When Marketisation Does Not Improve Schooling: the case of Macau

For centuries Macau has experienced extended market principles for schooling, with very limited state intervention in education, and only a recent history of regarding schooling as a public good. This paper suggests that laissez‐faire market principles have failed to provide high quality schooling in Macau and that considerable state intervention is required to ensure that education develops as a public good in Macau. The case is made for a ‘mixed economy’ of public and private providers of schooling as a public good in Macau, thereby building on the existing extensive private provision that exists there, with attention still needing to be given to quality control and increased governmental support. A state‐regulated market might be more effective than a genuinely open market. The case of Macau is used to demonstrate that public goods and private services are neither polar opposites nor mutually exclusive. The greater involvement of the state in education in Macau, with the impending handback of Macau to China in 1999, might be problematic if it becomes too intrusive and repressive, although there are indications from Macau's immediate neighbours in China's regions that China itself is moving towards marketisation, diversification of providers of education, decentralisation of administration, and increasing privatisation. This may facilitate integration and harmonisation. Macau's situation of a small state in transition to re‐incorporation is compared to the situation of other former colonies, and an agenda for reform is suggested.