Rodríguez G., M. F. (2024). Resisting regulation: revealing orders of worth behind the debate over private education regulation in Peru. Journal of Education Policy, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2024.2386613

Although the regulation of private education has been a disputed topic in academic and policy debates, there is a lack of recognition regarding the underlying structures that inform such opposing viewpoints. Through a sociological understanding of disputes, I propose to see through the lenses of the market to understand the contested visions at play in the regulation of private education in a specific case: a debate in 2018 between private providers and the Ministry of Education that would inform the national regulation in Peru. Specifically, I analyse how private providers justify their right to select and expel students by examining the underlying higher-order principles behind their arguments, or as Boltanski and Thévenot termed them, the ‘orders of worth’. The analysis provides evidence of contradictory ways of seeing education that are located in market, industrial and domestic orders of worth, which suggest a hegemonic project for private education in Peru that also holds open the possibility of challenging it by unpacking the arguments used to support it. These justifications expose the inconsistencies of an unequal educational system that has relied on private education for decades. This paper could prove useful for other countries seeking to reform the regulation of private education.