ABSTRACT
This chapter describes critical and powerful student movements to illustrate how students can be relevant political actors in education debates. It analyzes discrimination issue, linking students' demands with distinctive institutional features of Chilean educational system that have made it a case study of privatization in educational sector since 1980s. The chapter explains the main features of the Chilean education system, including its extreme degree of marketization, which provided the institutional context of the movements. It discusses the key components and characteristics of the 2006 and 2011 student movements: The chapter also describes basic features of the two movements separately and then identifies their key common elements, especially from an education policy perspective. It examines the link between students' proclamations and demands and the market-oriented institutions that prevail within the Chilean education system. The chapter also analyzes the relationship between the student movements and other civil society organizations that participated in both movements, although with varying levels of coordination.
