The impact of marketization on school segregation and educational equity: Evidence from Australia and Canada

While marketization has been promoted as a mechanism for improving educational equity and effectiveness, substantial evidence suggests that it may have the opposite effect. We contribute to this debate by examining educational equity and effectiveness in two similar countries that have embraced educational marketization to different degrees. Drawing on data from the Program for International Student Assessment and a causal-comparative design, we show that Australian schooling has more choice and competition, is more socially segregated, has larger school stratification of human and material resources, and has greater inequalities of educational outcomes and overall lower effectiveness than Canadian schooling. More specifically, our research indicates that lower SES students do better in Canada than in Australia because they are more likely to attend a socially integrated school. While Canada has embraced school choice, it has not done so to the same extent as Australia. Also, Canada has buffered the negative, segregating aspects of choice by generally avoiding policies that promote competition, such as public comparisons of school achievement data. In contrast, in Australia, increased competition between schools and resulting inequality have led to some schools having better resourcing, facilities, teaching staff, or “good” students, and many parents feel compelled to choose a non-local school and/or private school. Our findings suggest that educational marketization reduces educational equity and effectiveness by increasing school social segregation and stratification of resources. This study thus calls for a radical rethinking of education marketization policy.