Working Paper: To Cite Please Contact the Author 1 Conditional equality in privatised schooling: Is there a public good in the private sector? A paper presented at ECER 2014, Porto, University of Porto, 1 - 5 September 2014 Ruth Boyask, Plymouth University ruth.boyask@plymouth.ac.uk Key points:  Inequalities in society are increasing, and education is often presented as the means to overcome such inequalities, with increasing privatisation in education we need a better understanding of how well equipped privatised schools are to address inequalities;  Privatisation is increasingly normalised in the state-funded schooling sector; privately- funded schooling provides an established context in which we can see how the public interest is transformed when it comes into contact with private and commercial interests;  Only 3.3% or 64 of the almost 2000 privately-funded schools in England openly express a commitment to equality on their school websites in one or more of the following areas: governance, pedagogy, curriculum, intake and outcomes;  Compared with Dewey’s democratic ideal, the 64 schools included in this study tend to promote free and equal interactions in relationships between members of the school community, and less so interactions with different communities outside the school, particularly communities considerably different from their own. Schools are commonplace as a result of structural changes throughout the last two centuries and continued into this one. In this period state-funded and compulsory public education developed as the norm in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, in response to both the economic needs of industrialisation and more intransitive human needs of burgeoning democracies (Ramirez & Boli, 1994; Patterson, 2001). In recent years the new global phenomenon in public education is an expansion of private sector involvement. The proliferation of public/private partnerships (PPPs) in education generally (Robertson, et al, 2012), and increase in new types of public/private schools in countries such as Sweden, US, Australia, and England specifically (Bunar, 2008; Lubienski, 2003; Gobby, 2013; Ball 2010), makes using the term ‘public education’ to describe contemporary national schooling systems funded by the state outmoded and lacking in subtlety. Yet, neither is the public interest entirely missing from new forms of schooling. While acknowledging that ‘public’ in the schooling sector has been transformed through new relationships with different kinds of private interests, most notably commercial interests, it is important to investigate such relationships beyond the recognition that they represent an erosion of the public good. This is important in a world beset by increasing social and economic inequalities, a trend