REPOSTED FROM: E-NEWS FROM THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR EDUCATION

http://www.campaignforeducation.org

GATS: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door?

It was agricultural subsidies, not education, that led to the collapse of
the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks at Cancun yesterday. But activists
warn that a less well-known component of WTO negotiations, the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), is a lurking threat to public
education systems everywhere.

Groups including Education International, the worldwide federation of
teachers’ unions, say that GATS would force countries to allow more foreign
providers to sell education services, whether through distance learning or
by establishing satellite institutions overseas. This is already a
significant trend at tertiary level. Globally, international higher
education is a business worth an estimated $27 bn per year.

South African education minister Kader Asmal is one developing country
leader who has expressed opposition to the ‘unbridled growth’ of foreign
education providers. He says it has hampered efforts to build a non-racial
university system in post-apartheid SA. Foreign institutions are focusing
only on commercially lucrative areas such as MBAs, even though SA already
has plenty of MBA programmes, and are deliberately targeting the
highest-income students, Asmal said.

Many education stakeholders are also concerned that GATS may force
governments to withdraw subsidies and tax privileges from public
universities, in order to create a level playing field for foreign
competitors.

The WTO and others, including the UK Department for International
Development, claim this is a red herring. “Services supplied through
governments exercising their authority – such as public health and
education services – are explicitly excluded from the GATS,” says DFID.

However, activists would prefer to see governments completely and
permanently withdraw their education sectors from GATS negotiations. The
European Commission has already promised not to include education in the
current round of liberalisation agreements. But Steve Kelk, moderator of
the discussion group [email protected], points out that the EC
commitment applies only to current, not future, negotiations. He adds that
the US is pushing for radical education liberalisation in many countries.

**A petition asking governments to ‘Keep Education Out of GATS’ can be
downloaded from:
http://www.gatswatch.org/educationoutofgats.
**Organisations that wish to sign the petition can email details
(organisation name, contact email address, country of origin, web address)
to:
[email protected].
**DFID's briefing on GATS and services can be downloaded from:
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/AboutDFID/files/itd/itd_services_brief.pdf.
**See also the WTO’s ‘GATS – Fact and Fiction’ at:
http://www.gats.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/gats_factfiction_e.htm