engleski

Private Education in Transition Countries as a Promotor of Economic Freedom

Education policy that would fully enable the fullfilment of social and economic functions of education needs to be coordinated and aligned with the economic policies where the final goal is increasing the country's competitiveness on the regional and global market. Role and importance of such education policy in specific framework such as transition process has to be approached strategically. Discussion of the position of education in transition process raises questions such as: curriculum reform, coordination of education and labor market policies due to the changed environment which mostly includes and refers to the role of market forces (supply and demand) for certain knowledge and skills, financing education sector and others. Besides the new and important role of market forces, appearance of private ownership is an important characteristic of the transition process. This form of ownership is also visible in the education sector. However, it is not only due to the transition process and market oriented reforms, but there is also a global trend of decentralization, weakening the role of the state, liberalization, privatization, expansion of regional and global integrations and other global trends. The main research question focuses on the assessing weather the private education expansion has positively impacted Economic freedom in the transition countries of the Central and East Europe (CEE). These countries, are now what it is according to Birzea (2008) a „New transition“ that is more economic, social and educational and less political. This „New Transition“ of CEE countries is also in the accordance with the Lisbon Agenda and other EU goals concerning education and training (such as those set in the Education and Training 2020 – ET2020). Thus, this paper sheds some light on the relationship between Economic freedom and private primary and secondary education in the CEE region during the period 1999 - 2015, which also includes the transition period of the countries from this region. This paper continues the current scientific discussion regarding the effect of Economic freedom on Private share in education by continuing the discussion started by DeAngelis and Shakeel (2017). However, this paper goes one step further and estimates the effect of decomposed Economic Freedom Indices (Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation) on selected variables in CEE countries. Results of estimation also provide very limited statistical evidence to support the hypothesis that private education promotes Economic freedom in selected countries as it was expected regarding the current debate started by DeAngelis and Shakeel (2017). This paper shows that only certain dimension of the Heritage Foundation Index have an effect on private share in primary and secondary education. Five existing dimension of second (Fraser Institute) Index do not show any statistically significant effect on Private share. Recommendations to policy makers based on the results of this analysis are formed in the direction of necessary and continuous expansion of the access to education including both private primary and secondary education. However, this also requires well planned governmental quality assurance framework and financial support that is coordinated with other policies and overall country's development strategy. Measurements such as those of Economic freedom should take into account more aims and implementations of regulations. Finally, the concept of Economic freedom needs a coherent theoretical framework and more effort needs to be put by key promoters and players in the Economic freedom debate (international organizations) towards achieving this goal. This would create a framework to resolve measurement issues in order to create tool(s) that would measure „true“ Economic freedom. Using data from the World Bank, the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation this paper explores the scope to which private education promotes levels of economic freedom in CEE countries during 1999 - 2015. Using country and time fixed-effects regression it has been found that only certain dimensions of the Heritage Foundation Index promote the Private share in total primary and secondary school enrolment. Five dimensions of the Fraser Institute Index do not have a significant effect on the Private share.

CEE ; education ; freedom ; private ; transition ; schooling

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