Educators don’t normally have ‘trade negotiations’ on their radar as something that they must be informed about. Terms like ‘trade in education services’, ‘cross-border supply’, ‘national treatment’, ‘stand-still’, ‘negative list’ and ‘ratchet’ – to name just a few that are used in negotiating international trade and investment deals – are strange interlopers into the world of education. Yet education is a sector now included in a raft of trade and investment negotiations and agreements either underway or recently concluded and awaiting ratification. This report explores the wider economic, political and social conditions, development agendas, combinations of actors, and regulatory instruments, which together have challenged the idea of, and conditions for, education as a public service and a human right by locking in a market and profit-based framing of education in trade deals.
