Conference Agenda

Education systems have long been recognized as key drivers in shaping national economies and identities. Up through the 19th and 20th centuries, formal education served as a key lever for aligning people’s knowledge, identities, and emotions with the boundaries and needs of nation states (Harp, 1998). In more recent history, however, education has increasingly been consigned a central role in a transnational push toward constructing a global knowledge economy (Ball, 2012; Lawn & Grek, 2012). This has unsettled the sovereignty of nation-states in two interrelated ways. First, the transnational turn has galvanized the emergence of global and regional structures which, through mechanisms of competition and learning, have challenged conventional assumptions of states’ control over education (Martens et al., 2014). Second, the development hasled to an increased involvement of private actors whose services now form a vital part of the infrastructures upon which education systems operate. As a result, the governance of education now involves a plethora of private organizations, consultancies, tech platforms, international networks, and new financial markets, all of which have been a part of making education systems more networked, collaborative, competitive, streamlined, and international (Cone & Brøgger, 2020).

Yet the concurrent processes of internationalization and privatization have also made educational institutions vulnerable as the Western world's purported liberal values and soft power begin to falter. During the last decade, many of the organizing principles and values guiding the turn toward global cooperation and competitiveness in education have been put under pressure by an upsurge of authoritarian politics and rising fascisms (Geiselberger, 2017; Giudici, 2021). Emerging security concerns and nationalist-populist movements have put education at the forefront of European and national foreign politics, dragging it into the center of ongoing culture wars. This shift has perhaps been most saliently felt – though not exclusively – in the strategies and discourses of parties belonging to what was formerly considered the political mainstream speaking to the need to renationalize education, control academic institutions, and censor or direct educational content. As the relationship between education and nationalism (re)emerges as an object of political concern, many of the fundamental assumptions underpinning the contemporary development of education governance are put under severe pressure.

Europe provides a profound case to witness the implications of the ongoing slide toward different forms of nationalism, xenophobia, and populist authoritarianisms in systems characterized by high levels of internationalization, different forms of privatization, and decades of liberal reforms (Bromley et al., 2023). This symposium sets out to gather an assembly of critical perspectives on the implications of (re-)politicizing European education in privatized environments of public sector governance. Concretely, the symposium will bring together three different papers that in different ways speak to the complex links between political trends of exclusionary politics and education governance. Paper 1, by Francesca Peruzzo, explores the growing role of private actors in the governance of disability in education. Drawing on the notion of soft privatization, the paper discusses how post-welfare governance in England produces new forms of vulnerability and dependence on private infrastructures that are then mobilized to nurture new forms of exclusion. Paper 2, by Simona Szakacs-Behling and Elena Negrea-Busuioc, explores the homeschooling politics of Romanian public education figure Cristela Georgescu, discussing how her arguments frame alternative education formats as solutions to the perceived failures of the liberal‑democratic state. Extending the interest in new forms of family politics, paper 3 by Lucas Cone examines current geopolitical shifts in Europe in relation to the return of parenting and the notion of motherhood as an idealized figure for producing patriotic values and sustaining moral order, focusing empirically on the case of homeschooling mothers in Denmark.

This paper examines the growing role of private actors in the governance of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision in England. While scholarship has mapped the privatisation of mainstream schooling, SEND has remained peripheral to these debates (Gary et al, 2023). Recent audit and fiscal reports document a sharp increase in Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) (National Audit Office, 2024), which specify students’ educational needs and how to meet them, alongside escalating high-needs government spending (Institute of Fiscal Studies, 2026). The fiscal pressures have precipitated the entry of consultancy firms, specialist digital providers, and private education groups into SEND infrastructures. I argue that these developments represent a form of ‘soft privatisation’ (Cone & Brøgger, 2020). To shed light on the erosion of public capacity and collective responsibility for disability under post-welfare conditions, the paper builds on accounts of governmentality (Foucault, 1991) and mobilises environmentality (Lemke, 2021) to highlight how governance is modulated through the configuration of socio-technical environments, including procurement systems, risk modelling tools, performance metrics, and commissioning pathways, rather than through the direct shaping of subjects. Critical disability studies (Tomlinson, 2017; Goodley, 2014) provide additional analytical tools to analyse how disabled children are governed as cases within competitive resource environments rather than as subjects of rights within a redistributive welfare regime. The paper examines three interrelated sites of soft privatisation. First, consultancy firms have become central to the Department for Education’s efforts to ‘stabilise’ SEND budgets (DfE, 2025). Second, key components of the EHCP assessment and drafting process have been outsourced to commercial providers and augmented by new layers of digital and AI-enabled tools (Special Needs Jungle, 2025). Third, local authorities have become increasingly dependent on high-cost placements in independent special schools, many of which are owned by private equity firms or sovereign wealth funds (School Week, 2026). This emerging private education market embeds SEND provision within profit-oriented strategies. Conceptually, the paper extends privatisation scholarship by using environmentality as an analytics to explore the mechanisms whereby markets reorganise SEND governance. Empirically, it shows that privatisation in SEND is not peripheral but infrastructural, reorganising assessment, planning, and provision. Politically, the paper contends that these developments undermine inclusive and democratic practices, fragmenting accountability, individualising responsibility, and re-commodifying disability and special needs in education. The English SEND case reveals how post-welfare governance produces new forms of vulnerability and dependence on private infrastructures whose logics are incompatible with equity and inclusion.

Cone, L., & Brøgger, K. (2020). Soft privatisation: mapping an emerging field of European education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(4), 374–390. Department for Education (2025). Delivering Better Value in SEND Programme. Retrievable at https://www.dbvinsend.com/ Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell; C. Gordon; P. Miller, (Eds.), The Foucault effect. University of Chicago Press. Gary, T., Dobson, G. and Loxley, A. (2023). The increasing use of private special schools: A policy gap for inclusive education. British Educational Research Journal 49(6), 1357-1371. Goodley, D. (2024). Disability studies. Sage. Institute of Fiscal Studies. (2026). Rapid rises in SEND and childcare spending are reshaping education spending in England. IFS. Retrievable at https://ifs.org.uk/news/rapid-rises-send-and-childcare-spending-are-reshaping-education-spending-england Lemke, T. (2021). The Government of Things. Foucault and the New Materialisms. New York University Press. National Audit Office. (2024). Support for children and young people with special educational needs. NAO. Retrievable at https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/support-for-children-and-young-people-with-special-educational-needs/?nab=1&utm School Week (2026). Private special schools charging £100k fees failed standards checks. Retrievable at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/private-special-schools-charging-councils-100k-fees-failed-standards-checks/?utm Special Needs Jungle. (2025). The risks and benefits of using artificial intelligence to power EHCPs. Retrievable at https://www.specialneedsjungle.com/risks-benefits-artificial-intelligence-power-ehcps/?utm Tomlinson, S., (2017). A sociology of special and inclusive education: exploring the manufacturing of inability. Routledge.

While the global rise of populism and its entanglements with education are documented (Nestore & Robertson 2022), East European post‑socialist dynamics remain comparatively underexplored (Giudici et al. 2025). Post‑socialist states are distinctive in that nation‑building has been shaped by tensions between projects of national revival and Europeanisation - as vividly reflected, for e.g. in post‑1989 Romanian schooling reforms (Szakacs 2018). In this paper, we analyse ca. 17 hours of an educational podcast series produced by Cristela Georgescu, a Romanian alternative medicine and public education figure linked to former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu, known for his populist far‑right views. We examine how these post‑socialist tensions are mobilised in public discourse around education. Methodologically, we draw on constructivist grounded theory and inductive thematic analysis applied to a fully transcribed podcast corpus (Charmaz 2008). Echoing Brown’s (2021, p. 14) analysis of the “parallel politics” of conservative homeschooling in the United States, we show how Georgescu frames alternative education formats as solutions to the perceived failures of the liberal‑democratic state. This framing reflects a paradox: widespread scepticism toward the state and political elitescoexists with a longing for a new moral authority, articulated through messianic discourses of salvation. The outcome is an authoritarianism without the state, channelled instead through idealised notions of the family, orthodox faith, and charismatic forms of expertise. The podcast series advances a pronounced anti‑school discourse. Formal schooling is depicted as corrupt, neoliberal, and neomarxist, and contrasted with a proposed return to the “roots”: traditional masculinity, “laws of nature,” and God. Promoted inter alia by non‑governmental far‑right organisations in schools, such formats exemplify processes of “soft privatisation” (Cone & Brøgger 2020) in a country where for‑profit private education remains relatively limited. We situate this discourse within longer historical genealogies, highlighting Romania’s unresolved relationship with both its legionary (nazi) and communist pasts. As Verdery (1991) argues, Romanian socialism was deeply infused with nationalism. Ceaușescu’s “national ideology” promoted ethnonationalism by claiming the superiority of Romanian culture, history, and traditions in official cultural policy. Contemporary new right actors draw on these repertoires even while rejecting state institutions. By staging anti‑school education as the last bastion of child‑centredness, individual freedom, and traditional family values, the podcasts resonate with new right discourses transnationally and illuminate broader illiberal shifts in the meanings of education (Lerch et al. 2022). Our paper reveals how anti‑statism and demands for private forms of schooling merge to co‑produce post‑socialist forms of authoritarian discourse.

Brown, H. (2021). Homeschooling the Right How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State. Columbia University Press. Charmaz, K. (2008). Constructionism and the Grounded Theory Method. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Handbook of Constructionist Research (pp. 397–416). The Guilford Press. Cone, L., & Brøgger, K. (2020). Soft privatisation: mapping an emerging field of European education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(4), 374–390. Giudici, A., Gruber, O., Schnell, P., & Pultar, A. (2024). Far-right parties and the politics of education in Europe. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 00(00), 1–14. Lerch, J. C., Bromley, P., & Meyer, J. W. (2022). Global Neoliberalism as a Cultural Order and Its Expansive Educational Effects. International Journal of Sociology, 0(0), 1–31. Nestore, M., & Robertson, S. (2022). Introduction to special issue: education and populisms. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20(2), 81–85. Szakács, S. (2018). Europe in the Classroom. World Culture and Nation-Building in Post-Socialist Romania. Palgrave Macmillan UK. Verdery, K. (1991). National Ideology Under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu’s Romania. University of California Press.

A wave of family politics is unfolding across Europe and North America. Pace the promises of liberal rights and open markets, political parties from the far right have turned natalism and motherhood into centerpieces in their campaigning efforts to assert and legitimize ethno-nationalist claims of originality and lineage (Indelicato et al., 2024). In political terms, these efforts are being anchored in emerging postliberal networks of homeschool advocates, church organizations, and parental rights groups who view the family as the ultimate bastion of child-centeredness and freedom from the progressive principles of universal public schooling (Brown, 2021; Yilmaz & Morieson, 2023). Building on Stoler’s (2021) work on Interior Frontiers, this paper sets out to chart the current geopolitical shifts in Europe in relation to the return of parenting and the notion of motherhood as an idealized figure for producing patriotic values and sustaining moral order (Douglas, 2004). Empirically, the paper builds on a document analysis of policy texts sampled from across the European Union member states as well as material gathered through an ethnographic study of mothers engaged in homeschooling or family-based childcare Denmark, many of whom share a critical stance against formal systems of child caring, notions of the competition state, the authority of public teachers – and propagate their political claims to maternal superiority through an active presence on social media platforms. The paper will discuss the returning role of family politics and motherhood as part of the postliberal turn and its paradoxical connection to contemporary trends in educational governance as a form of privatization which has itself been enabled by the liberal state against which it revolts (Cooper, 2017). This will also include reflections on the role of social media and platforms in propagating “pro-child” content and circulating representations of white, Christian, European motherhood (Ahmed, 2004).

Brown, H. (2021). Homeschooling the Right How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State. Columbia University Press. Cooper, M. (2017). Family Values. Zone Books. Douglas, S. (2004). The mommy myth. Indelicato, M. E., & Magalhães Lopes, M. (2024). Understanding populist far-right anti-immigration and anti-gender stances beyond the paradigm of gender as ‘a symbolic glue’: Giorgia Meloni’s modern motherhood, neo-Catholicism, and reproductive racism. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 31(1), 6-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068241230819 Nestore, M., & Robertson, S. (2022). Introduction to special issue: education and populisms. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20(2), 81–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1948392 Yilmaz, I. and Morieson, N. (2023) Religions and the Global Rise of Civilizational Populism. Palgrave Macmillan Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9052-6