Austerity and inequality; or prosperity for all? Educational policy directions beyond the pandemic

Abstract

This paper draws on current international analysis of pandemic issues in education, and on recent arguments by critical economists and political scientists, to examine two scenarios for educational policy beyond the coronavirus pandemic. One looming possibility is an onrush of austerity, deep cuts to public education, financial hardship for the working and middle classes, and a range of private sector, including online answers to public problems in education, leading to more inequity, and an even wider digital divide. The pandemic, it is argued, is already being used as a strategy to bring about educational privatization by stealth by mismanaging return-to-school strategies and by overselling the effectiveness of online and private school alternatives. The alternative is public education investment to pursue prosperity and better quality of life for everyone. This will reduce inequality instead of increasing it, close the digital divide that COVID-19 has exposed, and encourage balanced technology use to enhance good teaching rather than hybrid or blended technology delivery that may increasingly replace such teaching.