ABSTRACT
The chapter considers three theoretical sets of ideas for explaining the privatisation of education and educational futures and reviews some of the school-related, policy, partnership and professional challenges for physical education. Neoliberal-based privatisation reforms are designed to achieve better outcomes and introduce greater choice in order to change traditional schooling. Very often endogenous privatisation provides the policy basis towards greater forms of exogenous privatisation. The chapter reviews the extent to which reforms should take place as part of reschooling, or through de-schooling, or through a mix of reschooling and de-schooling influences to consider how transformative futures for physical education might flourish. The ambitions of neoliberalism often need to co-exist alongside neoconservatism, which typically has a focus on the promotion of national interest and identity. Accordingly, schools need to balance being sufficiently distinctive in order to be successful in the market place but sufficiently similar to fulfill curriculum obligations considered valuable and that enable comparisons with other schools to take place.
