Education increasing or reducing the inequality gap?

Case study of the Netherlands

Over the past few years tutoring, homework support, or receiving expensive digital learning resources is normalized. This has never sparked debate or concerns, but during covid-19 these issues regarding education privatization were more and more apparent. When the pandemic hit schools closed for a long period of time and the lack of education became a heated discussion. In order to catch up for these accumulated learning difficulties parents decided to hire private tutors, send their kids to homework support, or exam practices more than ever. However, this was only eligible for people with high-income, therefore, the difference between rich and poor is now leading to inequality opportunities regarding education during high school and primary school. This essay will advocate for the reduction of privatization in the educational sector.

Rising inequality

            First of all, the privatization of education is happening due to many factors. One of the most important factors is the pressure from the demand-side. Many parents want better and more education for their children. (Belfield & Levin, 2002, p. 29). Because the government cannot meet this excessive demand, they allow the private institutions offering a solution for this excessive demand. However, those private institutions only meet the demand for the high-income individuals as it is not publicly funded. Therefore, the children coming from high-income families are ahead of the others (Belfield & Levin, 2002, p. 29). This will eventually lead to an opportunity inequality between people who can afford private education and people who cannot (Onderwijsraad, 2021).

Lacking Government

            Secondly, due to the rise of privatization of education the public education has been neglected over the past few years and the quality of publicly funded education has declined ever since. For instance, there has been a shortage of teachers, teachers get burn-outs, students experience lack of attention in the classrooms, and there is a chaotic organizations within schools. Noam Chomsky calls this lack of responsibility from the government; the technique of privatization (Visser, 2021, p.4). The government does not take responsibility for those problems, therefore, individuals seek for educational quality somewhere else; the privatized education industry. During COVID-19 the government made a policy regarding the lack of education due to the pandemic. 8.5 billion euros was allocated to different schools to improve their education and to make up for the learning deficit. However, the rule was that all the money should be spent in 2.5 years (Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur, en Wetenschap, 2021). As a result, instead of addressing structural issues in education, such as teacher shortages, schools employed a large number of private tutors and institutions throughout the week to assist teachers. This appeared to be a smart idea in the short term, but it will not benefit anyone in the long run. Additionally, this helped to further promote private institutions, which accelerated the privatization of education (Onderwijsraad, 2021). Consequently, the public sector loses grip on education and perceives education now more as a free market system with an invisible hand. The government is not aware enough of the risks that brings this perception with. For instance, the quality of education will decline and therefore in the future the quantity of highly educated individuals will also decrease. (Belfield & Levin, 2002, p. 34). Education was also seen as the most effective weapon in the fight against the wealth gap. Therefore, if it is now privatized, rather than reducing inequality, it will actually increase it. (Onderwijsraad, 2021).

Counterargument

            Nonetheless, there are also arguments that support privatization of education. Maarten Berg highlights that with privatizing of education young individuals have more opportunities to develop themselves and discover their talents (BNR, 2017, 6:33). For instance, Maarten Berg argues that some individuals are not made for going to school every day from nine to five. Moreover, he states that we should look at every individual separately instead of our youth as a collective (BNR, 2017, 8:23). I acknowledge that getting tutoring or going to homework support indeed is more focused on the individual than a normal classroom is. Additionally, I also understand that private education gives maybe more room to discover an individual talent or interests. However, as the podcast also highlights going to a normal high school also provides an individual with a lot of opportunities. Going to school and learning how to cooperate with persons of the same age or older is also an important element of individual development. (Onderwijsraad, 2021).

Conclusions

To sum up, the reduction of privatization of education is necessary to prevent an increase in opportunity- and wealth inequality. Nonetheless, due to excessive demand and a lack of attention for structural problems privatized education is now more normalized than ever. Society is just coping with the fact that the government treats education not as a priority and that they must take care of it themselves more often. However, this coping mechanism and the lacking responsibility of the government leads to an increase in opportunity inequality and wealth inequality. Furthermore, the structural problems regarding education are not being solved but instead becoming worse. Thus, the government needs an urgent reminder of how important education is for the collective interest before it is too late.