A PRIVATE ROLE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE Brian J. Caldwell 1 A system of public education is strong if it has high levels of social capital, that is, all with a stake in public education hold the same views and values about its purposes and programs and are prepared to work together to make it the best system it can possibly be. The purpose of this paper is to show how two nations started with roughly the same relatively low levels of social capital in support of public education less than a decade ago and how the situation was transformed for one of these by resolute action on the part of its government and extensive engagement from a range of organizations in the profit and non-profit private sectors. The focus is on Australia and Britain. There is much to learn from this experience and from the networking of knowledge about efforts to achieve the transformation of systems of public education. The possibilities are explored in a concluding statement. A tale of two nations The current levels of social capital in Australia approximate those in England when New Labor led by Tony Blair came to power in 1997. The scene has been transformed in England in less than the time it has taken for the problem to be recognized in Australia. The point of departure is the manner in which the respective governments have tackled the problem of schools in challenging circumstances in the intervening years and moved to build wider community support for schools. In terms of the position to be taken in this paper, the key point to be made is that the Blair Government has moved well beyond the ‘tipping point’ (Gladwell, 2001) in creating an environment in which the business, foundations, trusts, philanthropists and the wider community are prepared to support their public schools. Such support was not forthcoming under successive conservative governments, but it has blossomed during the two terms of Labor Governments. Social capital It is helpful to clarify the concept of social capital. Interestingly, the concept dates from 1916 and its first use, according to Putnam (2000), was in the context of school education: 1 Brian J. Caldwell is Managing Director of Educational Transformations and Professorial Fellow in the Department of Education Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne (Australia) where he served as Dean of Education from 1998 to 2004. He is Associate Director - Global, International Networking for Educational Transformation, Specialist Schools Trust (England). This paper was presented at the Policymakers Exchange, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington, Seattle, 18 November 2004.