A/70/342 resolution adopted by the World Congress on privatization in and commercialization of education and also dwelt upon its repercussions for the teaching profession. 32. On 29 July, the Special Rapporteur participated in a workshop on the challenges of public-private partnerships in realizing the right to education, convened by the Oxford Human Rights Hub and the Open Society Foundation, and highlighted key challenges in his opening remarks. He also made concluding remarks, mentioning the importance of those discussions for the present report. II. Right to education and the global dynamics of publicprivate partnerships 33. One can witness today the broad neoliberal policy trend towards the private provision of historically public services. 1 Privatization is being driven by an increasing number and range of public and private actors at the global, regional and national levels. The rapidly changing global landscape of education, with the phenomenon of public-private partnerships as a form of management and service delivery in education, is in part prescribed by the donor community and international financial institutions. The private sector is now deeply embedded in education at all levels from policy and research work to delivering learning in classrooms. 2 States cease to be fully responsible for the provision of education directly to their citizens but rather assume the role of a contractor of services delivered by a range of private providers. 34. The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation have been key proponents of public-private partnerships and have been particularly instrumental in facilitating the replication of what they consider to be successful pilots or experiments in partnerships between Governments and the private sector. A small cluster of large, powerful, global management firms have taken large interests in such public-private partnerships. 2 Outsourcing education activities to profit-making corporations opens the space for them not only to make a profit, but also to steer education agendas in ways that may not be in the best interest of students, parents and teachers and thus societies as a whole. 35. In its resolution 1.1 on privatization and commercialization in and of education, the seventh World Congress of Education International, held in Ottawa in July 2015, deplored the fact that, in many countries, Governments had abrogated their core responsibility to ensure the right to education for all through a fully accountable free, quality public education system and were increasingly turning to partnering with, or subsidizing, private actors to deliver education. 36. Multi-stakeholder initiatives are being propounded as innovative models to bring together corporations, Governments and civil society organizations under the guise of public-private partnerships to tackle global issues. That often negates __________________ 1 2 6/25 See World Economic Forum, Global Redesign: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World (Geneva, 2010). See Susan L. Robertson and Antoni Verger, “Governing education through public private partnerships”, Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol, United Kingdom (2012). 15-12538