Education service contracting in the Philippines: human rights as trumps, goals, or policy talk?

Abstract

In recent years, the goals and purposes of education within the international development discourse have shifted significantly away from education for productivity or human capital development and towards education for the fulfillment of the individual through human rights. The current global education climate provides governments with an environment to support policies of free basic education, driven by a global diffusion of the central principles of education as a human right. This article considers the function of international human rights law and political movements within educational policymaking and practice, specifically regarding policy efforts to increase school access. Using the Philippines as a case study, this article addresses the guarantees for free secondary education in Philippine legal and policy documents, and assesses the current government policy for secondary education expansion—the Education Service Contracting (ESC) Program—to discuss the impact of the country’s human rights commitments on educational policy. Using Kingdon’s multiple streams model of policy analysis, I account for human rights law within ESC policymaking and determine the drivers that have led the country to take up its current model of private expansion. In conclusion, the human right to a free education should be deliberated, not as a trump card to supersede local educational obligations, but as a guiding principle, placed within problem, solution, and political contexts to assess the current state of education and adequately protect those who need publicly funded schooling the most.