A/HRC/29/30 anchored conceptions of schooling” — a departure from decades of the welfare state.9 The work of numerous civil society organizations expressing concern about the negative effects of privatization in education must be commended.10 41. UNESCO and the International Organization of la Francophonie have expressed concern with sweeping privatization in education reducing education to a commodity: “With diversification in the field of education, the private providers — international or local — are more and more numerous. International consortiums have [become] specialized in ‘selling’ education. A number of local figures, including many teachers and even educational authorities, are creating schools for profit, turning to rather wealthy families with slogans extolling the quality [of the school] or are turning towards the disadvantaged public with altruistic slogans, which often hide the profit or political character of their endeavours. One can observe, above all, the emergence of a quasi-market phenomenon”.11 42. Private providers undermine the right to education, both as an entitlement and as empowerment. A. Privatization and the right to education as an entitlement 43. Entitlement to education in terms of universal access is an essential prerequisite for the exercise of the right to education. However, privatization breeds exclusion, as those who are disadvantaged are unable to access private schools. This aggravates existing disparities in access to education, further marginalizing the poor. Furthermore, voucher schemes purported to provide economically disadvantaged parents with the means to select a private school in fact promote group differentiation. 12 44. Often, the criterion for admission to private institutions is not merit or capacity, but rather the ability to pay. This is in contravention of the basic norms set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international human rights conventions. B. Privatization and the right to education as empowerment 45. Advertising that portrays private schools as providers of better-quality education lures ill-informed students and parents. The phenomenon of low-fee private schools is projected as an affordable means of obtaining quality education. However, there is no evidence that “private schools do anything different to induce more learning than do public 9 10 11 12 See J. Zajda, ed., Decentralization and Privatization in Education: the Role of the State (Dordrecht, Springer, 2006). See report on Privatisation in Education, organized by the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, together with the Privatisation in Education Research Initiative on the occasion of the twenty-sixth session of the Human Rights Council, June 2014; www.eiie.org/en/news/news_details/3306; interventions at the Global Campaign for Education World Assembly, Johannesburg, 23–27 February 2015; www.opensocietyfoundations.org/events/un-specialrapporteur-kishore-singh-privatization-education; http://globalinitiative-escr.org/advocates-from-91countries-call-on-governments-to-stop-education-profiteers/. “La régulation du système éducatif: une obligation pour atteindre l’équité et améliorer la qualité”, paper prepared by the International Institute for Educational Planning of UNESCO, the International Organization of la Francophonie, Wallonie Bruxelles, 2014, p. 7. Ian Macpherson, “Interrogating the private-school ‘promise’ of low-fee private schools” in Education, Privatization and Social Justice: Case Studies from Africa, South Asia and South East Asia, Ian Macpherson, Susan Robertson and Geoffey Walford, eds. (Oxford., Symposium Books, 2014), p. 21. 7