This presentation examines Pearson plc, a leading multinational education company, and how it is privatizing the education sector.

1. Pearson: A case study of
corporate-led privatizations and
profiteering in education in Ghana
Curtis B. Riep
The 58th Annual Conference of the Comparative and
International Education Society
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
March 14, 2014

2. Outline
• Why study the worlds largest multinational education
corporation?
• What are the roles, strategies, and impact of Pearson in
privatizing the education sector?
• The Pearson Affordable Learning Fund and Omega
Schools Franchise in Ghana
• Implications for future research

3. Why study Pearson?
• largely absent from education policy analysis and
comparative and international education studies
• it is less well known than other international actors that
affect national education systems, ie. World
Bank, OECD, UNESCO
• it has the potential to affect national education systems
through a variety of business activities and capital
accumulation strategies that are advancing the scope of
privatizations in education

4. ―We think education will turn out to be the great growth industry
of the 21st century‖ - John Fallon, chief executive of Pearson
Source: Pearson Annual Reports and Accounts, 2012

5. What are the roles, strategies, and impact of
Pearson in privatizing the education sector?
• public-private partnerships (PPPs)
• global partnerships for development
• Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF)
and Omega Schools Franchise in Ghana

6. public-private partnerships
For example, Pearson has established PPP agreements with:
• Bhutan
• Brazil
• Chinese Ministry of Education
• Italy
• South Africa‘s Western Cape Province
• 45 state governments in the US
• Abu Dhabi Education Council with UAE
PPPs in education are ―contractual relations between the government
and private providers to acquire education services of a defined
quantity and quality at an agreed price for a specified period‖ (Verger
2012, p. 116).

7. Global Partnership for Education (GPE) /
Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Ed)
―When the business community speaks with one voice,
politicians listen, and so the Global Business Coalition for
Education will pressure governments in the developed and
developing world alike to do more to deliver education for all.
GBC-Ed delegations will visit key target countries, like
Ethiopia, India and Nigeria, to meet Presidents, Prime
Ministers and other senior figures, encourage them to prioritise
education, and explore how the skills and resources of
businesses can be of assistance.‖ (GBC-Ed website)

8. Pearson Affordable Learning Fund
(PALF)
―At Pearson, Michael
and his colleagues
founded the Pearson
Affordable Learning
Fund, a for-profit venture
fund, in response to the
vital market and
government need for
low-cost private
education in the
developing world.‖
(PALF website)policy edu-preneur
Michael Barber
Source: www.affordable-learning.com/what-is-affordable-learning/Whyafund.html

9. Omega Schools Franchise
edu-preneur
James Tooley
―The Pearson Affordable
Learning Fund reinforces
our commitment to
tackling the educational
needs of the world‘s
poorest regions, to
experiment with new
approaches to low cost
learning, and to
demonstrate to how a for-
profit approach can scale
and solve education in
developing countries.‖
(PALF website)
Source: http://www.wise-qatar.org/content/omega-schools

10. Omega Schools Franchise
business/teaching/learning model
• Efficiency
• Standardization of services
• Pay-as-you-learn

11. Efficiency
Means serving the largest amount of students
at the lowest possible cost.
The main source of cost saving has come as a
result of the exploitation of teachers‟ labour.
• The monthly wage for an Omega School
teacher ranges between 130 and 150 GHC
(equivalent to $65 and $75 per month or
$2.95 and $3.40 per day)—this is only 15-
20% of what teachers in the public sector
make in Ghana.

12. Standardization of Services
the per
• ‗school-in-a-box‘ franchising approach
• uniform products or outcomes
• scripting employee behaviors and interaction with customers
Omega Schools has ―…developed lesson plans for the
teachers because ideally it takes a very experienced
teacher to be able to structure the lesson and design a
lesson plan to be able to deliver the needed effect and we
don‘t have that luxury. We can‘t get experienced quality
teachers in the schools so what we‘ve done is hired
experienced teachers to write out those lesson plans at
the head office and then give them to the schools so that
our teachers can read them and just deliver them.‖ (Ken
Donkoh, co-founder of Omega Schools

13. “pay-as-you-learn”
• This ―innovative all-inclusive no hidden cost daily fee
payment system, ensures that we rope in a lot more
lower-income families who otherwise may not be able to
afford bulk term fees‖ (Omega website).
• ―since the poor earn on a daily basis we must develop
a payment system that allows them to pay on a daily
basis.‖ (Ken Donkoh, co-founder of Omega Schools)
• Families pay a fee of 1.50 GHC (equivalent to $0.75)
per child per day
• ―I sell water on the streets one day so I can go to
school the next.‖

14. Why do you think Pearson invested
in Omega Schools Franchise?
―Obviously, it‘s a very interesting space—the low-fee education space is quite
interesting. It‘s a huge market. It‘s getting more and more interesting. It‘s also a
way that Pearson can really make an impact by helping the poor and helping
low-income communities also get a better education...I think the low-fee sector
has made a very strong statement – that yes, it is possible that the private
sector can also educate the poor. I think that Pearson wants to be involved in
these things. So I think that‘s the key thing. There‘s huge wealth at the ‗bottom
of the pyramid‘ as they put it. So who knows? Maybe in a few years to come it
will be a very viable market. But I think for now they are driven by the fact that
they want to be involved in this space, they want to support, they want to bring
quality. In a way help achieve, if not even achieve, we get closer to the
Millennium Development Goals…I think that the reason why Pearson set-up
the Affordable Learning Fund, the Fund that invested in us, is not to make a
short-term return, but instead to develop the market, develop the market to
maturity.‖ (Ken Donkoh, co-founder of Omega Schools)

15. Building new markets at „the bottom of the pyramid‟
Global Economic Pyramid
* based on purchasing power parity in US$ Source: UN World Development Reports
‗Bottom of the pyramid‘ (BOP) strategies see the poor as an
untapped market where multinational corporations can provide low
cost services, such as education, on a for-profit basis, while also
working towards poverty alleviation by creating more ‗poor-friendly‘
market systems.

16. access, equity, affordability
To determine if Omega Schools can be expected to significantly
expand initial access to the ‗last 10%‘ of students in Ghana who still
remain excluded from basic schooling, a sample was taken of 437
pupils across four different Omega schools. Only 1 out of 437 students
questioned said that Omega was the first school they attended.
• Families with an average household income in Ghana (1,217 GHC)
would pay approximately 25% of annual household income to send 1
child to an Omega School
• Lowest-income families (728 GHC) would pay approximately 40% of
annual household income to send 1 child to an Omega School
Omega Schools are not ―low-fee‖, ―budget‖ or ―affordable‖
options for the poorest families in Ghana

17. ―Unfortunately, the private schools that are coming on
board are clustered in urban centers. This is because
those low cost or low fee private schools do it as a
business enterprise, so they go to communities that can
afford to pay. So those children in the villages, in the
remote areas—what will be their fate?‖ (Director of
Private Schooling, Ghana Education Service)

18. • Omega Schools is initiating plans to expand its franchise
beyond Ghana and into West African markets including Sierra
Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and the Gambia. With plans to grow too as
many as 340 schools with 200,000 students by 2020.
• Omega Schools Franchise is the first investment made by the
Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. It is expected that more joint
ventures and investments in chains of low-fee private schools will
be announced by Pearson in the coming months - to further
develop a global market for low-fee private schooling.
• Who ‗wins‘ and who ‗loses‘ in these corporate-led privatizations
in education?
Implications for future research