ABSTRACT:

The aim of this article was to analyze three experiences of public-private management models in middle education that were developed in the last decades in Uruguay. In particular, the Programa de Aulas Comunitarias and the high schools Jubilar and Impulso will be presented. The first program constitutes a special experience, because it articulates a mixed management between the Consejo de Educación Secundaria and various Organizations of the Civil Society. The other two programs regard private management models with public financing, which are characteristic of privatization forms in the education field. There is a special interest in contextualizing these experiences within the framework of the dispute going on in the symbolic field regarding the role that State, Civic Society organizations and companies have in public education. In addition, there is a concern in identifying the retraction process of education as a universal right and its rise and progressive settlement as a product prone to be commercialized that has been taking place in Uruguay in the last decades. This analysis was proposed to be carried out around three axes: contextualize and analyze the value public has had within the Uruguayan education system; identify the context in which each of the three experiences arise and their characteristics, considering the peculiarities of each program; and analyze the symbolic tensions and disputes taking place around the relations between public and private activities, as well as the new meaning of the public education sense, with the risks it implicates.

Keywords:
Public education; Right; Privatization processes