Buying, selling and outsourcing educational reform: the Global Education Industry and 'policy borrowing' in the Gulf.

This paper analyses the approach to systemic educational reform in the Arabian states of the Gulf and the central role within that of the Global Education Industry (GEI). Initially the authors identify the commonalities of their approach; subsequently they compare the approaches in Bahrain and Qatar. They demonstrate how the GEI is embedded in all stages of policy making, delivery and monitoring which revolves around the selling of 'best global practices'. They argue that the outcome is a commercial model of applied 'comparative education' designed for 'selling to the other' and it is both distinctive and of limited effectiveness; it also provides a vision of the future as educational policy making is increasingly outsourced to the private sector. They conclude with a discussion of the conditions which facilitated this approach and of what others might learn from the experience of the Gulf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]