Asian Trade Link.
So, it might be argued that when it comes to the provision of education, the pri-
vate sphere can play a more positive role in addressing cultural injustice. In turn,
we have also begun to see the limits of the public sphere in this dimension. Criti-
cally, whichever definition of the public and private is used, there would always
seem to be a role for the private sphere in pursuing a politics of recognition. For
example, we could define faith schools or community-based supplementary schools
as part of the public sphere, since they demonstrate the qualities of being collective
and demonstrating civic duty. But their private sphere equivalents, such as home-
schooling, which continues to have the qualities of being invisible and individual,
could still be seen as a response to the cultural injustices of the public sphere.
However, developments like these raise other issues. Apple (2000), for example,
believes that pursuing a politics of recognition through homeschooling will increase
economic injustices through diverting funds from the less well-off to more
privileged communities. It is too early to say whether this is likely to happen with
474 S. Power and C. Taylor

free schools, but certainly there is no evidence to suggest that the rise of
supplementary schools will have these effects. There may of course be other dan-
gers. Fraser (1997) herself cautions against the dangers of addressing cultural
injustices through strategies that serve to underscore differences between groups.
Nevertheless, it would appear that developments in the private sphere are more
able to accommodate and respect difference than the public sphere——as repre-
sented by the state——has managed thus far. It is also worth highlighting at this
point that we are beginning to see the importance of distinguishing between differ-
ent dimensions of social justice. So, on the one hand, it may appear as if the influ-
ence of the private sphere may lead to increased maldistribution and economic
injustice, but alternatively it may well decrease misrecognition and cultural
injustice.

Decision-making in the public and private spheres and a politics of representation

Even taking recent changes in funding and provision together, any shift from the
public to the private sphere has been quite marginal. Arguably the main shift from
public to private has been in relation to who or what groups have the ability to
influence or make decisions within the education system——principally the move
from the town hall to the individual. The third domain of education that we want
to consider, therefore, relates to decision-making.
The state has traditionally had a strong influence on what kind of education a
child receives. The tripartite system of grammar, secondary modern and technical
schools is a good example of this, whereby a variety of different educational routes
were prescribed for different groups of children. In this sense, the exercise of
choice and diversity within the education system was almost entirely held within
the control and influence of the public sphere. After the introduction of compre-
hensive education, local authorities in England and Wales continued to exercise
considerable control over the allocation of school places——through the demarca-
tion of catchment areas to the setting of school capacity levels in order to ensure
that pupils were distributed on a more or less even basis throughout the authori-
ties’ schools. However, as a result of the 1988 Education Reform Act and succes-
sive pieces of legislation, local authorities retained less control and parents were
given increased opportunities and abilities to choose a school for their child,
reflecting a shift in the locus of decision-making from the public sphere to the pri-
vate sphere. Indeed, successive admissions codes of practice, regulations regarding
admissions processes, and direct support to parents (all provided and encouraged
by the state) only served to increase the agency of individual families. Of course
this does not mean that parents were always successful or chose to exercise that
enhanced ability; but, as Hirschman (1970) would argue, just giving agency to
parents, whether this is exercised or not, is likely to influence other decisions in
the education system.
Also as part of the 1988 Act, parents were given increased control in determin-
ing whether their school would remain in a local authority or ‘opt out’. Parental
 Social justice and education 475

ballots saw almost a quarter of secondary schools in England leave local authority
control (Fitz, Halpin, & Power, 1993). In Wales, parent groups such as the Rhieni
Dros Addysg Gymraeg (Parents for Welsh-medium Education), have largely been
responsible for the significant growth of Welsh-medium schools, initially only pos-
sible because the 1944 Education Act gave parents the agency to express their
wishes. Finally, and more recently, the introduction of ‘free schools’ in England
has given parents the opportunity to actually start new schools.
It is often claimed that choice policies are part of a neoliberal agenda which
speaks largely to white, middle-class parents. Tomlinson (2008, p. 5), for example,
argues that neoliberal strategies of choice and competition exacerbated the racial
bias within the education system. Certainly, a number of research studies suggest
that choice policies can lead to ‘white flight’ (Waslander & Thrupp, 1995).
However, black and minority parents themselves can also be strong proponents of
choice (Denessen, Driessena, & Sleegers, 2005; Moe, 2001). There has certainly
been enthusiasm from some minority ethnic communities for greater ‘grass roots’
control of education provision. In the USA, it was black Democrat activists that
lobbied for the introduction of vouchers in order to break the public sector control
of education which they saw penalising black children (see Witte, 2000).
To some extent, both parental choice and the setting up of free schools are exer-
cises in participatory politics of a kind. For some analysts, though, the increasing
involvement of the private sphere through parental and business involvement
threatens rather than enhances democratic engagement. Ball (2007, p. 9), for
example, worries that the new processes of privatisation might lead to the ‘replace-
ment of democratic processes with technical or market decisions’. Similarly, Chitty
(1997, p. 59) argued, ‘When one tears away the rhetoric and the pretence, there is
nothing remotely democratic or egalitarian about the market system envisaged by
the New Right’.
It is certainly the case that local authorities are elected agencies and that their
powers have been significantly eroded as a result of the increasing involvement of
the private sphere. However, the form of democratic control constituted in local
authorities was and is quite weak in terms of the scale of mandate it receives
(Pratchett, 2004). Decisions in the public sphere have effectively been in the hands
of a small number of administrators, such that ‘Some decisions are visible and can
be held accountable, others are hidden from public view’ (Radnor, Ball, &
Vincent, 1998, p. 136). Moreover, even if one were to privilege electoral democ-
racy over other forms of decision-making, it needs to be remembered that it was
electoral power that has seen some of the most neoliberal and private-sector
friendly governments voted in. The devolving of decision-making from the town
hall to the community or individual is a popular and populist strategy. Even if
parental choice has led to increasing maldistribution of resources and opportunities
(and this is also contested), it may have decreased the injustice of political exclu-
sion from the decision-making process.
The relationship between political injustice and the public and private spheres is
perhaps the most difficult and contentious issue. This is in part because the impact
476 S. Power and C. Taylor

of the reforms is still contested but also because there are competing definitions of
what counts as ‘democracy’ at play.

Discussion
In this paper we have tried to unravel some of the complex relationships between
social justice and the public and private spheres. We are not suggesting that social
justice belongs to one side or the other, but rather to question dominant assump-
tions that social justice will always be threatened by increasing involvement of the
private sphere.
Two main conclusions arise, therefore, from this discussion. First, that shifting
funding, provision and/or decision-making between the public and the private has
complex implications for social justice. Critically, it cannot be implied that there is
a linear and one-directional relationship between the rise of the private sphere and
greater social injustice, primarily because what constitutes the ‘private’ is perhaps
more fluid than is often assumed.
Relatedly, the second main conclusion is that it must be recognised that social
justice is multidimensional, and that the positive influence of the public or private
sphere in one dimension may have negative consequences in another dimension.
In part, these issues depend on how one conceptualises the role of the state and
its relationship with the public and private sphere. Are the limits of the state con-
tingent or are they more fundamental? Apple (2000, p. 73), for example, acknowl-
edges the limits of the state, but sees them only as ‘historical tendencies within the
state to become overly bureaucratic and to not listen carefully enough to the
expressed needs of the people it is supposed to serve’. Others, particularly femi-
nists (e.g. Landes, 1988) and ‘race’ scholars (e.g. Brooks-Higginbotham, 1993),
have much more fundamental critiques of the state and claim that it is essentially
(rather than contingently) exclusionary along class, race and gender lines.
Either way, it is important not to conflate the state with a broader sense of the
public sphere. We want to conclude by arguing that if we want to foster social jus-
tice along all of its multiple dimensions we might need to develop a broader sense
of the public sphere which would not confine citizens and civil society to the pri-
vate sphere (Fraser, 1997). A broader sense of the public sphere would recognise
not one public but many. It would not be a public sphere that was commensurate
with the state, but one which would hold the state to account.

Notes
1. We are aware that in our own exposition we too are guilty at times of ‘lumping together’
the different dimensions——although we hope we do so with some degree of self-
consciousness. It seems almost impossible to escape from the pervasiveness and fluidity of
the concepts. We hope that the term ‘sphere’ captures this breadth without sacrificing too
much precision.
2. Of course, just as the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ are historically contingent, so too are the
different dimensions of social (in)justice.
 Social justice and education 477

3. See Power (2006) for a discussion of the ideological and gendered nature of the language of
public and private in relation to school choice.
4. Gal also suggests that public and private are ultimately distinguished by law. Although this
reminds us of the importance of the legal system in defining aspects of the social we would
also recognise that the law is also a reflection of the social.
5. It is possible to consider other domains or other ways of separating different aspects of the
education system. For example, access (admissions) and governance (control) have been
used in the past as ways of distinguishing between the involvement of the public and private
spheres (Taylor, 2002).
6. Based on 2010 prices.
7. In addition to the sources of funding, Green (2005) and Ball (2007) have also charted the
exponential rise of the education services, what Ball terms the ‘educational services indus-
try’. These range in focus from providing infrastructure (Academies, Public-Finance Initia-
tives) and educational programmes (Connexions, Children’s Trusts), to the delivery of
contracts (local authorities and assessment) and services (school improvement and examina-
tion boards) (Ball, 2007, p. 43).
8. The impact may well be greater in developing countries.

Notes on contributors
Sally Power is a professor in the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff
University. She is currently based in WISERD (Wales Institute of Social and
Economic Research Data and Methods) where she co-directs
WISERDEducation (a HEFCW-funded initiative to build education research
capacity in Wales) and NESET (the European Commission-funded Network of
Social aspects of Education and Training). Her research interests cover most
areas of the sociology of education and education policy.

Chris Taylor is a professor in the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff

University. He is currently based in WISERD (Wales Institute of Social and
Economic Research Data and Methods) where he co-directs
WISERDEducation and NESET (the European Commission-funded Network
of Social aspects of Education and Training). His research interests cover the
geography of education inequalities and the critical analysis of education policy.

References
Apple, M. (2000). Away with all teachers: The cultural politics of home schooling. International
Studies in Sociology of Education, 10, 61–80.
Baker, S. (1999). Risking difference: Reconceptualizing the boundaries between the public and
private spheres. In S. Baker & A van Doorne–Huiskes (Eds.), Women and public policy: The
shifting boundaries between the public and the private spheres. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Ball, S. (2007). Education plc: Understanding private sector participation in public sector education.
Abingdon: Routledge.
BBC (2011). What does the schools spending data show? Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/
news/education–12175480
478 S. Power and C. Taylor

Bennett, R., & Gabriel, H. (1999). Headteacher characteristics, management style and attitudes
towards the acceptance of commercial sponsorship by state-funded schools. Marketing
Intelligence & Planning, 17, 41–52.
Bradford, M. (1995). Diversification and division in the English education system: Towards a
post–Fordist model? Environment and Planning A, 27, 1595–1612.
Bray, M. (2011). The challenge of shadow education: Private tutoring and its implications for policy
makers in the European Union. Brussels: European Commission. Retrieved from: http://www.
nesetweb.eu/de/node/154
Brooks-Higginbotham, E. (1993). Righteous discontent: The women’s movement in the black Baptist
church 1880–1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Burchardt, T., & Craig, G. (2008). Introduction. In G. Craig, T. Burchardt, & D. Gordon
(Eds.), Social justice and public policy: Seeking fairness in diverse societies. Bristol: Policy Press.
Burchardt, T., Hills, J., & Propper, C. (1999). Private welfare and public policy. York: Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.
Chitty, C. (1997). Privatisation and marketisation. Oxford Review of Education, 23, 45–68.
Connolly, C., Martin, G., & Wall, A. (2008). Education, education, education: The third way
and PFI. Public Administration, 86, 951–968.
Conroy, J. C. (2010). The state, parenting, and the populist energies of anxiety. Educational
Theory, 60, 325–340.
Denessen, E., Driessena, G., & Sleegers, P. (2005). Segregation by choice? A study of group-
specific reasons for school choice. Journal of Education Policy, 20, 347–368.
DfE. (2012). Local Authority and school expenditure on education, children’s services and social care
for 2011–11, including school revenue balances, Statistical Release OSR 03/2012. London:
Department for Education.
Fitz, J., Halpin, D., & Power, S. (1993). Grant Maintained Schools: Education in the market place.
London: Kogan Page.
Fraser, N. (1989). Unruly practices: Power, discourse and gender in contemporary social theory.
Cambridge: Polity.
Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the ‘postsocialist’ condition. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Fraser, N. (2005). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, 69–88.
Fraser, N. (2008). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. In K. Olson (Ed.), Adding insult to
injury: Nancy Fraser debates her critics. London: Verso.
Gal, S. (2002). A semiotics of the public/private distinction. Differences: a Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies, 13, 77–95.
Green, C. (2005). The privatization of state education: Public partners, private dealings. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Hatcher, R. (2006). Privatization and sponsorship: The re-agenting of the school system in
England. Journal of Education Policy, 21, 599–619.
Hemming, P. (2011). The place of religion in public life: School ethos as a lens on society.
Sociology, 45, 1061–1077.
Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and
states. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holmlund, H., McNally, S., & Viarengo, M. (2009). Does money matter for schools? CEE DP
105. London: Centre for the Economics of Education, London School of Economics.
Jeub, C. (1994). Why parents choose home schooling. Educational Leadership, 52, 50–52.
Kakabadse, N., Kakabadse, A., & Summers, N. (2007). Effectiveness of private finance
initiatives (PFI): Study of private financing for the provision of capital assets for schools.
Public Administration and Development, 27, 49–61.
 Social justice and education 479

Kraftl, P. (2012). Towards geographies of ‘alternative’ education: a case study of UK home

schooling families. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers doi:10.1111/j.1475–
5661.2012.00536.x (online only)
Landes, J. (1988). Women and the public sphere in the age of the French Revolution. Ithica: Cornell
University Press.
Lester, R. (1997). Citizenship: Feminist perspectives. London: Macmillan.
Maylor, U., Rose, A., Minty, S., & Ross, A., Issa, T., & Kuyok, A. K. (2011). Exploring the
impact of supplementary schools on Black and Minority Ethnic pupils’ mainstream attain-
ment. British Educational Research Journal, iFirst Article, 1–19.
Moe, T. (2001). Schools, vouchers, and the American public. Washington, DC: The Brookings
Institution Press.
OECD (2012). OECD.StatExtracts (online education database). Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.
org/edu/onlineeducationdatabase.htm
Olson, K. (2008). Participatory parity and democratic justice. In K. Olson (Ed.), Adding insult
to injury: Nancy Fraser debates her critics. London: Verso.
ONS (2011). Family spending: A report on the 2010 living costs and food survey. Newport: Office
for National Statistics.
ONS (2012). Consumer trends, Q1 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/con-
sumer–trends/consumer–trends/index.html
Power, S. (2006). Markets and misogyny: Educational research on educational choice. British
Journal of Educational Studies, 54, 157–188.
Power, S. (2012). From redistribution to recognition to representation: Social injustice and the
changing politics of education. Globalisation, Societies and Education 10, 473–492.
Pratchett, L. (2004). Local autonomy, local democracy and the ‘new localism’. Political Studies,
52, 358–375.
Pring, R. (1987). Privatisation in education. Journal of Education Policy, 2, 289–299.
Radnor, H., Ball, S., & Vincent, C. (1998). Local educational governance: Accountability, and
democracy in the United Kingdom. Educational Policy, 12, 124–137.
Taylor, C. (2002). Geography of the ‘new’ education market. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Tomlinson, S. (2008). Race and education: Policy and politics in Britain. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Troyna, B. (1993). Racism and education. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Turner, D. (2004). Privatisation, decentralisation and education in the United Kingdom: The
role of the State. International Review of Education, 50, 347–357.
Waslander, S., & Thrupp, M. (1995). Choice, competition and segregation: An empirical analysis
of a New Zealand secondary school market, 1990–93. Journal of Education Policy, 10, 1–26.
Weintraub, J. (1997). The theory and politics of the public/private distinction. In J. Weintraub
& K. Kumar (Eds.), Public and private in thought and practice: Perspectives on a grand dichot-
omy (pp. 1–42). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Welsh Government (2012). School effectiveness grant and pupil deprivation grant 2012–13, guidance
document no. 072/2012. Cardiff: Welsh Government.
West, A., & Currie, P. (2008). The role of the private sector in publicly funded schooling in
England: Finance, delivery and decision making. Policy and Politics, 36, 191–207.
Whitty, G. (1985). Sociology and school knowledge: Curriculum theory, research and politics.
London: Methuen.
Witte, J. F. (2000). The market approach to education: Analysis of America’s first voucher program.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.